By CandH blogger Allen Cummings

Much has been made recently about Manuel Pellegrini’s insistence on continuing to play with just one up front!

The cry has been for Seb Haller to be given help to share the goal scoring load.

And for Pellegrini to ditch his preferred formation and move to a two-pronged attack, as he bids to turn West Ham’s recent disappointing fortunes around.

The smart money, which is often spent by those who look up what is a Yankee bet, says Pelle is unlikely to change direction for this Saturday’s line-up against Spurs – preferring to persevere with Haller as the focal point of the attack.

That’s a recipe for disaster some will say! But I’m reminded of an encounter with the spuds back in October 2013, during the reign of Sam Allardyce, when we took on our north London neighbours without ANY recognised strikers in our team.

It was far from a disaster that day, as we came away from White Hart Lane with a thumping 3-0 victory, and a youngster by the name of Ravel Morrison took on hero status for his stunning strike.

Tottenham went into that game with the joint-tightest defence in the league – having previously conceded just twice thus far in the season.

They were also on a six game unbeaten run and were sitting proudly in the top four. West Ham on the other hand were in the bottom three – experiencing something of a striker crisis, and were yet to score an away goal.

Allardyce amazed everyone by deciding to go into the game with no recognised striker at all. The plan was for Morrison and Mo Diame to rotate as the furthest player forward when a break presented itself.

To say it worked a treat is something of an understatement. Three second half goals from Winston Reid, Ricardo Vaz Te and that super solo effort from Morrison emptied White Hart Lane long before the final whistle leaving just the travelling West Ham fans to ‘revel’ in their victory.

Amid all the  doom and gloom at the moment – let’s never forget West Ham are the masters of the unpredictable…as they proved again that day!