Saturday, January 27

Will Grigg's on fire as Hammers are dire

Wigan 2 West Ham 0 (FA Cup)

Well, an injury-ravaged Hammers side was never likely to get much out of this and it hardly ranks as a shock. Burke allowed Grigg to get on the wrong side of him for the first, but was unlucky to have a penalty awarded against him for the hadball. Something happened when Masuaku clashed with Powell on the touchline, but there was no excuse for spitting and Arthur earned a stupid red card. Out of character, but indiscipline now means we lose a vital player for a number of games. Oh and Obiang was carried off as well, while Oxford mussed our only chance. The travelling fans deserved better. Cup Final breakfast at Nigel's is now postponed until 2019. As my pal Matt texted: "Apart from 11 players too injured to start, and two more in the game, a player sent off for spitting, a dodgy penalty and a 2-0 defeat, what could possibly have gone wrong?"

4 comments:

mj said...

I'm starting to think that I'll be happy to respect the point when we arrive on Tuesday night!

Pete May said...

Will we be even able to field a team? Have to hope Noble, Collins and Kouyate at least come back.

matt said...

Collins will be available, and perhaps Kouyate. But we don't know if Zabaleta is injured, he went off at half-time. We've got at most 10 senior pros available for Palace, Adrian, Hart, Collins, Cresswell, Ogbonna, Zabaleta, Byram, Kouyate, Mario & Hernandez. Rice may be fit again, but I think Burke is out. There's at least 11 senior pros injured, and one suspended. Yet Moyes was saying he didn't think there'd be any new signings. The Board tried to do this season on the cheap with a woefully lopsided, small and injury-prone squad and now we're paying the price for their short-termism and lack of vision.

Pete May said...

Guess even Haksabonovic and Cullen might get games. We should also have put a recall clause in Snodgrass's deal at Villa and would have made sense to unload Sakho and get a replacement last summer. Though to be fair the board can't legislate for Masuaku's stupidity...