My week this week has mostly comprised of reading tosh. For most people, no news is good news, yet for West Ham it would seem that no news is quite simply an excuse for people to print rubbish.

So far this week I have read that:

1) Herita Illunga thinks we are a second rate club.
2) Rob Green has bought a painting
3) Redknapp thinks he is coming ‘home’
4) Illunga will feel full force of ‘cockney cauldron’
5) We will be taking a massive gamble if we have a firesale
6) Behrami is going back to Italy
7) We wont be able to field a side Dean Ashon is leaving for £18m
9) Illunga thinks we are second tier

Then again, we don’t really help ourselves:

Noble and Behrami make good use of West Ham’s sticky-backed plastic supplies

I get so frustrated reading these ‘articles’. Maybe it would be easier for me not to read them and to just ignore them. I’ve even almost slipped up and found myself on the bandwagon myself (Carlton Cole Comments), and for that I apologise.

It seems to me that everyone seems to be firmly in favour of making us scapegoats for just about everything.

It would seem to the neutral that West Ham’s world is falling down, that we have no future, that even our players don’t like us and that we are a truly awful footballing side. It would seem that we didn’t deserve even a point a Liverpool and that we are favourites to get relegated. You may even be forgiven for thinking that Dean Ashton has played every game this year and scored two in each. It would seem that Sheffield United are a righteous team, that can do no wrong and a team beyond the justice system at the FA. A team where court rulings are only appropriate if it is about money and not someone’s life. Oh my, they really are great up there.

Just sitting there.

On their high horse.

I have felt stirred to quell some of these quite devestatingly poor and completely unecessary misconceptions.

Maybe our financial situation is a little tight, but I firmly believe that we have the right manager, coach and backroom staff in place to take our club forwards. We actually do have a half decent first team already as far as I am concerned.

A backbone of Green, Upson, Parker and Bellamy is enough to encourage a lot of people. Collins is playing brilliantly recently, even Neill has been having some of his better games. Zola is learning that it is not always the best thing to attack with 9 men upfront each game, and we are starting to keep some clean sheets.

As a quick aside, we have kept three [cleansheets] on the spin. Arsenal have only kept 5 since the beginning of October, Chelsea have only kept 3 in their last 6 and Tottenham have only kept 5 all year.

Zola has the character, the passion and the desire to take our team forwards. He has a great relationship with the fans and the press. He clearly takes pride in his work and is never quick to criticise the team.

Speaking of the team, Zola has instilled an attitude within them to fight as a unit for each other. It appears to me that the team is growing stronger in light of all the rubbish off the pitch.

The attidude of each and every player recently has been the best I have seen for a long while and I am enjoying watching us play. Sometimes it is a little hard work and maybe a little nail biting when we are not getting the results that our performances deserve, but nonetheless I believe we are making good solid progress.

Here’s my own attempt at a fair, unbiased, subjective review of tonight’s game that is reminiscent of some of the stuff I have read this week…

We will win tonight, confidently. We will only further impress the Spuds into the relegation dogfight whilst propelling ourselves into the top-ten. Of all this, I have no doubt.

I am confident about tonight, and I am confident about our future. It is about time that we started reading positive West Ham news, and I hope that today I have, and we will, set another bandwagon into motion.

We may even get Mark Lawrenson on board

Maybe not.

Come back later for the highlights…

COYI!!!

Sam

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