It has been a brilliant start to the season for us so far. It is fair to say that Sam Allardyce had his fair share of critics at the club. This was largely down to the style of football that he employed. I had never been as critical as other people because I see his spell at the club as successful. He won promotion in his first season with a squad that had lost many of its best players including Scott Parker and Demba Ba, and had no moral. He kept us comfortably in the Premiership the next season with a tenth place finish and then the following season we stayed up again and reached the Capital One Cup Semi-final where we were annihilated by your lot. So all in all it had been a success but this was still not enough for a large majority of our fans as it was believed that Sam had abandoned our football entertainment philosophies. Some of the players who have played for both City and West Ham are an indication of the flair we had come to expect the likes of Tevez, Sinclair, Ian Bishop, Mark Ward and even the likes of Paolo Wanchope had set the previous bench mark which Sam had failed to replicate.
This season it has been totally different and we are back to our previous footballing ways at the academy. Our 3-1 home win against Liverpool was one of the best performance we have seen in many years at the club and this season has also seen other very solid performances. We beat QPR at home and Crystal Palace comfortably away and really should have beaten Spurs in our first game and got something at City’s fierce rivals United. We drew at Hull and had one disappointing loss at home to Southampton in the league, prior to our excellent win at Burnley last weekend.
Part of the successes have been because of the new players that we have brought in plus the rebirth of Stuart Downing in the diamond formation. Sakho has been a revelation and his ability to finish is something that we have been missing for many a year. Valencia has shown undoubted quality and scored a spectacular goal against Hull. Although he is less than 6 foot his leap is superb, as we saw with his goal against Burnley, and I expect there is more to come from him. Our own Yaya Toure is Kouyate and whilst he has been injured, but possibly back for the City game, he was brilliant in the first few games. We bought in Mauro Zarate who has brought some Argentinian flair with him and Morgan Amalfitano on deadline day who has already scored and looked impressive. At right back we have a player with champions’ league experience in Carl Jenkinson on loan from Arsenal and Gus Poyet’s son Diego as one for the future. Our most impressive signing so far in terms of stature is Alex Song on loan from Barcelona. We pulled of a real coup getting him and although it is claimed he isn’t 100% percent fit, we have already seen why he has played at the very highest level.
City and West Ham have always had quite friendly links in my experience. I was at both games in the league last season. The away visit to the Etihad was a special day especially for city. Although I had been to Maine Road before (to see us win in the FA Cup in the 90s) this was my first trip to the new stadium and I was very impressed. It has made me even more excited about our move to the Olympic Stadium in 2016. What I especially enjoyed was after the final whistle when the city fans poured onto the pitch and the majority applauded us and sung our iconic Bubbles song.
As I have mentioned before there have been many players who have enjoyed successful spells at both clubs Carlos Tevez who scored the winner at Old Trafford to keep us up being the most controversial one. Ian Bishop was a graceful midfielder, whose spell at West Ham was sandwiched between great periods at City. He arrived from City with Trevor Morley who was our top scorer in a couple of seasons and one of my first favourite players, with Mark Ward going in the other direction. Paulo Wanchope was quite a frustrating figure for us when he played upfront with Paolo Di Canio. One of our biggest disappointments when getting relegated was selling Trevor Sinclair and David James to City. Stuart Peace won Hammer of the Year at the club and famously played on with a broken leg during his time. Eyal Berkovic and Kevin Horlock served both clubs’ midfield as well as Frank Lampard. I could not understand why Chelsea released him and they could be left seriously regretting that going on his current City form. I knew Frank from his early years with us and no one works harder on the training ground than him. He is also one of the few privately educated footballers in the Premier League and in person is a very humble and likeable chat. Of course the relationship between Lampard and the West Ham fans is hostile and Frank is the focus of a number of chants. There are things that Frank has done since leaving that he probably regrets but he always felt hard done-by at the club because people said he was only selected because he was, our manager at the times, nephew and cheered when he went off injured with a broken leg in one game. It is a shame that we will not get to see what reception he wouldn’t have received since his move to City.
I expect the game next Saturday to be high scoring as our defence has been much more open this year and we are scoring more goals and City have an abundance of talent in attack. I would like to think we will give you a good game and are capable of giving you a tough match if we play like we did against Liverpool. Both teams are coming into the game with confidence and having registered impressive results at the weekend. I expect City to challenge Chelsea for the league this year and I hope you win it for a second year in a row.
