Remember, remember the month of November

Scott Parker emailed me this week to thank me for my fantastic support and to tell me about ticket prices for the Carling Cup quarter final. “The league is the main priority for us but having this good cup is a big bonus and can only help,” wrote Scott. It’s hard to argue against the league being our priority but in all honesty, if you offered me some silverware at the expense of Premier League survival, I would take it.

Bill Shankly used to say, don’t look at the league table until ten games in. If you follow Shankly’s mantra and resist the temptation to do some complicated mental arithmetic, you will only just have become fully aware of our predicament. Bottom of the league and, unless we can conjure up a 6-0 win at St Andrews, destined to be there at the end of the week. Relegation battles can be rather exciting. After two very close shaves in the last four years, I am simply feeling fatigued.

The performance at Arsenal has to go down as a positive. Our fate won’t be decided by games against the top four (whoever that is now), so the best that could be hoped for was a battling display, which we got. Yes, Arsenal had several chances to score sooner, but they were denied by Robert Green. That’s not luck. That’s Robert Green being a good shot stopper. Had we held on for a point, this would have gone down as the performance of the season so far.

The players may have felt deflated afterwards (see Danny Gabbidon’s tweet on the right) but as a fan, attention turned immediately to the more winnable games: West Brom, Blackpool and Wigan all come to Upton Park in November. With games against Blackburn, Sunderland and Birmingham also between now and Christmas, failure to move out of the dropzone before the turn of the year would make a difficult task look increasingly hopeless.

Avram suggested recently that he would feel no more worried were we to be in this position come April. To put that ill-advised comment in context, March ends with a trip to White Hart Lane, while opponents in April include Chelsea, Man United, Man City, as well as a trip to Bolton. Avram may pride himself in playing it cool, but fans will be forgiven for mistaking this as complacency. Rightly or wrongly, Tony Cottee has already made his concerns public through the white van man’s favourite medium, Talksport.

Against this backdrop, the Carling Cup becomes an increasingly welcome distraction. Clearly we are underdogs against Man United but with home advantage it’s hard not to feel a sense of optimism. A good performance and a bit of luck and suddenly we are one game away from our first appearance at Wembley since 1981 and the possibility of winning a competition that has been dominated by Man United and Chelsea in recent years.

Relegation is of course undesirable but the prospect of Championship football for a year or two does not scare me. People talk about the danger of “becoming the next Leeds” but in truth such declines are the exception rather than the rule. Big clubs, such as Newcastle, Birmingham and West Brom, tend to bounce back quickly.

We are evens to stay in the Premier League and 20/1 to win the Carling Cup. One bet looks better value to me than the other. Of course, this isn’t a Sophie’s Choice situation. The reality is that with a maximum of three games left to play in the Carling Cup, Avram doesn’t have the headache of needing to prioritise one over the other.

In November 2006, Sheffield United had a late equaliser at Upton Park ruled out for offside. The goal cost Sheffield United their Premier League place and inflicted the self-righteousness of Kevin McCabe and Sean Bean on the rest of us. Over the next few weeks there is little margin for error.

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