Hammers boss David Moyes seems read to sacrifice the FA Cup in order to save the Hammers league season.
Two league games this week, the 3rd round tie against Shrewsbury on Sunday followed by two tough Premier League outings is quite simply “making life impossible. ”
Sam Allardyce was caught up in a similar scenario four years ago when an under strength Irons side crashed out of the cup at Nottingham Forest during the course of a relegation battle.
And Moyes side: “I remember that. But do you not think the position you are in now, the focus would only be on your Premier League status?
“Because if you’ve not got Premier League status and you’re talking about winning the cup, you’ve still got to beat all the teams to get there.
“So it’s a difficult one — not easy to say what would be the way. Do I want to win the FA Cup? 100 per cent. But I don’t think it can be where we can damage our league season.
“And actually, if we got through to the fourth round [on the final weekend of January], our next two games are on the Tuesday against Crystal Palace and Brighton [both fellow relegation candidates] on the Saturday.
“So, in a way, to play the FA Cup and then you’ve got a Premier League game on the Tuesday night and a Premier League game the following Saturday, you are saying, ‘Wait a minute here — it’s nearly becoming impossible for us to find the players.’
Hang on there “Moyesie/Moishe”! (I had an uncle called Moishe!)
One step at a time..
Lets try and get 3 points from the WBA game and possibly a point against the Spuds.
Surely we have enough quality (first team and U-23’s) to cope wit Shrewsbury?
OK, one might say that some of the young blokes are too young, but are worth a go.
The games against Huddersfiled and Bournemouth will be challenging, but I expect 4 points from them.
If we look too far ahead, and then start comparing anomalous results from other games, then it is easy to catastrophize?!
Catastrophize!!! We should play scrabble instead of football and make you captain 🤣
In my humble opinion, the FA cup, sorry, the Emirates FA cup has lost a lot of the glamour of old. Last time it meant anything was 1980. I would be happy to play all of our upcoming youngsters, Qinoa, Rice, Oxford and Martinez and if they win, well done. If not, oh well, as long as life goes on for us in the premier league then I’m happy.
Blinding word!! you should send that to Soccer AM. I agree; give the youngster (and the Bench) a game. I’m going and I want to see effort. If we lose; so be it; let’s at least try harder than at Arsenal the other day
37 years after I saw us beat Arsenal, I like most others am desperate to get to Wembly again, but not at the expense of our Premiere league place, so Moyes is right.
The real problem is the Spurs game. It’s ridiculous. We hardly have enough players to cover the WBA and Spurs games, so for the FA cup we have to use U23 players.
The next problem is that we have injuries in our U23 including Holland and Pask, and the rest have had 2 weeks off, so they won’t be very sharp. Quina and Haksabanovic are the only ones close to the 1st team at the moment ( Rice is already counted as 1st team )
Totenham’s squad is much stronger than ours so they are major favorites to beat us, but we like surprises, and miracles sometimes happen.
Rice, Oxford and Burke in the back line..
Quina, Cullen in centre mid.
Martinez and jahmel hector-Ingram up top.
Just don’t know who to fit in the other midfield role or the wing back roles?
Perhaps Ben Johnson RWB? And Neufville in LWB?
Moses makasi as the other midfielder?
I don’t know but I actually think that would be enough to beat Shrewsbury… especially as Burke, oxford, rice and Cullen have had first team experience (either with us or on loan)