Monday Musings: A week of reflection

With the FA Cup semi finals in full swing, Slaven Bilic and his West Ham United squad were afforded a rare weekend off.

Although the manager and his players would no doubt have preferred to be in action on Saturday afternoon against Everton at Wembley, the recent quarter final replay defeat at the hands of Manchester United put paid to the Hammers' chances of going any further in the competition.

Of course, by rights West Ham should have been in the semi final without the need for a replay, but referee Martin Atkinson somehow failed to spot Bastian Schweinsteiger's blatant shove on goalkeeper Darren Randolph milliseconds before Anthony Martial's late, late equaliser at Old Trafford in the first meeting.

And that's been the story for West Ham in recent weeks, where a sting of mystifying decisions have essentially killed off any lingering hopes the Hammers may have harboured of qualifying for the Champions League for the first time in their history.

Whilst those may be bitter blows for Bilic, the popular Croat should take solace from a string of outstanding achievements so far season, his first as a manager in the Premier League.

Last weekend's 3-1 win against Watford extended West Ham's unbeaten run at home to 15 Premier League games, a top flight record for United. And with just four games of the season left to play the Hammers have 56 points with a positive (+14) goal difference.




That in itself may appear to be relatively unremarkable, but West Ham's record points tally in a 38-game campaign is 57, achieved on Harry Redknapp's watch nearly 20 years ago, meaning the current squad merely need one more point to match it.

And as incredible as it may seem, you have to go back to 1985/86 and the much-vaunted 'Boys of '86' to find West Ham last finishing a season in the top flight with a positive goal difference, which barring a total collapse will be emulated in a few weeks' time.

Bilic has already started making plans for the 2016/17 campaign, which will commence in August at the Olympic Stadium (which will be known as something quite different by then due to naming rights).

And it's to youth that he's currently turned, with the capture of highly-rated striker Toni Martinez (19) from Valencia and, so it seems, Portuguese midfielder Domingos Quina - still only 16 - from Chelsea's Academy.

KUMB.com exclusively revealed last month that Bilic has already moved to sign 25-year-old Norwegian defensive midfielder Havard Nordtveit from German Bundesliga side BMG; he'll replace Alex Song who is returning to Barca.

So whilst this season may not be ending quite as we'd hoped, there's still plenty of reasons to be cheerful for Bilic, his squad and us fans as the curtain begins to close on a campaign that began way back in July against Andorran minnows Lusitanos in the Europa League qualifying rounds.

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