Samdwich

Macarthur

Espinoza, great volley. I just love Wigan and Martinez, think it's very impressive that he's kept them up for so long whilst losing his best players every year (Valencia, N'Zogbia, Moses, Rodallega etc.). How many of their players would get into any other teams in the league? Reckon you can count them on one hand. Plus their record signing (Ramis) has been out all season.

http://www.haugstadfootball.net/2013/05/06/why-mourinho-stumbled-in-europe-a-tactical-theory/ Interesting article, not sure I necessarily agree with it - yes Jose has a certain style, but that doesn't limit his ability to train teams to attack. Anyway, if the author is right, then surely he isn't a good fit for us with our new found commitment to attacking football with small technical players?

Sorry that you didn't get automatic promotion mate, gutted for you. Fairly certain that most Chelsea fans were willing you guys to clinch it. Hope you win the playoffs, Zola deserves to be in the prem.

If that were an average-at-best performance by his standards, I'd be in favour of keeping him. Unfortunately that was one of his better performances.

Yeah Luiz is still #2 for me. Possibly #3 too. Looks like the Brazillians are gonna monopolise this thing for the next few years! Luiz's turn next year, then Piazon the year after

That's a fair point, but doesn't detract from the fact that he's going to find it more difficult to dominate aerially here.

I don't think he's done a good job, but like Seven Times and Sharpy, I do actually feel bad for him. I don't like seeing people getting so much abuse - saw a post on here from someone after the FA cup replay vs Utd saying that he just hovered around the halfway line while the players were being cheered because he knew the crowd would turn on him. Thanks for your effort Benitez, but I'm glad to see the back of you. If we win the EL and get top 4, I'll be thankful for it but don't think he deserves any praise really considering the position he was in when he took the job.

You don't want to be taking a coach to Amsterdam, they're a f**king nightmare!!

Nice to see Torres taking shots on goal, positive play.

Right, I don't watch Falcao week in week out. I've seen a fair bit of him though and obviously he's a great player. My understanding is that one of his greatest strengths is his aerial threat. Now, I'm not one to say "La liga is sh*t" "La liga defending is sh*t" or anything of the sort, but the fact is that it's a far less physical league with less emphasis on balls into the box (see: De Gea). He's 5'10 and whilst he does well in the air there, I'm not sure he'd be as dominant in the air against the likes of Huth, Vidic, Kompany etc. That's my only real reservation about him in this league.

ouch, Davey must be gutted. He just stumbled :(

As others have said, I don't have an issue with the badge kissing, particularly as it's WBA and not a team that we have directly competed against or called rivals.

I'm saying we don't particularly need to find more goals. We have two attacking midfielders who will score 10+ league goals next season and two strikers who are capable of 20 goals. Yes our system is set in stone; you think Emenalo would approve of a manager who intends to play 2 up front considering our depth in attacking midfield? See what happened to Adkins at Southampton for an example of the manager not wanting to follow the playing style the club wants (our youth also play 4-2-3-1). You talk as though goals are created and scored by the striker alone, and that nobody else contributes. Yes, there have been games where having Torres up front has cost us and he hasn't put away the chances our midfield has created for him. That doesn't happen when Ba plays, and won't happen when Lukaku plays. There are more important issues to address for games like that, like the speed of our build up - I agree with most others in here re: having Oscar deeper as he is fantastic with the play ahead of him and can link with Mata and Hazard without congesting the play. With competent strikers, as long as we create chances they'll put them away when it counts - yes Ba has had a few games where his finishing has been sloppy but those have been games where we were comfortable anyway (West Ham and Swansea). When the pressure is on he seems to find the net - eg. against the Manchester clubs. After AVB left, RDM continued to use only those two up front. And as I said, since we've had Ba we haven't been short of a striker, two is fine for a team that only plays one forward, especially if you have a third who plays another position but can play as an emergency striker - which is what I thought we were buying Moses for. Yes, I'm banking too much on Ba and his dodgy knees which have seen him miss a total of.... 0 games through injury since joining West Ham over 2 years ago. And yes, the reason people want a wide player who can play up front if necessary is for exactly this kind of situation. Because if the two first choice strikers stay fit all season, the third choice won't get any significant game time - no good player would be happy with that. If we stick with two, if something does happen to one of them, we're in trouble. Hence a wide player who can cover as a striker in emergencies. Not rocket science. What kind of flexibility would a third striker give us that a combination of Lukaku, Ba and Schurrle wouldn't? You've got pace, power and technique there. Realistically, if we're struggling to break a team down they'll almost definitely be sitting deep and the best type of striker for that situation is a strong lad like Lukaku. He's got plenty of pace to get in behind defences too. SAF keeps his strikers happy. You know why? Because he plays 2. We don't, and we won't, do that. I've agreed that going into next season with 2 strikers does leave us open to problems, but having 3 out and out strikers means one is likely to go unused or just be used for the sake of it. This is why it is preferable to have someone who plays in another position who can play as a striker if necessary. I thought we were chasing Hulk for this quality, and I thought part of the reason we got Moses was because he could play as a CF in emergencies, but apparently not.

The above post makes no sense. You talk about "extra firepower" as if having a player on the bench is going to increase the number of goals we're going to score. You're the one talking about numbers ("two and a half strikers"). The point is that last season we only had two players play up front despite having 5 strikers + one winger/striker - 5 and a half by your count. Only two of them played as a striker that season. What is the point in having 3+ strikers then? This season we haven't been hurt by having just two strikers - we've been hurt by one being sh*t and the other being out of favour. Since signing Ba we haven't looked like we need another striker. Yes, the two main strikers at two of the 3 top teams had a combined total of 57 goals. Messi and Ronaldo had 96 goals between them. Long and Defoe had 19. What does it matter? Their stats this season - they play together, something that our strikers don't do, so again it's a pointless stat. A more meaningful stat would be comparing Mata + our striker as we play Mata instead of a second striker (Rooney). Ba has been good since he's come here, he's linked up play very well and has scored some great goals. He's not been consistent but I don't blame him considering the "rotation" hasn't allowed him to play two games in a row, often being benched for the important games. Nobody has argued that he's in the same league as RVP or Suarez, but Lukaku can be. The best thing for Lukaku's development right now is to play him in front of Mazacar and get him accustomed to our system, letting him build an understanding with them. Ba should be there to rotate, and he is easily good enough to lead the line for us to get a CL spot. By the end of next season, Ba should be second choice to Lukaku. He's certainly good enough as a second choice striker for a title winning squad. And you expect to match that? Let me remind you that we scored more goals than any other team in PL history that season. This season we're second on goal difference only to Manure. This is despite playing half the season with a striker who can't hit the side of a barn and having an in-form one mismanaged by FSW. Next season when we have this same forward managed properly (hopefully by the special one) and Lukaku who has scored 14 goals from 17 starts. I'm not worried about goals. As an aside: with 5 games to go we have scored 4 fewer goals than we did in both 04/05 and 05/06. Man City didn't win the title with a "proven 25 goal striker" last season, Aguero scored 23. Suarez is stuck on 22/23 for this season too. In 2010/11 Rooney scored 11, Hernandez 10. Both Ba and Lukaku are capable of hitting 20 a season. You keep going on about number of strikers. Do you forget that you can only have 11 men on the pitch, and we're not going to play more than one striker? I'm not certain that we need Schurrle for £20m either, especially if it costs us KDB who I'd rather have. But It's more sensible than spending a load of cash on a striker who comes in to push Lukaku down the pecking order. Say we buy Falcao, what happens to Lukaku? By the end of next season he'll 100% be ready to lead the line for us. What do we do, sell Falcao? Sell Lukaku? I say it again: we have plenty of goals in our team, we need a better midfield to control games more effectively (and therefore create better opportunities) and a competent manager.

7 shots from Ba, 6 on target! Slightly disappointing finishing but rest of his game was good; one or two of the shots were ones which he did well to get on target, though.

So many wasted chances!

Would have been a little harsh to give a second yellow for that. considering the game isn't tight and we're cruising I don't think it's being "shafted", more Clattenburg giving him a bit of leeway. Don't forget that Azpilicueta is lucky to still be on the pitch, too.

Ba is destroying Williams out there. Should have been a second yellow but Clattenburg doesn't want to give a red, don't particularly blame him. What a miss from Mata :o

lovely play

Can anyone imagine Torres giving Williams a runaround like Ba is doing at the moment? He's doing very well with the scrappy balls that often get played up to him

Magic from Mata to get Lamps the pen!

Lamps And lovely finish from Oscar, despite being poor that's what he can do. Love the kid and expect great things from him next season.

more of that please frank