The Hammers ran themselves into the ground

By CandH blogger Allen Cummings

Before the game against Villa on Monday all talk was of the Hammers reaching third place in the Premier League. After the game the popular media headline was that West Ham had ‘missed’ the chance to move into third spot.

The headline could just as easily have read ‘resilient 10 man West Ham hold out’and  and that would have been spot on in my opinion!

Ok we didn’t get the hoped for victory, but we did put in a performance that was every bit as noteworthy for its sheer gritty determination and dogged desire to come away from Villa Park with something.

Much has been spoken and written about the attractive make-up and attacking threat of Manuel Pellegrini’s developing side, but against Villa we saw a team prepared to engage in the less glamourous side of the game.

This was a team prepared to dig in when the chips were down, following Arthur’s wrongful and disgraceful sending off by Mike Dean, who continues to believe everything is all about him (as the travelling West Ham fans sang repeatedly).

There have been numerous West Ham teams of the not-to-distant past who would have folded after that. The fact that the present team didn’t says much about the spirit that’s evident in the side now.

Disgraceful sending off!

Make no mistake Villa Park was an intimidating arena! The home fans, buoyed up by their return of Premier League football, smelled blood when Arthur departed.

But their thirst was quelled by a team who refused to walk away empty handed. A second clean sheet for a defence much maligned just a few weeks ago is well worth noting. Often watching from home fails to fully appreciate the effort put in on the pitch.

For those of us lucky enough to be at the game last night the sheer physical exertion of the game was etched on the players faces and reflected in their legs when the final whistle blew. They had run themselves into the ground for the cause – and it showed.

Monday night extended our unbeaten run to four games. It was another valuable point on the road, and kept our tally ticking along nicely.

And when I looked this morning we were, after all, sat nicely in third place with eight points (albeit jointly with five others) which is more than a decent start to the campaign in anyone’s language.