West Ham Fans’ Negativity Baffling With Club Sitting Seventh

“I know many of you are disappointed by our 2 recent away draws. A year ago we would have been thrilled, just shows how far we’ve come. dg” – For once, as I very rarely do, I agree with this tweet sent out by co-chairman and Owner David Gold on Saturday evening after our draw away to Swansea City. 

Now, forgive me if I’m wrong, but aren’t West Ham United currently occupying seventh position in the Barclays Premier League and (at the time of writing this) still in the F.A Cup with a winnable home replay, and potentially, a very winnable away game in the 4th Round should we progress? Yet there seems to be a lot of unhappy, critical fans out there right now.

I didn’t make the trip down to South Wales on Saturday, but I watched the game via a good stream on the Internet, and also followed it on Twitter. The earliest criticism began at 2pm when the team selection was revealed. “Five at the back”, “why’s Nolan starting”, “where’s Song”, “how can O’Brien be on the bench”, “Valencia and Carroll never play well together”, “well that’s this game lost” and so on. This was just some of the negativeness on my timeline before the players had even warmed up. 

It wasn’t a classic performance in the first half, but it was a half where we grew into the game. A new 3-5-2 formation (the critics had that wrong!) took time to adjust to. But it seems nowadays that if we don’t race into an early lead the moaning starts straight away.”Carroll you donkey”, “has Nolan even touched the ball”, “didn’t even know Downing was playing”, “Jenkinson can only attack but can’t defend”, “this formation is not working” appeared frequently until big Andy Carroll scored a Goal of the Season contender (the critics got that wrong!) to put us 1-0 up at half time.

Half time produced 15 quiet minutes due to West Ham winning but
there was still those unhappy few – “We will still lose this”, “We won’t score again”, “just waiting for Collins to make his usual, costly mistake.” And it didn’t get any better when Swansea almost scored in the first minute after the restart. The second half was pretty much like the first. Swansea did grab a very fortunate equaliser during a spell where they were on top. For me they don’t score from that corner if Collins had been on the pitch and not receiving treatment. 

West Ham then dominated the last 20 minutes, and here is where I can understand the frustration of some of our fans, but no team can simply attack for 90 minutes. There will be periods in the match where you will come under sustained pressure. We’d all love to see free flowing football from the first until the ninetieth minute. Some decent saves from Fabianski ensured the game finished a draw between two teams likely to finish in the top 10. A draw away against a team that don’t often lose at home.

Yet after the game the critics were out tweeting about the negativeness, rather than the positives. As I’ve said West Ham are seventh in the league, still in the FA Cup, unbeaten in three games and scoring goals in every match. At first I thought maybe it was the people I following on Twitter, and that it was my fault for surrounding myself amongst the negativeness, but looking at @whufc_official and @davidgold accounts it really seems that it’s most of the fans, or maybe they are just a loud minority. No wonder David Gold sent that tweet out, as let’s be honest, things could be a lot worse. We know that as we’ve been there. So let’s all cheer up and enjoy this fantastic season!