Hammers Dominate...... And, Lose

Championship, Sun., Aug. 7, 2011
Upton Park, East London
West Ham Utd. 0 Cardiff City 1

The Hammers dominated this game but came away with nothing. I was very impressed with Henrita Illunga and Winston Reid (and no one said that last season), but it was an Illunga error (trying to be too clever with five minutes to go) that led to the one and only goal. The fact that no one watching groaned too loudly is testament to how long the amassed fans have supported the team.

A colleague of mine (Spanish-American) has a nephew whose Long Island team won the regional finals of a club competition and thus travelled to Los Angeles for the national finals. At this level, it was their World Cup. They did not do so well there, but to get to the finals they were in a game that they were winning 2-0. This was as far as my friend explained the goings-on to me, and then he said, the opposition team got one back with five minutes to go, and we really felt the tension. I already had the scenario in mind. The opposition gets the equaliser in injury time and then….”I said, my goodness, you really do know what it’s like to be a West Ham supporter.”  I think that long-winded story (and thanks for reading it) pretty much sums up the last 39 games, if not many more.

Time for panic? No. But as was stated, every Championship club will view a West Ham fixture as a mini-F.A. Cup and stick 10 men behind the ball, waiting for the time to counterattack when Hammer frustration kicks in.

Scott Parker looked absent, and maybe he will be permanently soon, and Kevin Nolan missed two sitters. How his goalline-header chance bypassed him, I do not know. And of course, our new manager exercised his administrational right to not make any substitutions before the 70th minute, thus not allowing Carlton Cole to get fully into the game. Freddie Sears was poor.

Two brighter lights came from Matty Taylor, who was a live wire, and, to a lesser extent, Joey O’Brien, who reminds me a little of Matty Etherington, now at Stoke, where he was joined this week by Matthew Upson.