This Game is all About Zola

Prediction for this game (Chelsea (h)), for the smart arses, consensus of those says we are going to get slaughtered and what a revelation that is eh? Read the papers look at our form & position in the table, read all the negative stuff about Zola and the inevitable follows, we’re going to get tonked. Great bit of deduction Watson no matter how elaborately you say it – The Alan Shearer’s school of punditry, state the obvious and you can’t go wrong.
Would be much harder to predict Zola’s team and tactics, especially as he says he is not going to abandon his principles for this one, even if we do languish at bottom of the pile – well any defeat puts us bottom because we are currently on -9 goals with Pompey, both on 14 points.

Is it possible we can take any heart from what 'our' three plus Murphy did to Manure yesterday or what a spirited Pompey did to the Pool, albeit the scousers know their season is over, despite what the pundits thought back in August?

I believe Zola has to get real and take this game on merit, they are top of the heap and could be rampant against us today if he try’s to play the beautiful game in and around our own defensive third or mid-field where we continue to lose or give the ball away cheaply.

Set up a true 4-5-1 and defend for our lives a 5-4-1 even and defend like we did when we beat Arsenal at the Emirates. Tell each and every player that he demands they give blood for this game. We should be very physical, not let them settle anywhere on the park; continually hassle them from start to finish. Let Lampard and Drogba know we are there very early on with some crunching tackles (enter Mark Noble).

It will do Zola no good if he has one eye on the Boxing day game 'gainst Pompey - we need to field our best fit XI so important are these points. The world and his ladder expects us to get beat so it's time to stick pride in the back pocket and play with intent - if this rabble can do that

I don’t know if ‘this team’ understands the dislike that the West Ham fans have for Chelsea; in the past that aversion has raised the atmosphere at the Boleyn and thereby lifted the players to put in a performance. If they can do that today we might just have a chance or at the very least be able to keep it down to, say, two nil.

I get the feeling this game is ALL about the manager- he looks a beaten man lately who is out of his depth without a clue what to do or where to go from here. If it don't work fix it

Three Blind Mice

Following another defeat to a poor side which leaves us languishing in the bottom 3, soon prompts a crisis meeting called by Duxbury to lay the law down to Tweedle’s Dumb & Di(ck) aka GFZ & SC. It took 3 hours to go over the poor first half of this this season’s performance, if you can call it performance. It would have taken me three minutes to tell them that they have to field their strongest available eleven week-in week-out, play basic football until we have turned it around. Zola to ditch his principles, stop playing around with formations and get real. Let the players know, in no uncertain terms, that they are being paid good money to do a job, if they can’t do it don’t turn up on Monday for training – visit Quashie at MK Dons – by the way we could do with him back at this very minute in time - Drive up there and get him back for the Chelsea game Zola, you Numpty

What improvements can be made, it’s laughable? This is a meeting where we have a manager who obviously doesn’t know what he is doing – else why the meeting? A second in command who has already asked us to blame him for our recent plight and a CEO who knows nothing about football and should have been sacked a long while ago - whilst he was our club’s legal representative – over the Tevez/Mascherano affair.

Interestingly the Tweedles sought to save their sorry arses by blaming 9 lost points on individual errors citing Robert Green in particular, “watch your back Robert”. They are comparing our failure to perform this season to our similar failure last season. IF WE BEAT CHELSEA (don’t make me laugh) we will only be 2 points worse off than this time last December – so in actual fact we are 5 points worse off with a side that has no stomach, going into what will probably be a Chelsea hiding of us – talk about spin, Jesus.

We are 19th and the Tweedles insist that this team is technically better than last year. We have 4 ‘spine’ players, two of which want away, a few has-beens and cast off’s that flatter to deceive IF THEY CAN and a bunch of kids who are no where near ready and would be no where near the first team if we had proper owners with money to invest in real senior prem players.

They also only think that they are going to get money in January. The window is less than 2 weeks away and they don’t even know whether there’ll be any investment or not – incredible! If they think they can raise money from the sale of Green & Upson they need to look at the bigger picture. Those sales would only mean more disruption to an already disrupted side in turmoil. Any new players that might come in will take the rest of the season to settle in and might find that they have to find their feet in the Championship – should they stay following an inevitable relegation due to the ineptitude of the 3 meeting members; talk about the blind leading the blind.

“There will be no fire sale….& no pressure to sell” I’ll believe that at the end of January, such is my faith in the integrity of Duxbury. But should there be a sale Upson is the obvious choice. Is that the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, or is it just lies, because there seems to me to be a contradiction in there somewhere? They do cite his age, short contract length and unwillingness to negotiate, not travelling to Bolton and his poor form – “watch your back Matthew!! It appears to me he is off in January, unlike Parker and Cole who they have said they will not countenance bids for – not the same for Upson it would appear though, bye Matthew.

They justify the terrible mistake they made in the sale of Collins by saying the money funded the show-pony Diamanti, and not a very good show-pony at that. What about the Chamakh fib then? And Nani is justifying the poor signings by saying money is tight – so they are poor signings then else why mention them and him?

This paragraph speaks volumes about Zola’s inability – “Zola and Clarke have been an effective team at West Ham with the latter, in particular, a talented coach and organiser who perhaps needs to be allowed more influence at the club” Both of them can’t motivate the senior players though, can they.

Shambles, completely shambolic management team – they can’t even be honest with us and all we get is more spin. Even David Gold has been dropped now as a bidder & it’s just Sullivan or is it? They treat us like fools!

Let’s hope that Andrew Bernhardt in taking his time to consider what to do next seriously considers the positions of all three Dozy, Beaky and Titch – anybody, absolutely anybody would be better than those three.