Firstly, a quick apology for lack of posts of late, the Christmas flu came to visit so have not been 'blog fit', hope you all had a great Christmas and a happy New Year to you all.
The Hammers find themselves with the distraction of the FA Cup this weekend. Normally I'd be pushing the lads to go for it, a cup run can be great for morale and as you get into the latter stages, you start to dream of Wembley. But this season, the FA Cup should be the least of our priorities, the first being our Premiership survival. With plenty of niggles and knocks picked up over the Christmas period, key players must be rested, a few youngsters should be given a run out and if we end up out the cup, fine, so be it. I'm not saying don't support the team, as the Daily Mail has been keen to point out, we've struggled to sell the tickets for this one, but the eleven out there must be given our backing. However, I'd expect that Parker, Illunga, Diamanti and the suspended Franco will be sitting this one out.
So, the Hammers to line up along the lines of;
Green
Daprela - da Costa - Tomkins - Spector
Collison - Jiminez - Kovac - Faubert
Nouble - Sears
Bench: Stech, Stanislas, Behrami, Diamanti, Payne, N'Gala and Noble
It's not the strongest side in the world but it can do a job and it will be great to see what the youngsters such as Daprela and Nouble are made of. Arsenal won't exactly be playing their strongest eleven either, so there is no reason we can't give them a decent match and bring back the boys with the niggles for the bigger game against Wolves next week. Give the young Irons a chance and see what they can do, come on you Hammers!!!
I don't entirely agree with you, sure we need to maintain our league status, but I think the FA cup is the greatest traditional trophy to win, and we should put 100% into winning it. Remember the joys of 64,75 and 80, the cup has meant so much to West ham.
Posted by: coco | 02/01/2010 at 13:31
Did I miss the review of the spurs game?
Posted by: thfc1882 | 02/01/2010 at 19:29