Where did it all go right? - 2011/12 review

Turning point: Fans witness a 3-0 defeat against Reading in December

In my review of the 2010/11 season, I used the image of Avram Grant losing a blank notebook to the wind of the Etihad Stadium as a symbol of a rudderless and doomed campaign. The topsy-turvy 2011/12 season does not lend itself quite so neatly to such metaphors. One Arsenal fan described his team’s season as “bipolar”, and while I am loth to compare a season that ended in promotion to a disorder, it was certainly a year of extremes and uncertainty. Aptly, fans were kept waiting until the dying minutes of the 49th and final match for a dramatic resolution.

For most other supporters in the Championship, regardless of whether they ultimately tasted success or failure, the pattern of their season tended to be quite straightforward. Reading: play-off hangover for the first four months, ruthlessly efficient thereafter. Southampton: quick out of the blocks, stumbled at the halfway point, then recovered. Coventry and Doncaster: barely out of the relegation places all season. There was little ambiguity at either end of the table. 7^th-placed Middlesbrough missed the play offs by five points. 21^st-placed Barnsley avoided relegation by eight points. By contrast, the play-off final victory over Blackpool could not have better encapsulated a season that for West Ham fans was never quite one thing or the other.

An opening 15 minutes in which Blackpool could quite easily have been 3-0 up, was a throwback to the self-destructive mentality demonstrated in too many big Upton Park matches where the players had simply frozen or panicked. 2-0 down within 30 minutes against Birmingham. Reduced to ten men within 18 minutes against Southampton. Turning a one-nil lead against Reading into a 2-1 deficit within the space of a minute. This was not how it was supposed to be under Big Sam.

The response though, was also familiar. The players waited patiently for a chink in Blackpool’s armour and when the chance came, West Ham’s superior class told. Matt Taylor, always a threat in advanced positions, played an inch-perfect pass to Carlton Cole who calmly slotted away his fifteenth goal of the season. It was not by accident that this team finished ten points above its nearest rivals and just three points behind champions Reading.

Blackpool may have portrayed themselves as hard done-by underdogs, but the truth is that before Ricardo Vaz Te’s dramatic winner, both teams came equally close to breaking the impasse. With a bit more luck and accuracy, chances for Carlton Cole, Jack Collison, Kevin Nolan and RVT would have seen West Ham finish off their opponents in the same comprehensive manner they had earlier in the season, not to mention against the likes of Watford (4-0), Nottingham Forest (4-1), Barnsley (4-0) and Brighton (6-0), too. Then again, had Matt Phillips and Stephen Dobbie shown just a little more composure, West Ham could themselves have been on the end of another Ipswich-style rout.

Looking at West Ham’s league placing during the season, it is tempting to counter this portrayal of a season of extremes. On 17 October, we entered the top three and remained there for the rest of the season. Indeed, narrow one-goal wins at Upton Park against the likes of Portsmouth, Peterborough and Coventry did not feel particularly “extreme” at the time. But rarely was one such clinical, workmanlike performance followed by another.

And that’s the point. This was not a season that can be nicely dissected into defined segments of good form and bad form. You simply did not know what to expect from one game to the next. Three consecutive league wins at the turn of the year were followed by that 5-1 hammering at Ipswich. When a run of seven home matches without defeat came to an end, it did so with a 6-0 thrashing of Brighton. When three consecutive games had to be played with ten men, seven points from nine were still accumulated.

Where did it all go right? Or perhaps the question should be, how did it not go wrong? For there were plenty of negatives. The protracted departure and derisory sale price of Scott Parker. The collapse of the Olympic Stadium deal. David Bentley. Sam Allardyce’s attempt to sign Diouf. The mysterious under-utilisation of big-name signings Ravel Morrison. Nicky Maynard and Sam Baldock. Exit from both cups in the first round. John Carew. Watching opponents “park the bus” at Upton Park. Watching our players fail to deal with opponents that “park the bus”. Fans calling for Di Canio. Allardyce calling the fans deluded. A bit too much “long ball”. Exaggerated perceptions amongst opposing fans about “long ball”. Unhelpful generalisations in the media as to West Ham fans’ attitude to “long ball”.

To miss out on automatic promotion by just two points and to go up anyway against that backdrop is a reminder of exactly why Allardyce was employed in the first place. He gets results. He took a team relegated with 33 points, with one point from its last 27, and got them back in the Premier League at the first attempt. He made some very good signings: Kevin Nolan, Ricardo Vaz Te, Matt Taylor, George McCartney, Henri Lansbury, Joey O’Brien. He got the best out of existing players – James Tomkins, Winston Reid, Carlton Cole, Gary O’Neil – whom another manager might have preferred to move on. Somebody more tactically analytical than myself could dedicate thousands of words to deconstructing the tactics that ultimately brought us success. I will sum them up in two words. Job done.

Analysing a year in the Championship sheds little light on what a first season back in the Premier League is likely to bring. Scraping into the play offs in 2005 gave no indication that a top half finish and an FA Cup final appearance awaited. Within days of the final game, the promotion-winning squad was already being disassembled. This is a season that will be remembered for the outcome, rather than how that outcome was achieved.

Did I say that?

Finally, and if only for some comic relief, here are my pre-season predictions from last August.

1. One-nil to the cockney boys. Six one-nil wins by mid-January, then no more. (1/5)
2. Player of the year: Matt Taylor. Were it not for injuries and a bizarre redeployment to defence he may have been in with a shout, but probably not. (1/5)
3. Big Sam to re-write I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles. I reckon he considered it at times but by the time we reached Wembley he was singing Bubbles with the rest of us. (1/5)
4. Millwall hoodoo to be broken. A draw at their place. Victory with ten men at ours. (4/5)
5. Leeds and Ipswich good value for promotion. Peterborough and Derby to be relegated. Hmm. (0/5)
6. The kids to make little impact. Hines and Stanislas left. Sears and Nouble bearly featured. Potts played a couple of games. (4/5)
7. Scott Parker to be gone by end of August; Greeno gone in January. Scotty left. Greeno stayed. (2.5/5)
8. Starting XI for last game vs Hull to have at least five changes from opening game vs Cardiff. Exactly five changes. Out: Ilunga, O’Brien, Parker, Sears, Piquionne. In: Demel, O’Neil, Lansbury, Vaz Te, Cole. (5/5)
9. Sam Brown’s ‘I Feel Good’ to kick in when we score at Upton Park. Announcer Jeremy Nicholas makes it clear in his book Mr Moon Has Left the Stadium that music being played after a goal will never happen. (0/5)
10. Some good awaydays. A club record 13 away wins. (5/5)

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Allardyce’s ‘master plan’ trumps Blackpool’s ‘modern way’

Master Plan: West Ham fans finally celebrate at Wembley again

David Gold may have been joking when he said that, rather than achieve promotion automatically, it had been Sam Allardyce’s “master plan to have this fantastic day”, but there was a serious point being made. During a season which reached its nadir in spring when some fans sang “We want Di Canio” and Allardyce duly responded by labelling them “deluded”, a day out at Wembley that allowed 40,000 fans to celebrate with the manager and players will go a long way to building bridges.

At times this season, West Ham have been excellent. At other times they have been poor. On Saturday we certainly were not excellent, but we showed a resolve and winning mentality that did not exist when Big Sam joined the club. Blackpool’s players were quick to declare that they did not get what they deserved, but that is to review the game rather selectively. Ricardo Vaz Te may “score when he wants”, but if he scored when I wanted the game would have been over by half time. Minutes before the Portuguese did score, Nolan was within inches of volleying home what would have been the winner. Blackpool players would do well to reflect less on their bad luck, and more on their lack of composure.

For some weeks now I have questioned Allardyce’s decision to employ Matt Taylor at left back. Taylor has never been a defender. He is, however, a brilliant wide midfielder. His pinpoint cross to create a wonderful chance for Jack Collison was in stark contrast to his woeful backpass in the opening minutes, as well as his poor positioning for Tom Ince’s equaliser. Allardyce made the necessary change early in the second half, but had George McCartney played from the start, I just wonder whether we would have been in for a much less tense afternoon.

None of us will ever forget Vaz Te’s dramatic winner. It will be especially memorable to me, as I was convinced he had hit the ball into orbit. When 40,000 people around me started to jump around like lunatics, I quickly realised that the problem was not Vaz Te’s finishing, but my vision. Seeing Mark Noble celebrate behind the goal in front of the West Ham fans, it was impossible not to draw comparisons with the 2005 play-off win. In fact, it took the ecstasy of that moment to truly relive the sensation of beating Preston seven years ago.

The working week after such elation is inevitably an anti-climax. So, many thanks to Blackpool’s players for dragging out the post-match analysis. Alex Baptiste’s comment in particular brought the words “chip” and “shoulder” to mind.

"I suppose everyone got what they wanted. Everyone wanted West Ham to win because they're a team from London”, declared the bitter one. "Congratulations to them, they won the game, but I know who I would rather play for.” I assume he means he would rather play for Blackpool, which is handy because I don’t think Big Sam was going to bid for him any time soon.

“I wouldn't survive in their team because I'm not tall enough”, he continued rather desperately. “All of them are 8ft tall." It’s a shame he stopped there because I could have listened all day. Ian Evatt, who along with Baptiste had the bad luck of conceding ten goals against West Ham this season, was equally gracious in defeat.

“We were much the better team. I think we play the game in the modern way, we don't smash it up to certain players”, said the defender, before remembering that he plays for Blackpool, not Barcelona.

But enough of that. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.

As in 2005, we don’t go in to the Premier League off the back of our finest season, but we do head there with plenty of momentum. It’s a division that holds no fear for us, and nor should it. There was not one player on that Wembley pitch who does not deserve a crack at the big time. But if anyone deserves the big time again it’s the fans, who have travelled the country in their thousands.

Despite suggestions to the contrary from Tony Mowbray and others, no-one at this club ever thought we were too good for this division. But after 46 games we proved we were the third best team in it. Asked to go back and play another three games, we won all three. We got what we deserved.

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Have you Evatt seen owt like it?

Moody: Ian Evatt successfully appeals to the referee to send off Robert Green

Blackpool defender Ian Evatt has reacted angrily to what he believes to be a show of arrogance from West Ham ahead of this weekend’s Championship play-off final.

Evatt was visibly upset when told about the following developments, which he believes demonstrate a lack of respect for Ian Holloway’s men:

• According to one insider who does not exist, West Ham have banned players from arriving to the game in suits, insisting that this gives the impression that “we even need to try”. Instead, players will come dressed as various characters from the popular ITV2 show The Only Way Is Essex, which is said to be popular among staff.
• Sam Allardyce has already been paid his £1m promotion bonus which he has used to buy the land immediately next to Steve Kean’s home, where he plans to relocate the evicted Dale Farm residents.
• Carlton Cole has named his new hamster ‘Premiership’.
• First-team coach Wally Downes has already sent hand-written farewell cards to each Championship club which read simply: “Laters, mugs”.
• The club have hired out the entire Jubilee Line on Saturday evening to allow fans from across London to celebrate together.
• If West Ham are more than two goals ahead at half time, Mark Noble will be substituted for his two-year-old daughter, Honey.
• If West Ham are more than four goals ahead with five minutes remaining, Carlton Cole will be substituted for Freddie Sears.

Evatt, who is from Coventry, is understandably angry.

“This is typical cockney behaviour", said the moody defender when told about the plans. "Playing a girl in midfield, or any position for that matter, is just taking the piss. We’re not the best team in the world but we’re not that bad”.

Joint chairman David Gold has already arranged an all-expenses-paid holiday for the players to celebrate. In yet another twist that is certain to infuriate Evatt further, Gold has arranged for the celebrations to take place in Blackpool so that players and staff can visit the Blackpool Illuminations. The players declined the offer.

While some Blackpool fans shared Evatt’s irritation, others were more relaxed.

“I found the West Ham fans a good bunch when we went there”, commented one fan on a Blackpool supporters forum. “Not like the ones you see on that film Green Street”.

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