West Ham vs Spurs (15:00, 20/10/18) - Match build-up, commentary, discussion & analysis

Giant_Hammer

It's my birthday today. We've lost, southend have lost and Warnock wins. What's not to like. ;weep

MrsGrey

Happy Birthday ;lol

grey_til_I_dye

Giant

Happy birthday, and at least if you fancy a sherbert or lots, it's not like anyone could begrudge you...

;cheers

Hamstew

We need to start getting some more points

grey_til_I_dye

Ham

And on that performance, we will.

Are people really at the 'sacrifice performance for points' stage so soon?

thornburyiron

At this point I'd rather we picked up points and then playing well and losing won't be such an issue.
We are for the most part playing well but can't even average a goal per game. If we aren't picking up points when playing well we are going to be in a struggle when we hit a bad patch of form again which we inevitably will.
I don't want another relegation battle.

madridhammer

Let's be philosophical for a minute. We've just lost by the odd goal to one of the better teams in the league. I'm more annoyed by the Brighton result than this & if we can take our chances we'll be comfortably in mid table by Christmas. After 3 matches we had conceded 9 goals, 3 a game. We have only conceded 5 in the next 6 & i reckon we're on the right track. Onwards & upwards & as always COYI!!!

Lukerz

Discounting Liverpool, we have lost 5 games, 4 by one goal margins & one 3-1 but we all know how even that game was.

We don’t tend to get battered.

Having said that, 6 losses out of 9 games is not good. We need to start picking up points as we get close to Xmas.

We didn’t disgrace ourselves today but Spurs were hardly on top form either. That was a 0-0 game, but a sloppy goal on HT cost us.

Hamstew

grey_til_I_dye said:

Ham

And on that performance, we will.

Are people really at the 'sacrifice performance for points' stage so soon?

Nope I'm at that it's typical that Lloris decided to have a blinder today stage.

grey_til_I_dye

Madrid ;ok

Its not like we wasted chances today; we forced a top keeper to be at the top of his game.

Expat_Hammer

I'd be happy to accept the defeat and the performance if it were against ANY OTHER team

;weep

thornburyiron

Am I correct in saying we've lost the 4 games we've gone behind in and 2 when we've led. As soon as Spurs scored I said we'd struggle to get anything out of it.

OldCastleSwift

thornburyiron said:

If we aren't picking up points when playing well we are going to be in a struggle when we hit a bad patch of form again which we inevitably will.

Absolutely key for me, this. Obviously all of us want to see the team play well, but if we don't get anything for it, then the performances are literally pointless.

We should have got something from the Arsenal game. We should have got at least a point from today, but 'should' isn't good enough.

grey_til_I_dye

OCS

Well, IMO, it has to be for teams at our level.

It is for me.

OldCastleSwift

Fair enough Grey.

But I'm not happy with mediocrity.

Particularly after all of the big talk from those at the top of the club.

grey_til_I_dye

I didn't see anything mediocre in that performance, tbh, and haven't heard big talk from the owners recently.

We've spent nearly £100m on really decent players, and appointed a quality manager.

That shows ambition to me.

steve

;doh just walked in from a cruise so missed the game ,perhaps as well I did ,were we just unlucky again ,really want a run of good results from now on

grey_til_I_dye

steve

Looks like it will depend on who you ask.

I liked what I saw from us, and would say a draw would have been a fair result.

steve

;ok thanks grey ,will just have to get them in the cup ;scarf

Hamstew

Anyone know how Declan played today?

grey_til_I_dye

Ham

Really well, for me. Covered a lot of ground, and took up good positions.

Diop was superb.

thornburyiron

Granted a draw would have been a fair result but we didn't get one and far too often we seem to have to say that and if it keeps on we will struggle. We are getting better but we need to string results together.
Id rather at the moment be saying that we didn't deserve to win that but who cares.

Lukerz

29 games remaining

Get the performance consistently right & the results will come

For me, anyway ;ok

jay_in_cpt

A draw imo would have been very fair, only a real idiot of a Spurs fan could say they deserved to win, Lloris is class and always perform well, we couldn't rely on him to play poor, we couldn't take a few good chances, but like Madrid said above, the Brighton game freaked me more than todays by a long way...

all IMO of course !

grey_til_I_dye

Thorn

I wouldn't; for me that would just be more of the same see-saw stuff we've had for years.

I'll take us going out against every team and assuming we can win, and players being brave on the ball, even though they may make mistakes, over hide or hoof it, pack the defence and look to nick something in the last 20 minutes.

The former offers the possibility of development and improvement; the latter true mediocrity.

OldCastleSwift

grey_til_I_dye said:

I didn't see anything mediocre in that performance, tbh, and haven't heard big talk from the owners recently.

We've spent nearly £100m on really decent players, and appointed a quality manager.

That shows ambition to me.

And yet the results still don't improve.

Which is really my point. Irrespective of who's in charge, who's on the pitch and how they perform, we always struggle to string any decent results together. I love that Diop and Rice are playing brilliantly, but at the end of the day we've still lost two-thirds of our games to date. If we carry on at that rate we'll lose 24 games this season. Would anyone be happy with that?

grey_til_I_dye

Luke

For me, if today is our benchmark performance, we'll win a good number of the remaining games.

thornburyiron

I'm not saying I want that all the time but consistently playing well and losing will soon cause a lack of confidence in the team and the fans getting disgruntled.
I never expect us to pick up anything from the 12 games against the so called top six so losing this one was not a real surprise but it's not only against the top teams that we are playing reasonably well and losing.
It's easy and probably fairly obvious to say keep playing like this and the results will come but the same can be said about the teams around us.

grey_til_I_dye

Thorn

But I have no worries that we will continue to play well and lose.

If we keep playing like we are, I expect to see us winning a good number of games.

I like that Pelle didn't panic after our rotten start, and I don't expect to see him panic now.

I like how he expects us to play.

Lukerz

We have played 7 of the current top 9 (5 of the current top 6), with the other two games Everton & Brighton away. We can’t judge our current points tally on those games. It’s been a difficult fixture list to start the season. We have had 3 disappointing results. The next batch, excluding Man City, will see us play all teams in the bottom half. That’s where the points should come if we continue the progress we are making in performance. The defence has been on the up since August, we are conceding far less & our build up play & possession is getting better.