West Ham Utd 1 Aston Villa 2 (16/04/11)

[Morocco Mole]

Not as bizarre as Hines leap frogging him and Faubert and Dyer and Barrera in a wide position...... genuine lunacy...

I'm beginning to wonder if Grant is being bribed by the Zola mob to make Zola look good (never thought I'd ever say that).

I was just seeing Hines name on the list of subs to be honest....

[stubbsy07]

When we scored, people behind me jokingly said 'Oh god, now we will sit back for 88 minutes'.

That's how bad it is at the moment and like it or not - the manager has to be changed.

[m-h]

Their lad took the ball. Big challenge though.

Nothing wrong with the tackle whatsoever. Studs down, got the ball, fully committed, great tackle.

[Me ol china]

I really didn't see us playing well first half, first 15-20 minutes we done ok but after that i thought we were well & truly outplayed

However bad the performance normally is there is always one or two that put in a decent performance but today i seriously couldn't pick a man of the match for us, Jacobsen was shocking today he was absolutely **** scared of Young

I remember when we went down last time i was absolutely distraught & i think that had a lot to do with knowing that we were going to lose some good young players, hand on heart Parker aside & maybe the 2 new boys Hitz & Ba i don't really give a **** who we lose out of the rest of them, i would like to keep some of the youngsters but will not lose any sleep if they are sold

The odds are we will get no points from the next 2 games so it all depends how close/far we are to safety after them 2 games but i have virtually acepted relegation now, let's hope i'm in for a big shock

[bubbles1966]

I'm being serious. Under Zola we at least always had a plan and the players gave everything for him.

The passage of time, mate.

When we were getting drilled 0-4 by Man U, thumped by Wolves and Bolton at home, beaten at Burnley...crumpling with 10 men week after week.....I don't recall there being a plan etc.

We were rubbish.

Some of us have cut Grant a lot of slack (maybe too much) because of that - certainly until Bridge, keane etc were signed.

Under Zola with very few excpetions we never got battered l

We let in 67 goals last year. A record (until this year probably).

[hawkins_hammer]

Christ did we really ship in that many? Shows how important Neill/Collins/Illunga were to the team.

I still maintain that we've been battered more times in one season under Grant than two under Zola. I'm happy for facts to prove me wrong, and to ignore them

Tell me this, would we be doing this badly with this team under Zola?

[QuintonNimoy]

A poor loss but really Villa look much better than their points total suggests - **** knows how Houllier has manager to get them down here. I've seen far too many final twists and turns to assume we're down particularly considering the final fixtures, but it's not looking good.

Mark Noble doesn't seem like he's coping with the stresses of the situation, his basic decision making has completely gone to pot in the last month or so and that's been very costly to us. Brady pulling the plug on Sidwell could have been a huge mistake.

Upson's showing nervousness and stress all the time now as well.

I couldn't believe Reo Coker got away with that foul on O'Neill, I thought it was appalling and a clear penalty. God knows what the ref was thinking about when Dunne pushed Cole over denying a clear goalscoring opportunity.

I didn't understand Grant's subs, but they did seem to bring us back into the game from being under constant pressure to trading attacks. Going man for man at the back was always going to be very risky though, and we paid for not being able to create any good chances ourselves.

[speculator]

Thankfully other teams around us lost. Still all to play for but could really have done better today.

[bubbles1966]

Tell me this, would we be doing this badly with this team under Zola?

Well...he was pretty shocking with Bellamy, Parker, neill etc for months - 5th to 17th...

How badly are we actually doing with this team? 11 points in 9 games since the January window shut is a 46-47 point season.....

The worst thing is that Grant doesn't seem to be much of an improvement on Zola.

Hope I never see another ex-Chelsea person anyone near managing this club.

[Iron Spine v2.0]

I tried to be nice to Avram Grant but sod it, I want to kill the useless f***er.

TRAP!

[Up the Junction]

Don't tease me with such a prospect boss....would make this one of the great seasons of all time

Be like Groundhog Day for a certain Mr Bruce ... and because of that, I'm in!

[GideaParkHammer]

For the first time in a long while I am totally gutted. I sat/stood there watching a medicore side batter us. I coped the other week as it was Man Utd, but this was a gutless performance. We had a defence that could not head a ball, a midfield that could not pass, and showed no pace. I hate picking out individuals, but without Parker, Noble was a liability. Upson is not even going through the motions anymore. Perhaps I am deluded, but I though Cole held the ball up well, and showed instances of skill, but the rest did not seem motivated to support him.

We all give new-jerk reactions, but I really can not see a positive. As I feel at the moment, we are going down.

[hawkins_hammer]

Well...he was pretty shocking with Bellamy, Parker, neill etc for months - 5th to 17th...

.

That's horseshit and you know it. First season under Zola we finished above moneybags City (who bought Bellamy off us halfway through the season) and level on points with Spurs. We also only finished a point behind Fulham who got into Europe because of it.

Then we sold Collins and Neill wasn't resigned and we struggled. Our defence was decimated.

Under Grant we have seen significant investment and no change in our fortunes. In fact we will probably do worse this season in terms of position than under Zola. I respect that Im ignoring certain other factors. But dont tell me we were shocking with Collins and Bellamy and Neill under Zola because with them we were a hard side to beat and played very attractive football.

[ihateroeder]

Given that we are in a relegation scrap the under-use of LBM is bizarre.

I think I have wanted to see him come on the field at some point or another in every one of our last four matches.....

Good point, everyone slates the man but he works hard for the team, would have been a better sub than Hines. 4-3-3 was a mistake from the start (again) most us untrained fans realised this after 20 mins, however it took grant approx 60 mins, during most of which we had been getting battered.
4-3-3 works when you have a mobile midfield and forwards to pass to, time after time when we won the ball we either gave it away or there was no outlet.
I can only assume Ba was not fit (he did not look with it), and how Cole constantly starts in front of Piq baffles me.
Avram has to take the blame for this one (and most of the others)

[garage]

Is the FAT Lady singing yet

[Chicken Run Supreme]

Just got home after a nightmare trip which rounded off a thoroughly miserable day.

We were shocking today, absolutely shocking. No fight, no passion - except perhaps Keane who ran his legs off I thought.
Also thought Cole tried hard to no avail

when did we become Wimbledon? Hoofing the long ball is not our tradition and we aint any good at it anyway.

Noble is a player I have long admired but he had a shocker today. What was he thinking of? All he had to do was kick the f*cking ball but no he had to try and be Pele.

Halsey had a shocker and the ironic cheers and applause he got midway through second half when he finally gave us a free kick spoke volumes of his performance and the linesman running alongside West Stand.

Would Parker have saved us today? Maybe, but I rather fear the weight of carrying the whole team is starting to take its toll.

I really dont know where we go from here, never mind the next two away games that most of us have already written off, I simply cannot see us winning all of our last 3 games now.

I am now preparing for life in the Championship.

[WHU_Del]

When O'Neill was injured, should that have been a pen?

Their lad took the ball. Big challenge though.

It's the inconsistency that annoys me.
Not long before that, Villa got a free-kick for a challenge by Upson on Downing, which from what I could see looked exactly the same as the one on O'Neil.

[GideaParkHammer]

Is the FAT Lady singing yet

No but the fat bloke is

Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma!
Tu pure, o, Principessa,
nella tua fredda stanza,
guardi le stelle
che tremano d'amore
e di speranza.

[Cuenca 'ammer]

Remember the "I didn't expect to get anything out of the ManYoo game and we never beat Bolton......."

How I fkcuing those platitudes.....Same problem that Zola had (although we had 3 teams really that were worse than us)..Giving up against the big boys and assuming that we will beat those around us.

Didn't work then, won't work now. Try your fkcuing hardest week in week and you might get battered and win 1-0.

[QuintonNimoy]

Under Grant we have seen significant investment...

Let's get it right. We saw meagre investment, a drop in the ocean, an amount an established team might get away with spending, in the summer. Then we saw a little bit more mostly in loans and hire purchase agreements in January when it was established we were firmly in the ****. Delayed until the very end of January, just to make sure we didn't spend a penny more than was absolutely necessary.

The significance of the investment was there wasn't enough of it to deal with the problems in the team.