Here’s my blog as published in today’s www.london24.com – a great site for Hammers News

It’s depressing and it’s wearying but it’s very West Ham that we should still be looking over our shoulders with 29 games of the season gone!

Somebody mentioned in conversation the other day that life wouldn’t be the same if us Irons hadn’t got the relegation issues to worry about with a handful of games left.

I think I speak for every Hammer out there in saying: “Well, let life please not be the same then?” Personally – as a very long term fan – I’ve been here far too many times and could do with a long break from the R word.

Blood pressure and heart problems become a problem to some of us at a certain time of life around this this time of the season if we wear claret and blue!

But in all seriousness, the situation begs many questions, the biggest perhaps being: “After the money the club has spent in recent years should this be the case?”

With the likes of Andy Carroll, Matt Jarvis and Stewart Downing arriving at a collective cost of over £30 million plus the likes of Modibo Maiga (£5 million) and Kevin Nolan (£3m), close to £40 million has been sunk into player resources by a club which until recently was deep in debt.

We all know the Carroll situation so let’s not go there as the fact remains we have spent ‘fortunes’ to still be talking about the drop, injuries or not!

The good news however, is that I don’t believe we will go down, although I have to stay off Twitter to convince myself! Pity parties and Irons martyrs aren’t an essential element of my day!

Some of them are so entirely miserable and negative I wonder if they wouldn’t find suicide preferable.

So Instead I chose to spend some time analysing the fixtures faced by the Irons and the teams beneath us as at first glance ours appear to be very daunting indeed.

The Twitter Army seem fixated on how many points we will glean without often addressing a single thought to the run-ins of the others.

I have given each team what I consider to be the minimum number of points, including ourselves, but before giving you what I reckon will be the final points tallies of each and their positions let’s take a look at some of the matches our rivals face.

Fulham: Man City (away), Everton (home), Aston Villa (away)  Tottenham (away) plus several against teams around them where crucial points will be won or lost by our ‘rivals.’

Cardiff: Liverpool (h), Southampton (a), Newcastle (a), Chelsea (h)

Sunderland: Liverpool (a), Tottenham (a), Chelsea (a) Man Utd (a)

Palace: Newcastle (a), Chelsea (h), Manchester City (h)

Norwich: Liverpool (h), Chelsea (a), Arsenal (h). Three games also involve relegation threatened teams where again points will be lost by someone or other!

Swansea: Arsenal (a), Chelsea (h), Newcastle (a)

Hull City: Manchester United (a), Arsenal (h), Everton (Everton).

We of course have the likes of United (h) Liverpool (h), Arsenal (a), Tottenham (h) and Man City (a). However, alongside those are home games against Palace, Sunderland and WBA.

My minimum points count for the Hammers is six taking us to 37 points and here is my finishing table:

Hull           42 pts

Norwich   39 pts

IRONS       37 pts

C Palace   37 pts

WBA         35pts

Sdland      35 pts

Swansea  35pts

Cardiff     30 pts

Fulham   30 pts