When Carlton Cole put us 1-0 up yesterday, there was a small part of me that felt the players could actually find it in them to either hold on for all three points or finish Arsenal off.
And after Joey O’Brien and Carlton Cole missed a sitter each in the space of about five minutes I truly believed we were going to cause an upset. The typical West Ham way.
But who was I kidding? So many times this season we’ve thrown away leading positions or have failed to take our chances and finish teams off.
The opening 45 minutes against Arsenal was a fairly even affair. The Gunners did see a lot more of the ball and were clearly the stronger side, but we were holding our own well and showed signs of finding a break through on a number of occasions.
So it was no surprise to see us take the lead just seconds in to the second-half, regardless of how lucky it may have been. All we had to do was continue to do what we were doing and we would have taken three precious points from genuine Premier League title contenders.
But, in typical West Ham fashion, we allowed Arsenal to put to much pressure on the defence and eventually get the equaliser, which clearly caused our heads to drop. As soon as Arsenal had equalised you just knew there’d only be one winner.
And it was a soft goal to give away after doing so well to ensure we were still in the game and in front, but Adrian painfully saw Walcott’s weak effort slip through his legs. Was it his fault? I’m not so sure. But one thing for sure is that there was nothing he could do with the other two goals, so the young stopper shouldn’t feel too disheartened at the way in which the game went for him.
The result aside, it was the performance that frustrated me the most. We were not expected to beat Arsenal but I, for one, expected some kind of reaction to recent performances and results in the Premier League.
And we got that for most of the game until Arsenal scored. We played some good football at times at looked fairly dangerous when attacking on the flanks, but that’s it really was. Fairly dangerous. Fairly. That’s not good enough, is it?
There were moments, particularly in the second-half, when we had the chance to counter attack. Mark Noble twice found himself running at the Arsenal centre backs with yards of space in front of him. All he needed was support either side of him and we will have been outnumbering Arsenal and, dare I say it, definitely would have scored.
But each time that happened, Noble had no support. There appeared to be no urgency going forward when there was a real opportunity to make something of it. The desperate lack of urgency cost us dearly in the end, because had we showed some sort of fight and conviction going forward during those counter attacking periods, we could well have been three or four nil up by the hour.
Same ol’ West Ham, then. It’s been like that for most of the season. There just doesn’t appear to be enough desperation to finish teams off. We’ve been getting ourselves in front and sitting back and settling for the one goal advantage.
If we continue with that kind of mentality for the remainder of the season then, I’m afraid to say, it will be curtains for us. Curtains for Sam Allardyce. Curtains for Premier League football.
All season I have kept faith in our ability to pull ourselves away from trouble and eventually finish around mid-table, mostly citing bad luck and a lack of firepower as the reason why we are where we are.
But yesterday showed a lot more problems than just a lack of fire power. It’s a lack of urgency to actually attack. It could be hesitation, or it could be that the players lack that kind of fitness. But I’m pretty sure that, whatever it is, Allardyce will have identified it.
But can he put it right and improve our fortunes? For me the problems lie a lot deeper than just Andy Carroll still being injured. It’s a mentality issue that we’re seemingly suffering from. Once that’s sorted then we should expect a change in fortune.
