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Next up it's time to dig out the thermals and prepare yourselves for the visit of Nottingham Forest - or "We Hate Nottingham Forest", to give them their full title.

Kick off on Tuesday is at 8PM. so as you shiver away in the sub zero temperatures you can console yourself that all the frostbite you will be developing will have been down to Sky Sports.




So Forest, then. There are a few parallels to be drawn twixt up on them. We've both had managerial changes this season, for example. In fact, they're on their third manager. They started off with some chap by the name of Nuno Espirito Santo, his departure seemed to have about as much to do with the personality clash with club owner Evangelos Marinakis as it did with results.

In fact, it was actually a major surprise that the parting of the waves didn't take place a lot sooner, the owner memorably electing on one occasion to personally berate his manager in public, on the pitch, straight after a game.

Santo departed having lost three-nil to us earlier on in the season. The next incumbent was Ange Postecoglou - and he lasted all of 39 days, which Daisy informs me Is the second shortest tenure in Premier League history; Sam Allardyce's 30 days at Leeds being a lot shorter, of course.

So enter then Sean Dyche. Since his arrival on 21 October, they've played 12, won four, drawn one and lost seven. The four wins came during a relatively purple patch during which they won four of six. The last of those wins was a 3-0 trouncing of Tottenham on 1 December.

However, their last four games have all resulted in defeat away at Fulham (1-0), at home to Man City (2-1), at home to Everton (2-0) and the other day, the 3-1 defeat at Villa. That's left them in 17th place with 18 points from 20 played - four points clear of us, obviously.




On the injury front, 'keeper Victor is a doubt having apparently injured himself pulling a calf muscle whilst conceding the comedy goal against Villa. Victor, who you may recall we left stranded at a Brazilian airport during the summer is likely to be replaced by Sels.

Hudson Odoi, who missed the Villa match is rated as 50/50 for this one whereas perennial thorn in the side, Chris Woods, has had a knee operation which will keep him out until February. Yates, thigh, will be a week or two away whilst Ndioye faces a late fitness test. Boley and Sangari are away on cuppa soup duty.

At the time of writing, they haven't actually signed anyone in the current window so we'll move straight on, shall we? And we're gonna bypass the wild and wacky world of Association of Football this week and, unfortunately, we're going to move on to us.

Now imagine a match in which a referee gets four major penalty decisions wrong, VAR fails to do its job and yet, the officials are still not the worst team on the pitch. That's how bad we were in this game.

Nobody can really come out of that game with any credit whatsoever with the possible exception of Areola, one of whose saves was rather spectacular.




I have seen some criticism of the manager complaining that having signed a striker, we left him on the bench throughout the game. However, I can actually see why that happened. Let's put it this way, the player having signed only 24 hours previously had almost certainly undertaken no training whatsoever with his teammates.

And whilst if we'd been, let's say three-nil up with 20 minutes to go, it would have made sense to give him a run out, if only just to loosen up the muscles in his legs following all the travelling he'd been doing lately it would have made no sense whatsoever to me to bring a player on with only a few minutes left chasing a three-nil deficit.

One thing I would point out, as I mentioned last week: When Wolves had gone on a run of (I think it was) nine defeats on the trot, what eventually happened was their chairman actually resigned. We've heard nothing from our chairman or, for that matter, our vice chair.

Neither of them seem entirely concerned at how our apparent descent into the Second Division or whatever the thing's called this week (The Championship, I believe).

Wouldn't it be nice if one of them came out and said what their plans are to get ourselves out of this mess rather than the usual blarney about how this has been the most successful stadium move in the history of the universe of stadium moves itself? We've kind of heard that one now. And if our intelligences weren't insulted by in the first place, they sure as hell are now.




Moving on to this match and in addition to Pablo we now have a chap by the name of Taty on the books. An Argentinian striker, Valentina Castellanos to give him his full name. His fee, not counting add-ons paid to Lazio for the players services, is believed to be something in the region of £26 million.

As happened with our chum Pablo at the weekend, I would expect Tatty to be on the bench without necessarily coming on. Again, the state of the game will have more of an influence on that. With Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Malick Diouf both still in Africa at present, we have but two on the injury list to consider.

Jean-Clair Todibo Is rated as 50/50 to return to action having missed the Wolves game whilst Lucas Paqueta - who picked up a lower back injury much beloved of players during transfer windows - apparently has less of a chance of being available.

This brings us on to the prediction. Now we were absolutely dreadful at the weekend and really, that seemed to me to be the lowest point of the season. So this can only go one of two ways: we either get worse or we react.

Now if Alan Shearer goes on telly and tells you that you're, and I quote directly, "useless", if your reaction isn't wanting to go out and prove him wrong then frankly, you don't deserve to be anywhere near a West Ham shirt.




This is probably the last time I'm going to forecast a victory after such a dreadful performance because if we don't react to this one then we may as well be down anyway.

So, and I'm guessing I'm going to be in a minority on this one, I'm going to place the £2.50 that I won betting that the officials would get all four penalty decisions wrong on a win for us.

I'm going to call it 2-1, to us, if that's OK with you Mr. Winston. Enjoy the game, and wrap up warm!

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