It will be just 75 days from that amazing night in Prague, champions of Europe, to this week’s return to UEFA competition.
I hadn’t really forgotten, but that glow of triumph had sort of been replaced by the more mundane, if you dare to call Manchester City that, European champions too, I believ
And that home defeat by arguably the best club side in the world, had been predictably deflating, brought down to earth, a return to reality after a few weeks unbeaten and in the top four. A reboot was needed after that.
Let’s face it, there had been far too much talk of “we can take them, let’s go toe to toe, they are not as good as last season”. All that sort of tripe.
My various levels of debriefing with increasingly inebriated young men on the trip home on what is laughably called a modern train service, had failed to lift the mood.
Saturday night in the gloom of Stafford station waiting for a connecting train, likewise. I’m sure Paul Simon could write a song about it. Paul who? I hear from the back. Do look it up lads, you might even discover where Widnes is!
Then there was a day of gibberish from the usual YouTube suspects, who also seemed to have spent too much time on the booze, insisting that David Moyes had set us up to lose and made it easy for City. So searching for my own, supposedly, insightful views was getting nowhere.
That is until my little package from the club to mark our wonderous Europa Conference League victory over Fiorentina dropped through the letter box. It was a bit emotional for a while, tearful even, and I thought I was past all that.
For some reason I felt this little gift from the club was only aimed at the kids, but I even took out the golden coin and clutched it stupidly for a few minutes. The gallery of memorable pictures was very nice, the one with a grown man, his face buried in his hands, sobbing, summed it all up.
So, moving on, we are back on the road again, this time with the Europa League final in Dublin on 22 May the target. There’s a thought, there’s the perfect city. Not helped by another of our number suggesting we could drop down to the Conference again and get to that final instead. He’d already found out it will be in Athens on 29 May. I can only apologise for all that.
Anyway, it’s the Serbian club TSC Backa Topola, seven games unbeaten and at the top of their Super Liga, who will be at the London Stadium on Thursday. Our first game in Group A, having avoided all that qualifying nonsense because, well, we are champions of Europe and are the top seed accordingly. How that has annoyed my Liverpool friends.
And now it gets all serious. Avoiding the European early rounds and also missing the delights of the first two rounds of the Carabao Cup has given us a calmer opening to the season prior to the international break, which saw three of our best stars, James Ward-Prowes and Jarrod Bowen ignored by England- heaven knows why – as well as Lucas Paqueta being ‘overlooked’ by Brazil. You can bet he was upset by that (sorry, sorry) meant that they could rest up a bit after the season openers.
And it all gets tougher now. Including the Manchester City match, it’s 24 games in three competitions in 107 days, if we progress in the Carabao, until New Year, to determine where our season is going. It’s the business end of a summer of discontent among some fans, one that still saw us buy four very decent players.
We are getting to a point where we should be able to field completely different teams in Europe and the League Cup in Lincoln the following week from the one we field at Liverpool on Sunday. It’s something the really big clubs manage with ease.
You would expect to see Mohammed Kudus, Konstantinos Mavropanos, Pablo Fornals, Danny Ings and Conor Coventry against the Serbs and Lincoln. We have a big squad, the new players are all upgrades, so rotation should be easier.
Moyes is still talking in terms of us building, but we must also start to produce consistency with growing regularity. There’s no real excuses now and the manager will know this.
We have the tenth most expensive squad in world football, some £436m worth. West Ham are the 18th richest club in the world, 27th now in UEFA rankings and 39th in the world (two years ago we were 116th).
We have made decent progress under Moyes, he seems to have emerged from the summer with his position enhanced. He’s signed players on five-year contracts while he only has one left on his own. Tony Cottee thinks he should already have been given a new deal and the outside football world would see that as a reasonable reward for giving us three seasons in Europe.
But I can hear the gnashing of teeth from the anti-Moyes mob already.
Will David Sullivan still be around? It seems increasingly likely. With Danny Kretinsky likewise, will there be new owners. It’s all being discussed and evaluated.
Moyes though has sailed serenely through all the upheaval. The talking has stopped, there have been plenty of plaudits too. Mostly from the outside.
The only currency that will re-affirm his tenure will be continued progress, top half in the Premier League a minimum and staying in Europe. That’s the key, it is the only place to be. We don’t want to be like Spurs and Chelsea, do we?
So a winning start to our Europa League group is imperative, before we have to go to probably the toughest opponents, Freiburg without any fans. I do hope those handful of idiots who threw missiles onto the pitch in Prague are pleased with themselves.
As for Saturday’s performance against Manchester City, I felt we did a lot better than many critics have said. The first-half was our best, controlled, performance as I can remember against Pep Guardiola side.
I don’t agree that we should have gone on the front foot, that’s a recipe for disaster against them. Ward-Prowse made the point that they are better than us with better players, which is hard to get through to some of our fans.
Small details in the end. Losing Edson Alvarez through injury, when Moyes was about to take off Tomas Soucek, was the killer. Alvarez has quickly made himself crucial to our system, a tough, acutely aware holding midfielder who can shift from midfield to the back line, and take out opponent’s main striker. And we have no-one to replace him.
Mo Kudus looked a little lost in the end, I doubt he has faced this quality of player before, apart from his Champions League games last season for Ajax against Liverpool and Napoli.
And it’s a shame some fans turned on Michail Antonio for that one-on-one miss in the second half after he had turned Ruben Dias beautiful. Yes, his first touch was heavy, but if he could improve on that he’d be Jimmy Greaves!
Like to share your thoughts on this article? Please visit the KUMB Forum to leave a comment.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the highlighted author/s and do not necessarily represent or reflect the official policy or position of KUMB.com.
About The Author
Leave a Reply