West Ham United

Preview Percy is back after the international break. Don’t worry, there’s another one in November. Here’s his look at Saturday’s trip to North London in the meantime...

Next up we have our inoculations as we get up in the middle of the night to venture north to the London Borough Of Haringey (motto: “At least we’re not Croydon”) for a 12:30pm kick-off at the toilet bowl where we will be hosted by Tottenham Hotspur.

C2C will be having a load of engineering works which will see a reduced service, with all trains diverted to Liverpool Street which might make things easier. Possibly not.

So Tottenham then. It is a fact of life for their supporters that, no matter what the team does on the pitch, the club will for some reason always be a laughing stock for the rest of the world. Indeed you can bet your last penny that someone, somewhere in Carlisle (bottom of League 2 with a -13 goal difference) is sitting there with a pint and thinking “still, at least we’re not Tottenham”.

They were of course rather scathing of our European win – the most repeated comment being “Mickey Mouse Cup”. Interesting how they have become experts on trophies all of a sudden isn’t it? I expect they’ve seen silverware on the telly or something. Meanwhile their own foray into the Thursday Night Conference effectively ended when they got beaten by Slovenia’s sixth best team. Not exactly Fiorentina, was it?

Back home it’s been an odd start to the season for them. Three wins (Everton h 4-0, Brentford h 3-1 and Man Utd h 3-0), three defeats (Newcastle a 2-1, Arsenal h 0-1 and Brighton a 3-2) and an opening-day 1-1 draw at Leicester has left them on 10 points from the seven they have played so far. The defeat to Brighton down in Falmer last week went some way to explaining a national epidemic of split sides, as a comfortable 2-0 lead was not so much thrown away as placed atop one of Elon Musk’s rockets and boosted into orbit.

As ever, Daisy has been poring over the information regarding their new signings. The first arrival came in the form of young Swedish midfielder Lucas Bergvall. The midfielder commanded a fee of around £8.5m coming in from Djurgarden. The 18 year-old’s starts so far this season have been confined to the League Cup and the Thursday Night League, though he has made five appearances off the bench in the league.

Those of us of a certain age felt ever so slightly older at the announcement that they had brought in Archie Gray from Leeds – and not simply because of the £40m fee that was paid to Leeds for an 18 year-old. As one travels towards the autumn years of one’s life, one gets used to seeing players who are the sons of those one remembers seeing play when one was a hell of a lot younger. One gets used to that eventually.

However in Archie Gray we are looking at the GRANDson of Frank Gray and GREAT nephew of Eddie Gray who, particularly in the case of the latter, was part of the Leeds side who kicked and (allegedly but everyone knows they did) bribed their way to 1970’s success. Like the Swedish lad, Gray’s starts have come in the League Cup and on Thursday nights, though again he has three sub appearances in the league.

Dominic Solanke’s signing raised an eyebrow or two and again this was not entirely down to the £65m fee paid to Bournemouth. History is littered with journeymen strikers who have a season in the sun before reality kicks in and they fade to obscurity.

Solanke’s career has all the hallmarks, scoring for fun at lower levels to assist with promotion but not really doing much in the top flight. Then came last season when suddenly he managed 19 goals in 38 league matches. To put that into context, his previous 96 top flight appearances over a period of seven or so years had netted him a grand total of 10 goals.

He has notched twice in five league starts but it remains to be seen how much bench time he gets when they have the likes of Son and Richarlison available again. Having said that, he is just the sort of player who scores against us and nobody else.

Further attacking options arrived in the form of Winston Odobert and Timo Werner. Odobert arrived for a so-called undisclosed fee of £25m from Burnley, for whom he holds the record of youngest ever Premier League scorer. A thigh injury will preclude his involvement on Saturday however. Werner on the other hand is not really a new signing as such, this season’s loan from Leipzig being a renewal of last season’s loan, with the added option to buy for £8.5m at the conclusion.

As far as injuries go for Saturday, both Son and Richarlison will need late tests to see if they are fit enough to throw themselves to the floor on Saturday both having missed the last few weeks. The international break will have been handily placed for their recovery then.

On we move and welcome then to the Wild and Wacky World Of Association Football. And we were all heartened, weren’t we, to hear that VAR errors are down by 80% this season. Rejoice one and all. An impressive statistic indeed. Until, that is, you realise that the source of that statistic is, er, PGMOL.

The statistic seems to depend on acceptance of PGMOL’s snow job every time something goes wrong, which, of course sees them rewriting the laws of the game every time they don’t get it right giving an instant removal from the stats for whatever mess they are clearing up at the time. As if to underline the matter, we saw a return of the completely made-up provision that contact in the box has to be “sustained” to make any sort of difference.

It doesn’t and the sole purpose of this trend is to repeat it often enough for it to be accepted. And of course, by concentrating on the false VAR narrative, the fraudulent and misleading statistic completely ignores the lousy standard of refereeing in general, most of which never gets near a video screen to review. So thanks for the update Mr Webb, but come back and see me when someone less dishonest is marking your homework.

And of course we should mention that our national team has a new manager in the form of Thomas Tuchel. This seems to have caused a mass bursting of blood vessels in certain quarters as it became public knowledge that Herr Tuchel is in fact a – wait for it – German. Shock, horror. It’s almost as if Capello and Eriksson never happened.

Now I’m as patriotic as the next man, but I have to say that I have no problem with Tuchel on the basis of his nationality. I am reliably informed that it is the year 2024 and these things really shouldn’t matter. The only issue I might have is whether or not he is the right man for the job.

That’s not a reflection on Tuchel’s abilities in any way. It’s more representative of my doubts in the abilities of anyone at the FA to make a decent decision on the matter. After all these were the people who decided that Sam Allardyce was the man for the job. And let’s not forget Allardyce is English.

In the meantime, Tuchel could do us all a favour by taking a look at whether Trent Alexander-Arnold is really worth his place. One free-kick apart, he produced his standard substandard performance in an England shirt, a pre-match interview suggesting that he was too good to consider playing in a fixed position (“I play the game, not the position”) was the relevant quote.

This was picked up in an interesting article in the Sunday Times by David Walsh, the gist of which was that too many England players believe the hype the TV companies spout about them. So when they come up against a team like Greece who, to paraphrase Alexander-Arnold’s nonsense, "play the game not the reputation" they come mightily unstuck. Meanwhile, Liverpool supporters are apparently worried Alexander-Arnold might go to Real Madrid. On that showing, Real Madrid’s fans should be more concerned.

And so to us. Wasn’t it nice to be the ones scoring in the first minute for a change? It wasn’t perfect, but there were little spells where we played some decent stuff. It was particularly good to see Jean-Clair Todibo start to settle in and his partnership with Max Kilman is beginning to develop nicely. It is true that Ipswich were poor – and they’ll be relying on other teams being worse than they are if they want to stay up. However, the result didn’t flatter us in the end and it’s just a shame that we had the international break served to interrupt our momentum.

On the injury front Fullkrug will miss out again, “complications” having set in on his dodgy calf muscle. I’m guessing that the Paqueta family turf accountants may already have opened a book on whether we actually see him play again given that the transfer window re-opens in a little more than two months. Other than that it’s a full squad to choose from with no ill-effects being reported from those engaged on international duty.

So hopefully the last two games have seen Mr Lopetegui get a little bit closer to knowing what his preferred line up is likely to be. We will have the usual thing of course with Spurs raising their game against their betters making the match more difficult that it might otherwise be.

With that in mind I think I will plump for a draw. So the £2 that I was going to spend on their best selling video “Tottenham – the Audi Cup Glory Years” (I haven’t got anything that plays Betamax anyway) will instead be taken down to Winston The Turf Accountant and exchanged in wager on a 2-2 draw.

Enjoy The Game!

When last we met at the Toilet Bowl: Won 2-1 (Premier League Dec 2023)

Romero gave the home side a half-time lead but they failed to add to the tally. Bowen capitalised on some hilariously awful defending to level. Did I say Hilariously awful? Well it was nothing as the ‘keeper made a mess of a hospital back-pass under pressure from Bowen. Sticking the ball into the empty net was too easy for Ward-Prowse who elected instead to play a one-two off the goalpost as Bowen cleverly stayed out of it all to avoid being caught offside. So long and thanks for all the points.

Danger Man: Brennan Johnson

On a run of six in six at present, though on past form it will be journeyman Solanke who may cause issues.

Referee: Andrew Madley

Last seen at Anfield where he refused three penalties that he would have given without hesitation had they occurred up the other end. Also allowed a goal so offside it was visible from outer space, though he can blame his lino for that one. And because VAR wasn’t in operation it didn’t count towards the shameful propaganda that masquerades as statistics in the bent world of PGMOL. Large G&Ts all round then eh Mr Webb.

Percy and Daisy’s Tottenham Fact Of The Week Type Thing

Tottenham are the current holders of the Audi Cup, a pre-season tournament that was held until 2019. Having seen their trophy won by Spurs, Audi seem to have been so embarrassed by their flagship tournament being won by them it looks like they pulled their sponsorship in the hope nobody would notice, and the cup hasn’t been played for since. Still I believe they do a nice video of it on Betamax.

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