andym

jesus, shocking defending. we are allowing their forwards to win the ball too easily. bit too much sitting off players in general for me at times

decent 1st half, need to score some more though because you get the feeling sunderland will get one. we are sitting off bent and jones on the long ball and noone in midfield is picking up their chest downs so they have space to turn. i do like how petrov and jimmy are passing it in the midfield, though they are mixing it up with the quick ball over the top at times. good stuff and there were some lovely bits of one touch passing in the half. ash, downing and gabby seem quite quiet, so if we can get them in the game as well i think we can get some more goals- they look suspect at the back

**** that was close, we are standing off them a few times and they are getting chances from it. bent and jones are chesting down the ball and have too much room to work. need to get a bit tighter

ah come on ash, great ball by stan for you, gotta setup gabby there

excellent by petrov and jimmy and a nice finish by emile

nice footy, why didnt heskey shoot though?

the veetle link is still going for me, excellent quality. behind by about a minute though

very good half, need more goals though. you just know manu are gonna get all the decisions, loads of injury time if they are losing and one of their players is bound to score a wonder goal- they always do against us. im pleased that we are putting up such a good performance though, that is all i ask

sounds like the ref is giving everything to man u

thats what i like, bouncing back straight away. sounds like some good work by gabby to set up ash

ooh close from ash, this is good from us, keeping the ball and looking for more goals.

i want us to really put them to the sword now, lets get some more goals!

yes downing!!!!

ffs, we played good footy, created chances and scored goals by keeping the ball in the first half. why have we gone back to this stupid sitting back and trying to hit them on the break?

gabby sounds like hes struggling tonight.

jimmy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

nice one emile

bit of a back and forth half- we would have a good 5 mins, then it would be all spurs for 5, then we would get hold of it again etc. we need to stop giving it away so easily though, because if we keep giving spurs too much of the ball they will score eventually. if we are playing direct then carew and gabby need to make it stick upfront, and ash and milner need to do something with it when they get it out wide

were giving the ball away a bit too easily again, been mostly spurs for the last 5 or so mins

not confident about this, not because i think spurs are really any better than us, but because Redknapp seems to have the jinx over MON. he has a ridiculous record going right back to when MON was at leicster. id like to see 451- petrov and nrc holding, milner, young delph or downing and gabby up top. please no steve "mr invisible" sidwell

only person id change would be sidwell, bring in stan and let NRC partner him. sidwell was good for the first 20 today, got stuck in and made some good runs forward. but then he did his disappearing act again, he started to get muscled off the ball easily and gave it away a few times with some awful passes. he also somehow missed that header and then the rebound on the penalty i dont know whether its a confidence thing but he just isnt really getting hold of the ball enough and doing something with it, particulaly in the final third where he is meant to be good. he also seems to stand next to opposition players, doesnt make himself available for the pass. cant fault his workrate off the ball, he puts players under pressure (though he cant tackle very well so doesnt actually win it much), but i think he needs to start doing more things on the ball. id like to see how NRC and petrov do together

glad i chose this match for my free tickets after the rapid game!! thought we played very well today, could even have scored more i reckon. all of our attacking players were on fire today and all scored. carew bullied cahill and scored an excellent goal. knight couldnt cope with gabbys pace and strength, and gabs hold up play and running of the channels was excellent today, he deserved his goal. crossing was much improved today from ash who looks like hes getting back to his best, and also milner which helped, jimmys ball for cuellars goal was excellent, and those 2 cross field balls he played to ash were absolutely brilliant. need to find a new penalty taker though. defence was solid and coped well with the threat of davies and elmander. i think cuellar was the best of the back 4 and his goal was a great header i thought NRC got stuck in well today and his passing was good. i think he really makes a difference to us. sidwell started well but then seemed to disappear as usual. lost the ball too easily for my liking and didnt really contribute much particulaly in the 2nd half. missed an easy headed chance and an even easier rebound from the penalty. i hope when stan comes back it is for sidwell and not NRC, because id like to see how those 2 work together. thats a minor complaint though, really pleased with the result and we passed the ball better today. funny that keeping the ball = more goals!

1st half we pass it around, keep the ball better. this equals chances created and green having to make good saves. we are on top and west ham cant get the ball. 2nd half we revert to long ball. we create hardly anything, give the ball away all the time and west ham dominate. ash's goal was a brilliant shot/cross, but it came from warnock playing a nice incisive through ball into gabbys feet, gabby laying it off nicely along the floor and then ash cutting in and letting rip. the one time we tried to construct something decent along the floor in the 2nd half and we score. had warnock lumped it long to gabby it would have come straight back. it was the same for the goal against everton. that came about from some nice build up play, warnock got in behind the defence and had a chance to get a dangerous ball in which eventually came to carew. so the question is why cant we do this regulaly?

we played decent first half, had west ham on the backfoot by keeping the ball and actually made the keeper work. so why 2nd half did we revert back to MONs shitty long ball tactic, considering we now had an extra midfielder on? we created hardly anything 2nd half, apart from a young screamer. makes no sense, we just slacked off and let west ham back into the game. last half an hour it was all them, the only villa players i heard mentioned were the defence and keeper. noble, parker, hines and collinson were being mentioned practically constantly. MON should have done something but made no changes! and its not just tonight, this has been the story for most of the season- inability to keep the ball, little or no creativity and relying on set pieces or moments of individual quality. its not good enough, we must be the worst team in the top half at passing the ball. big opportunity missed tonight

sounds a harsh pen but we should have made it so it didnt matter. its been all us but as usual we have failed to create enough good chances. greens made a few good saves but for how we have dominated posession we should have at least scored 1. west ham are there for the taking but we are not taking advantage