Lighthouse

‘Aren’t that great’ included Beattie, Oakley, Lundekvam, Anders, Pahars, Bridge, Dodd and Marsden. They’d all walk into our side now, in fact I think WGS would only have Ramsdale, THB and Fernandes.

Eventually people are going to have to accept that Suga is a limited player who makes a lot of quite bad mistakes. You’re going to start to get diminishing returns on the whole, “yeah but the guy who was sacked before Christmas…” argument.

Because we are far too reliant on an 18 year old to provide our only genuine creative talent. Livramento also started to look jaded around this time in his first season, Newcastle have been much more sensible in managing his minutes. Hopefully Dibling doesn’t go the way of him, Lavia and all the other young talents asked to do too much too young, like Michael Owen and Lee Holmes.

For me it’s not Christmas without Home Alone, Wallace and Gromit and Die Hard. Then it’s a smorgasbord from Jurassic Park, Guns of Navarone, Italian Job, Zulu, The Great Escape, at least one cheesy Moore Bond film and Escape to Victory.

Which is all we’re realistically hoping for; that this season will be forgotten rather than remembered by the rest of the English footballing community.

Thick and fast Xmas schedule. It’ll be interesting to see how much IJ deviates from todays team. I’d be include to go for Manning on the left and Suga on the bench personally. If we’re trailing with nothing to lose, the latter can put a decent cross in but if we’re trying to keep it tight at the back, the bloke is a Tommy Cooper tribute act. Hopefully Archer is well enough to replace the useless Armstrong too.

Well the first half looked decent although being honest West Ham looked a bit out of sorts and, understandably, weren’t really sure how we’d set up. Clearly they had a very good half time talk because second half they had us figured out. TP something of an enigma, a few very good touches but some very poor finishes too. My fear is that if teams figure out how to mark him out of the game, there’s not much else to worry about. Fernandes will get into the box and have chances but his finishing was well off today, that first half header especially. I’m going to be optimistic and say that Ivan will have learned a lot about his squad today and hopefully we have some fresh ideas for Palace.

They were on the front foot long before that.

I’m not sure it’s that so much as West Ham getting their act together at HT. They’ve figured out our game plan and cut out our chances. If it was fitness I’d expect us to be dropping off around 60-70 minutes but honestly, we’ve just been sh*te since we came out the tunnel.

Summerville should have made that two. Far too much space, don’t leave him this way!

I wouldn’t blame him for that as such, we had more than enough chances to clear it. I think there’s a reason Manning has been preferred to Suga recently and he’s showed why again with that corner. He has far too many lapses in concentration to be a reliable PL defender.

THB can’t be letting him win that header so easily, very poor.

His standing leg slipped out from under him and he clattered into KWP. It was clumsy but never a red, yellow is fair.

No arguments here, good VAR decision.

That’s a harsh red, he slipped.

They both had one didn’t they? MF down low and TP high and looping.

Three I thought. One straight at Fabianski, one at Areola’s feet and one wide. He’s had some excellent touches, like the chest down and pass for Suga and some crap ones, like the take down on the halfway line that ended up in a West Ham corner 10 seconds later. Hopefully he can get one in the net second half.

Decent half, definitely a step in the right direction. Hopefully those three headers straight at the keeper don’t come back to haunt us. West Ham looking a bit blunt going forwards, I think they’re missing Antonio today.

For those watching on Prime, you can change the playback speed to x2. We actually win 3-1 in the end.

Another great chance, definitely been a decent half so far.

Fernandes has to score that.

TBF it’s hardly Sweden vs Colombia at the WC when it comes to the selection of eye candy.

Another passenger airliner heroically shot down.

We can only keep our fingers crossed for the next 20 games (26 if you include our unstoppable March to Wembley).

Certainly a different team.