Fortune always hiding? or is there more to it...

I am going to use todays blog entry to dispell what the pundits will have you believe is football's biggest mystery. What is going wrong at West Ham? I hope you are sitting down because this is shocking... they just aren’t that good.

The cliche’ for the past couple of seasons has been that West Ham have got a quality spine to their team with Green, Upson, Parker and Cole. I disagree. 

I have never been a fan of Upson and find the fact he has 21 England caps pretty embarrassing. Carlton Cole has got the physical tools to score goals in the Premier League but he is the kind of striker that will take 3 or 4 chances to score a goal and is largely inconsistent. He needs a quality strike partner because he won't score enough goals to keep a team up on his own.

As for Parker, I can't help but think there has been a lot of undue hype in recent weeks. Parker is good by association with the mediocre players he has to play with every week but not much more. He does produce moments of quality (his volleyed lob over Petr Cech earlier this season is surely a candidate for goal of the season) and I can see why West Ham look to him for leadership however, in the grand scheme of things he is just a run of the mill combative Premier League midfielder who runs about a lot and puts in tackles.

Be that as it may, the bigger issue is the mediocre players they are surrounded with and this needs to be addressed in the transfer window if West Ham are to stay up.

Einstein once said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, by that definition West Ham must be certifiable. West Ham narrowly avoided relegation last year and nothing has changed but the manager. The situation the Hammers find themselves in has been coming for a while now. The signings of Piquionne and Ben Haim aren't not enough to stop the rot in anyones wildest dreams. Don't be fooled by their win against a toothless Fulham today. Only one side in Premiership history has avoided relegation after being bottom at christmas and without major investment in January I don’t see how West Ham can buck that trend.

Merry Christmas and hopefully my next entry will be a more positive one.