Astra Giurglu 2 West Ham 1 (Europa League Qualifier)
So that's the end of West Ham's European tour. We were never likely to get a result fielding a team of promising but inexperienced youngsters such as Lewis Page, Josh Cullen, Kyle Knoyle and the likes of Elliot Lee and Doneil Henry. West Ham had a fine start when Lanzini scored on his debut after three minutes, but the game turned on some shaky defending and two goals for Budescu. Bilic has firmly prioritised the Premier League which is a gamble — you wonder how much abuse Big Sam would have received had he done the same. Difficult to read too much into this as none of these players are likely to start against the Emirates and elimination might prevent a relegation struggle. But even so, I'd still rather have given it a go and selected at least some players from Payet, Kouyate, Ogbonna, Noble, Cresswell, Adrian, Amalfitano and Jarvis to give us a chance. Our best hope of success in Europe now is if Slaven enters his band in the Eurovision Song Contest…
4 comments:
You silly buggers! Here was a chance to go a little way to having some sort of standing in Europe, and you blew it. You`re right, Sam would have been crucified for this, and what happens if and when the team is taken apart at the Emirates? A very poor start to the season.
Who's right back tomorrow? O'Brien or Tomkins?
It didn't affect the result, but towards the end one of their players picked up the slightest of knocks in a challenge, and fell over a couple of yards off the pitch. He then rolled back onto the pitch, so he could get the game stopped, and waste some time. Doubt if anything a ref does this season will annoy me as much (they'll probably take that as a challenge). In this case the ref should have booked him for unsporting behaviour, if not for coming back onto the pitch without permission. Refs eh, useless whatever country they come from.
Never trust a ref Matt…
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