Following Saturday’s defeat to Wigan ,
it was suggested that Roberto Martinez’s men have become West Ham’s bogey team.
Three consecutive defeats might appear to give some credence to this view, but
two away defeats and one League Cup defeat is not nearly enough information on
which to base a trend. A glance back at the previous five matches, in which
West Ham were victorious in four of them, should demonstrate that while our
bogey team does reside in Lancashire, that team is not Wigan. Bolton
have beaten us in each of our last eight meetings. Now that’s what I call a bogey.
If we are to go down the route of analysing historic
information – always a limited exercise in an industry with such a high
turnover of managers and players – then the lesson we should surely draw is
this: matches between West Ham and Wigan have
almost no bearing at all on the teams’ destinies.
Our first ever league meeting came in November 2003,
with West Ham recording a first victory under Alan Pardew with a convincing 4-0
win. A springboard for promotion? Sadly not. The following season, Wigan came to Upton Park and won 3-1. West Ham went on to
secure promotion.
The first six meetings as Premier League opponents saw
the away side victorious each time; another example of the haphazard nature of
these encounters. The last of these matches saw West Ham record a famous 3-0
win at the then JJB Stadium in a huge six-pointer. The penultimate game of the
season appeared to have condemned Wigan to
relegation. Instead they recorded an unlikely awayday win at Sheffield United
and stayed up on goal difference.
Perhaps the ultimate red herring though, came in the
2010/11 season under Avram Grant. Having won just once in their opening 14
matches, West Ham beat Wigan 3-1 with a
convincing performance. The match had been billed as a “save our season game”. So
was our season saved? Yeah, right.
You may argue that the team’s underwhelming
performance at the weekend is more deserving of analysis than my manipulation
of the stats; and you’d probably be right. Still, I couldn’t help but be a
little taken aback by KUMB’s match report, which began and ended thus: "West
Ham blew the chance of moving into the Champions League spots after going down 2-1 at Wigan this afternoon
…West Ham's fine start to the campaign meant today's disappointing reversal
shouldn't necessarily cause panic in the ranks."
Too right it shouldn’t cause panic. We’re ninth in the
table. It’s not Champions League football or bust. If the season so far is
enough to send you into a panic you are either of a very nervous disposition or
this is your first season following West Ham.
Anxiety seems to have been caused by our pre-Christmas
run-in, which goes a little something like this:
Not an easy set of fixtures, granted, but isn’t the
point of our strong start to the season that we can enjoy these games without
too much pressure. The bottom three teams – Southampton, Reading
Like Big Sam, KUMB have split the season up into
phases and recognised the next phase as a rather tough one; but in doing so
they have reached an unnecessarily bleak outlook. In the same way that a
fireworks vendor doesn’t expect to do much business over the summer, West Ham
aren’t expected to notch up many points over the coming weeks. But so long as
the seller of explosives does good business during October and November, he
should still achieve his targets; and so it is with West Ham. We can afford a
lean spell in the run up to Christmas, because we did the business in August,
September and October. Dropping three points at Wigan
doesn’t undo that.
For what it’s worth, my opinion is that the upcoming
games offer enough opportunities to at least hit 20 points before we all sit
down for Christmas Top of the Pops: Pards has said himself that Newcastle
aren’t their usual selves on Sundays following Europa League Thursdays (which
is when we come to town); I believe that West Brom are in a false position and
that we may be playing them at the right time; home matches against Everton,
Liverpool and Stoke are winnable.
