And the best, Mr Poyet, was simply not good enough. Certainly not good enough to inspire anyone to stay up and post your e-mail here last night …
Dear Colin,
The players showed spirit.
We ask them to maintain an organisation and style of play and I think we did that during the game and put the opposition under pressure.
I think the situation is simple – we were probably better than them in every aspect of the game except the final score.
That hurts a lot, but we are not going to give up.
I was disappointed with the first goal. We talked about it, but at the end of the day we didn’t cope with the situation.
The second goal was similar. It’s a second ball and a deflected shot. It was a typical game of a team towards the bottom – we were the better side, passed the ball better, had more shots and then a deflected goal goes in.
Today the message is we are defending the football club to the best of our ability, starting from me to the last person in that dressing room.
We gave everything possible; we tried our best but couldn’t win. The only thing to do is keep doing it until the end of the season.
We must keep battling. We must believe and it’s my job to make sure everybody does that.
All the best,
Gus Poyet
Unfortunately, our best is woefully short of the required standard. We have an extremely limited ability to shuffle the pack, but that being the case why leave out one of our aces?
Having said that, Johnson if a starter tends to fade in and fade out of games and can be totally ineffective. He is probably our only impact player so Poyet may have been thinking about keep him fresh and bringing him on when he could cause maximum damage, which on the face of it worked.
Unfortunately we were two down by that time. West ham scored two goals against the run of play, however we allowed their most potent striker to play a role in both. Poyet can only play the hand he has been dealt with, and on the face of it that hand is pretty poor.
The fact that the team almost picks itself, with one or two possible exceptions, is indicative of the paucity of the squad. Trouble with Johnson you never know which one is going to turn up, just like the rest of the team really.
I think it is obvious that in such a crucial game there is a desparate need tp play your best players. Experiment should be avoided at all cost. Where was the team got us to Wembley and hammered Newcastle. To play 3-5-2 for no other reason than to make place for Vergini and Bridcott is very difficult to understand. We went 2-0 down to what must be said was an ordinary West Ham side after deciding on a defensive formation is very difficult to justify. Borini and Bardsley were the only likley scorers. The question what was the logic behind this selection is of no consquence because it was flawed. Full responsibility for this should go to Poyet and his excuse they tried their best is an example of his inexperience, he has learnt nothing and is likley to learn nothing in the future. We were duped by the press spin of the pre match and I am extremely angry at this abortion
Poyet has earned quite a bit of slack from us for picking up the pieces of the total wreck that he inherited, but last night’s loss was very much down to him.
How can you play 7 defensive players in a must win game against statistically the worst attack in the league? How can you allow your only class player only 40 minutes on the field and then only after the game has already been lost. None of this is hindsight, all discussed before the game.
Utterly appalling tactics and he got what he deserved. Yes, we can point to a penalty we should have had, but West Ham have 1 trick and we were caught out by it twice. Carroll given a free header from a corner – HOW? Carroll allowed to chest a ball down from a 50 yard free kick – HOW?
For most of the game, for most of the pitch we were decent but, without Johnson, we are hopeless in the last third. Finally, and more worryingly, why on earth does he persist in bringing on Scocco for the last 10 minutes? He is not up to speed yet and so we basically go down to 10 men.