4 Hs - February 25, 2011

4Hs—Holiday, Happy Hour and the Hammers. Sounds like a pencil does 4H, and West Ham certainly came out leaden (where do I come up with this stuff?) against a team that looked like us but luckily did not capitalise in the manner we did.
Not much Hammers news this week, and I have certainly been busy. West Ham is desperate to offload Chunks, otherwise known as Benni McCarthy, and suddenly-off-the-boil Henrita Ilunga, to anyone, and there was a chance Sheffield Wednesday might come to our rescue, but then they realised that these two players are awful.
And literally just as I am writing, it looked as though Sporting Prague and former West Ham colossus Tomás Repka were on their way to the last 16 of the Other European Contest, when in the dying seconds Rangers equalized for the second time and thus went through on the away-goals rule. The away-goals rule changes for every competition, so it seems, so I am sure there were some Scots who were not sure they had gone through, just as we were not sure why Carlton Cole’s first goal against Burnley stood—if it was not disallowed for being offside, surely it should have been disallowed for handball or for being crap.

West Ham Utd. 5 Burnley 1 (FA Cup 5th Round), Monday, February 21, 2010.
The Hammers had a relatively easy time of this. Yes, Burnley had a few chances early on, but its talisman, on-loan-from-United Chris Eagles was continually forced wide by a defence that is not as bad as some make out. Winston Reid appeared out of his depth (even if he was playing against a Championship team for a Premiership one) despite a very-well taken headed goal and a spectacular header off the line that would have made the score 4-2 and caused some nervous jitters, especially as we all remember leading Burnley 5-0 recently. Maybe the idea is to only allow Reid to use his head. Use your foot, son, and you’ll never play in the East End of London again!! With my clairvoyant insight, I was telling someone how Wayne Bridge is playing a lot better, and I think he is, but then he did that ghastly bit of “defending” that resulted in Rob Green booting the ball against the back of Tyrone Mears (which is more than Tyrone Mears did for West Ham) and onto the head of a Burnley striker, who scored.
Is there something wrong in putting the ball behind for a corner? I guess that players are so concerned that the resulting dead ball will end in the net, they’d rather do almost anything else.
Cole’s second goal was masterful, onside, a ball scooped down from the ninth floor and a shot dispatched into the roof of the net in fine style.
Oh, yes, and Freddie Sears scored another goal when all danger is over. The only goal he has scored that has been important was years ago on his debut against Blackburn Rovers. Come on, Freddie, score some earlier on. Sears was allowed to run through the Burnley defence by some neat shielding and torso flick-on by Jonathan Spector, and as we know no one is getting past that mean, all-business Skinhead from Chicago.

Man of the Match—Thomas Hitzlsperger It’s a little worrying that West Ham players score on their debuts—Sears, Demba Ba, Robbie Keane—as they seem hardly to score again. Keane is out injured for a month, but Ba played well in the Burnley game. And now Hitzlsperger. The match-day announcer even announced him as Der Hammer, so the pressure was on, and he came up with the goods, a spectacular shot that wobbled a bit but was wonderful nonetheless, and it certainly eased the pressure. More, please, Herr Deutschland.