With one of the biggest clashes of the season for all Hammers fans finally arriving tomorrow, we have a team with a pretty bad pre-season behind it, a manager who is the only person in football who thinks he plays an attacking three up front formation and some new signings who don’t know if they will start the season on the bench or not.
But when it comes to playing Spurs it seems to have that magical power that turns an average player in to a good player and a good player in to a great player – for 90 minutes at least. The fans look forward to these games so much that a season’s success can be partly gauged by the result in these matches. The club themselves even found themselves caught up in this last season with their forgettable three in a row t-shirt.
As it stands, it’s West Ham, 43 wins, and Spurs, 53 wins, with 15 draws and, of course, West Ham are on a four timer. Come 3pm tomorrow, while the Premier League is kicking off all over the UK, no game will have the intensity or the passion that this game will have and when Bubbles is being sang loud & proud, we know anything is possible on that pitch.
We hear a lot about the West Ham way, and sometimes as a long suffering supporter I often feel the West Ham way is always the hard way, the difficult way. We often end up in scraps at the bottom of the league or playing players out of position that we can see but the manager can’t.
Or, of course, buying players and leaving them on the bench and maybe the most frustrating of all when we see our Academy players making a name for themselves only to be loaned out or left out of the team.
A lot of negativity exists this pre-season and you could imagine fans writing our chances off before a ball is kicked but this is Spurs and this is a game that can quickly make heroes of a player and be remembered for years to come. If we look at what has happened over the last few weeks and pick out the positives we might be surprised at what we find.
Aaron Creswell has looked comfortable and could prove a good recruit, Mauro Zarate has looked sharp and looks the kind of player that can excite the crowd and, who knows, be remembered as one of those legends who scored against Spurs to make it four in a row.
Ennor Valencia had a great World Cup and will be full of confidence after a big move for him. Hopefully we will see Cresswell and Zarate start and Valencia at least get on in the second half. What if Sam plays 3-5-2 formation with Downing and Jarvis down the flanks? Could this finally be the way forward?
And most important in games like this is the 12th man. The West Ham faithful who, from the moment the hair stands up on the back of their necks as the players walk out on the sacred Boleyn Ground turf, this 12th man can be the difference come Saturday. Beneath all the negativity and poor pre-season results, this is West Ham and we have enough positives that you shouldn’t put it past us to make it happen again.
The Green Street Soap Opera that is West Ham United is back for a new series on Saturday, and it’s sure to be a roller coaster. But would we have it any other way.
COYI
