West Ham's performance against Millwall was certainly impressive, for any team to play over 80 minutes without their captain is always a test of a team's 'character', but to win without your captain against your biggest rivals is fantastic.
According to the rule book, Kevin Nolan should have been sent off - no question, but sometimes referees need to use common sense. To send off a player not even 10 minutes into a local derby is ridiculous, I know people will say that Nolan went in with two feet on Jack Smith, but there was no malice involved, just a player overcome by the emotion of the game and a rush of blood to the head. This is similar to Vincent Kompany's tackle in the FA Cup 3rd round match against Man Utd on Nani, that time it was ruled that Kompany showed excessive force, but he won the ball. Both decisions required some common sense from the two referees but of course, there's nothing in the rule book about that.
I thought West Ham's performance today was great, they showed immense team spirit and played well, they created chances but (as usual) failed to convert most of them. That's why Ricardo Vaz Te and Nicky Maynard have been brought in - to score goals. If we're going to win promotion, we need to be scoring more goals and Vaz Te and Maynard will certainly do that. West Ham have only scored 1.6 goals per game and that's not enough for a team pushing for promotion, however our defensive record this season has been good, so if we can start scoring more we'll be set for promotion.
Come on you Irons!
TB 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment