Mission accomplished yesterday as West Ham scraped through in a tricky away fixture against ‘plucky’ third tier Burton Albion. In the grand scheme of things nobody will care about the standard of the football on display: Does anybody remember the quality of Crystal Palace’s performances leading through to their Wembley win last season?
For the second time in as many weeks, West Ham players were involved in a mass brawl towards the end of the game. There is a fine line between ‘team spirit’ and ill discipline.
After the Chelsea mini-riot, which was perhaps more understandable given the circumstances, yesterday’s descent into ‘handbags’ could easily have led to further player dismissals and suspensions.
As thesun.co.uk observed yesterday:
“Burton vs West Ham FA Cup clash descends into chaos with mass brawl after Potts sent off…
“….players squared up to one another directly in front of the referee, before other players rushed to get involved in the confrontation. Burton forward Kain Adom was perhaps lucky to avoid a red card after appearing to shove a player near the neck in the melee, before being dragged away by Konstantinos Mavropanos.
Ugly scenes for the second time in as many weeks
Even Burton keeper Bradley Collins ran to the halfway line to get stuck into the clash, receiving a yellow card for his troubles.”
Nuno’s side can count themselves lucky that there was no VAR to pick over the detail looking for players to punish.
With one of the smallest squads in the Premier League, West Ham can do without losing players for extended periods: Freddie Potts’ three game absence comes at a time when Pablo is already missing injured for the foreseeable future. Jean Clair Todibo’s three game suspension has now been served and the Irons do not need a repeat performance.
Compared to the meek surrenders of Potter’s era, in one sense seeing a side who are prepared to fight for one another is no bad thing. Siege mentality can achieve wonders and the Hammers are -finally – doing a great job of fighting for their Premier League future.
Fine to battle for each other and to foster a team spirit but you’d sense that this ‘all for one, one for all’ mentality needs dialling back just a little if the Irons are to avoid further sanctions by the FA and, more importantly, further player bans in the crucial last twelve games of the Premier League season. Nuno needs a quiet word with his team and encourage them to be smarter rather than punchy ahead of the resumption of the campaign next weekend.
We don’t want to become too easy to tease though. Easily rattled, that West Ham. Give him a push and let the referee do the rest.
We need to maintain genuine concentration on playing football and not be distracted by the antics of opponents.
Not sure I agree MT it was a badly mistimed challenge by Potts but in a race to the finish when you are behind having no doubts your team have your back is an edge. It’s going to be an ugly long slog most likely unless we can produce a miracle and we will have to fight tooth and nail to survive.
Making us nasty to play against will in some games help us get over the line, we have been a soft touch and imho making us edgier is a good sign, balance can come after we have survived.
About time we got stuck in .
Don’t think it was a red seen a lot worse not given.
Football has gone to soft
Keep it up and fear nobody.
Except FA.
Many of yesterday’s games showed how reliant on VAR referees and linesmen have become, it’s as if they feel they don’t have to officiate the game with 100% concentration now because VAR will come to their rescue. There were tackles far worse than that produced by Potts and obvious penalty decisions missed. I agree that the Burton player should have also been shown a red card