There seems to be something about Jenas and red cards at the moment. Having been the victim of a very poor sending off decision last week he was the player "fouled" to send West Ham down to ten men. The referee's only excuse can be that Konchesky's foot came over the ball as he played it but it didn't exactly contact Jenas. If this sort of thing is going to be deemed a foul, let alone a red card (although to be fair having decided it's a foul, Jenas was clean through so it must be red), then we may as well give up now, for the art of defending will become impossible. Nobody wants to see players deliberately endangered but officials have to come to remember that there is an inevitable unavoidable risk in a contact sport. Red cards used to be the domain of the actually mallicous or badly dangerous. Now they seem to be dished out for anything which has the potential to hurt the opposing player. May as well send off every player as soon as they come on then; it's part of the game. Perhaps more worrying than the increasing wrong thinking in the heat of the moment by officials is their apparent reluctance to correct their mistake afterwards, or at least admit when they are wrong. Whilst Jenas's red was at least retrospectively reduced to a yellow (and there is of course an argument that that is still too much given that it isn't that insane a standpoint to say it wasn't a foul), Dermot Gallagher having seen the replay maintained that it was a foul. No, it wasn't. It was a bloody good tackle. And everyone on the pitch (other than the officials it seems) knew that.
Enough of the problems with the non-players. We have enough problems with those in the actual side. West Ham it should be remembered scraped into the Championship playoffs last season. We should beat them. Instead it never really looked likely. Whilst we had plenty of the ball, especially after the sending off, we did nothing much more than create pretty patterns as if to rival those formed by the lengthening shadows of the stand. There was, in fact, little threat of an end product. Where as last week Arsenal always looked likely to punish our numerical disadvantage, when it came to our turn we never appeared to have a cutting edge to take advantage. That we need a striker is becoming something of a desperate mantra (and even Shearer cannot continue to plough a loan furrow for much longer at his age). It is a truthful mantra but not the golden solution. Exactly when is the mythical striker going to do without support and supply? Some half decent pace up front and something more than a long ball into Shearer who has no one to give it to will help, but in a squad over heavy in midfielders there is a question as to which has the ability to pick locks. I've seen Beardsley having a kick about in the old gits masters and I say he'd do better than half this lot.
Talking of players past the golden days it says a lot about our inventiveness and desperation when the best we can muster in order to try and unlock the stubborn West Ham performance is to bring on Lee Clark. Now to me Clark will always be something of a legend (if for nothing else than the Geordie p*ssing on a mackem t-shirt incident when he was playing for the dark ones, having seemingly sold his soul). However, Clark is a player we let go way back because he simply isn't good enough. It's not like he's improved.
We need to sign a couple of strikers (yes, at least a couple---can we really expect Shearer to produce an injury free 38+ games at the sort of level needed). We need to find some inventiveness to produce chances for those strikers. It could just be everything else is gone so wrong, but at least I'm not bemoaning the defence too much (well, Taylor continues to be the best find we've had in years and Boumsong looks fairly solid. If only Babayaro could look like he was bothered and Carr had more talent). We need to beat average Championship teams, especially when they have less players than us and we're at home. Comparisons have inevitably been made between Souness's start to this season and that of Dalglish and Robson. The pressure possibly isn't that bad yet but he does need to produce something to prevent this season slipping from promised mediocrity to a relegation fight. There are still chances for a decent season but it really does require a lot of work, a bit of luck, and some transfers.
(@13:08)
