Kevin Whitcher
Ed’s note – My thanks to Charlie Ashmore for covering for me and writing up the editorial on yesterday’s game at the Olympic Stadium
On a Saturday evening in July I went to the Olympic Stadium for an AC/DC concert. I stood on the pitch and looked around at the seats newly replanted in claret blue and white but some considerable distance from the pitch and thought then that West Ham were going to struggle to make it feel like a football stadium. They haven’t succeeded. The whole thing has a ramshackle temporary feel with half the bottom tier effectively a temporary stand built on scaffolding and pushed some distance ahead of the top tier (to bring it closer (relatively) to the pitch but leaving a huge gap separating top and bottom.
Around the Emirates are the dates of our 28 trophies. Along one side of the Olympic stadium are 6 dates encapsulating the history of West Ham – four for trophies and 2 for formation and name change. Underwhelming. A huge carpet identifying West Ham as “The Academy of Football” covers the huge distance, further then an Olympic record triple jump, from dugout to touchline.
Bizarrely, when the players were warming up the announcer was providing potted biographies to the crowd of some of the home players – surely the home fans know them and the away fans really don’t care.
All in all a pretty unimpressive venue for top flight football and it is no surprise that West Ham are struggling to settle in. Last and unerringly accurate word goes to 10 year old Jack, sat in front of me who announced to those around him “This stadium is rubbish”. Couldn’t have put it better myself young Jack.
If the environment was underwhelming, what of the football? It would be churlish to complain about a 5-1 away win, so I won’t. It was a thoroughly deserved win against a poor West Ham side. From the start we took the game to them and found a lot of joy down the left hand side where between them Monreal and Oxlade-Chamberlain were finding space to spare. Unfortunately time and again they proved unable to deliver the killer final ball. Was it bad decision making or is it just that the way we are playing without Giroud makes it very difficult indeed to create goalscoring opportunities from wide. Without his height and focal presence up front we are reliant on a combination of someone in the middle finding space (generally done best by late runs in to the box) and the wide man delivering a low cross with pinpoint accuracy.
Spurning these opportunities threatened to derail us and West Ham forced a save out of Cech after some excellent recovery defending from Koscielny forced the attacker wide. And then came the goal – a blocked clearance and Alexis was on the 50-50 ball like a rocket. Bearing down on the keeper he had the presence of mind to spot Ozil arriving in the middle so rather than give the keeper a chance to save, Alexis slid the ball across to his German colleague who scored probably the easiest goal of his career.
The worry was that having totally dominated the half, we reached the break with only the one goal to show for it and I was not alone in fearing the worst, especially when West Ham started the second half with their best spell of the game. Even so you still felt that we only had to put our minds to it to pull away. Eventually Alexis decided to do just that and his control and turn from Mustafi’s heavy pass was stunning. He appeared to delay the shot too much ending up with a narrower angle than needed but in doing so he had taken the defence out of the game and his shot to the far post had slight bend on it to leave the keeper helpless. His second followed shortly and was another good finish from the edge of the box as we cruised ahead. This being Arsenal we had to stumble of course and Carroll’s goal from a rebound reflected a lack of concentration from our defence.
At the other end The Ox curled in a shot from the left hand corner of the box. A lovely finish and it should do wonders for his confidence. In truth he had a mixed bag of a game – great pace and skill to worry the defence, good positions taken up and always threatening but until the goal seemingly lacking in end product.
The best was yet to come as Sanchez found himself clear and bearing down on the keeper. The finish was stunning with an amazing feint as he pretended to shoot (at pace) with his right foot, sending the keeper and most of the stadium one way before, with the same foot, dinking it cheekily over the forlorn keeper’s body. An absolute beauty and real skill involved.
So a good away win sees us up to second (third when Liverpool win today) but does it tell us anything new about the team? Probably not. West Ham were poor, we took longer than we should have done to kill off the game, we still allowed a poor side opportunities through careless defending and in the end the brilliance of Sanchez made the difference.
Far more telling about this team will be the game in two weeks time at City and even next week’s home match against Stoke who as we know are not our favourite opponents.
Having said that, it is impossible not to enjoy a 5-1 win at any time and an away win by that margin in a London derby can only be worth celebrating so let’s all enjoy it and then move on to the next challenges.
The new issue of The Gooner will be on sale at the home matches against and Stoke and West Brom. It can also be bought online here.
Alternatively, you can simply pay £3.60 (postage included) via online bank transfer to –
Account name: The Gooner
Sort Code: 20-76-90
Account Number: 03004112
Please follow up the payment with an email to [email protected] stating your name and address, ideally with proof of payment such as a screen grab or pdf, or at least the reference that you used for payment (e.g. 262Smith). If the payment was made from an account with a different name, definitely inform us so we can match the received payment. Eight issue subscriptions are available for £24 (UK), £34 (Europe) and £44 (Rest of the World) and can also be bought through the Gooner Shop section of this website.
DIGITAL ISSUES
The Gooner is also available in digital form, through The Gooner App on iPhones and iPads, the Exactly App for Android devices and now Kindle Fire owners can also get their fix by searching the Amazon App Store for The Gooner.
You can also subscribe at www.exacteditions.com and read it through your internet browser as well as receiving a code which will enable you to access issues on all the above devices.
All digital subscriptions include access to our digital back issue library which dates back to August 2010.
