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by the pink palermo » Tue Dec 26, 2017 9:42 pm
Well that was a journey and a half today, foul weather all the way home and 2 accidents to steer a course around on the way there .Nonetheless it was worth it to see the famous West Ham way being on show , less happily though was the fact the team playing that way were wearing red and black .
No matter , that's just details , the helicopter view of this game would see the observer watch us concede a lead twice , the second occasion catastrophically so, and while there was a certain amount of ire directed at the officials , there was just as much at the inept defending that saw us concede so late when we had three points in our hands .
Once again, no Noble, no points, well one actually, but it sort of felt like a defeat .Ponder that , with his "legs have gone" epitaph being written by many on here .Playing in the middle for us again today were two players who lack the basic ability to receive , control and redistribute the ball in a tidy fashion on too many occasions .One of them, Kouyate , compounded his poor technical display with a work rate that simply wasn't good enough .To his left, despite setting up our third, Masuaku also decided that running in the second half was the job of others, and if it meant tracking back, then, no, sorry, that's a big no no .
The funniest moment came when , after a Bournemouth attack, in which they had no less than 4 players in our box, was Cresswell receiving our out ball 40 yards from our dead ball line .He was still jogging back .Bless .
However, before all that , we picked up the team sheet to see Antonio had not made the match day squad , and that Reid was benched .We can add them to a growing list of players this Manager has been willing to leave out to make a point .One can only hope the Chairman supports him in his attempt to get some of these players in to the correct mind set by giving him funds to spend in January , otherwise Moyes will find himself having to make peace with players he's gone to war with as the injury list inevitably grows .On this issue though the Manager is surely right , application , the willingness to run has to be the minimum requirement , and on that basis I'd be amazed if Kouyate gets another run out any time soon, injuries permitting .
Arnie did well to net his two goals, but 4 for him today would really be par .The two he missed were easier than the two he scored , but 5 in 5 isn't a bad return , well done Marko .Application, you see .
Of the rest, Zabaleta did as well as he could these days , but it's not enough, and our failure to get Lanzini on the ball more often , was not a mistake, but an inevitable consequence of where he was playing and the fact that neither Obiang or Kouyate can pass the ball to , well, frankly, anyone .
I'm not going to moan about the ref giving the equaliser , we should never have been in a position where the ref could make a mistake , and that's the learning point for our lads today .Once again it was three conceded, it could have been six, and only 3 scored when we too, could have had six .Overall though we didn't work hard enough to deserve the win , and Bournemouth played well enough to deserve a point .
Good game for the neutral, awful game for the Managers but plenty on show to keep the paying supporters entertained, and a point away from home is never a bad return .
Both teams though are running out of games .The West Brom game is now massive .
