SA’s Essay: missing the point at West Ham

Jake's take on Big Sam
Jake’s take on Big Sam

John McCormick writes: At half time some stats came up saying West Ham had 80 per cent passing accuracy and we had 55 per cent. Some of the responsibility for that must lie with Lee Cattermole, whose distribution in the first half was atrocious. I’d have taken him off earlier and I’d start Rodwell on Tuesday. I don’t know if that’s what the manager will do, although Sam does acknowledge Rodwell’s contribution in the post-match letter he has written exclusively for M Salut and possibly one or two others:

 

 

Dear Colin,

In the second half we were kicking towards our own fans and getting them on the edge of their seats, showing them how determined we were to come back from the very disappointing goal that we conceded in the first half.

For us today, not converting those chances that we had is a massive disappointment. We’ve not picked up any points from the game and from the chances that we created I think we should have been going away with all three.

Away from home you’re always happy to take a draw and to get a point, but we haven’t even done that today.

We can’t afford to keep doing this, we did it against Manchester City, but we need to start making sure performances like this get us wins.

One of the big positives is our second half performance and when we introduced Jack Rodwell. He came on and got three chances himself in the space of 10 minutes.

Missed chances today but needs a better service
     Will be disappointed today. And we aren’t?

Jermain [Defoe] will be disappointed after missing the couple of chances that he had.

Today is massively disappointing for us, the lads know that we should have come away with something and they’re bitterly disappointed that we didn’t.

Now we have to recover, Tuesday’s game becomes a real pressure pot for us at home against Crystal Palace. Everyone will want us to say we’ve got to win it and that’s what we must try and do; if we play like we did today I think we can.

We can take confidence from today’s performance going into that game and realise we need to be more ruthless and clinical to get the result we need.

Thanks for your support,

Sam Allardyce



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