West Ham jumps up to third in the Premier League form table with five wins out of the last six league games. Only Spurs and Liverpool have bettered that form with both winning all their six most recent games.
Chelsea sits in 6th place with two losses in the last six games and Arsenal seventh with a loss and two draws. Possibly the biggest surprise is Man City’s slump in form to 11th spot losing three games in their last six games.
The Hammers have scored 12 points from a maximum 15 in their last six, form that would put them in the Champions League if repeated throughout the whole season.
In real terms, West Ham jumped up to ninth in the Premier League table on 27 points which is identical to Everton in eighth who have 3 goals difference on the Irons. Leicester in seventh are just one point above the Hammers and that must be the next target as West Ham faces Burnley this Sunday.
I am speaking as one of those who was very critical at the start of the season. Yes one of those moaners some of you are always moaning about! I said then I would be delighted to come on here & admit I was wrong if Pellegrini turned it round. Well like most people I don’t enjoy admitting mistakes but I was wrong. Last night was encouraging because it was against a side coming off several good results with a new manager. Also it involved turning round a deficit, resulting from a dodgy goal decision. Like last year in the Bouremouth match.
A couple of reservations. After all I am a moaner! I still think some of the predictions about where we are headed are over the top. Yes a run of four wins is great, but isn’t it just as daft to go over the top about that as about four defeats on the trot? A month ago we were in the relegation mix. I thought we were poor at times in most of our recent games e.g. First half at Fulham. The defence still needs to be improved. We will lose to sides who nick a goal but can then defend it. Brighton will be an interesting test of this. The injury situation is not just bad luck. it is something that has needed addressing for several years and still does if we are going to be a top half club consistently. Also the home form is not good.
But overall it is great to be a Hammer at present and even a moaner can sit back and be proud of his club occasionally. Long may it last.
Can’t work out the injury situation. Quite a few different managers, backroom staff and medical team changes,new equipment and ideas, even changes of training and playing surfaces have made no change to our casualty numbers. What more can we do to alter this? How can it be explained and remedied? You say it’s not just bad luck, What is it then?
I don’t claim to know the answer any more than you do. Maybe it just seems as if we lose more players to injury than other clubs, but that is hard to believe. If the club aspires to be top 6 or regular top 8 it has to pay people to find the answer. My guess is partly recruitment of injury prone players that we take a gamble on-e.g. Carroll, Yarmolenko, Wilshere. That accounts for quite a few of the games missed I would think. Although I haven’t seen any evidence that we are more likely to do this than clubs similar to us in financial clout.
You mention changes in training methods- perhaps we are lagging behind other clubs in this area. I think that one is unlikely after all the changes you mention, although just changing the methods won’t necessarily improve things unless you are making the right changes.
Obviously all clubs have seasons when they are unlucky with injuries & others when injuries are a minor problem.But the laws of probability say that over a lengthy period you can’t keep being unlucky. The number of injuries per club would even itself out-unless other factors are at work.
I don’t think there has been a massive turnaround personally. I just take into account that our early games were mostly against top half teams and the last so many have been mostly against bottom half teams. I think our real progress is going to be measured when we have to play the top teams again. Another measure of our improvement as a squad in general Is that we can have so many injuries to some of our best players but still have enough quality in the squad to cope. Not only cope but win five out of six without them.
Agree with that last point Clive. Also the ability to bounce back.in the past one defeat was often the beginning of a bad run.
Not sure how much we can expect from games against the big sides. There seem to be more thrashings of the Also Rans this season- even Bournemouth copping a few. Just my impression. And we have most of them away in the second half of the season I think.