We have to respect the point we got from our visit to Bournemouth!
A win for the Cherries would have taken them to the heady heights of fifth place in the Premier League – reward for what so far has been an excellent season for them. There weren’t many Hammers fans confident we’d get anything at all from a trip to the south coast – I certainly didn’t.
But with just three minutes to go of normal time remarkably it looked as if we would take all three points on offer, courtesy of a very generous penalty award which Lucan Paqueta dispatched with some aplomb. To be fair we would have been outraged had a similar decision been awarded against us. But hey – you take what you’re given.
All we had to do was play out the remaining time keeping our heads. Sadly Konstantinos Mavropanos contrived to lose his, making a challenge he didn’t need to make, resulting in a totally un-necessary free kick and giving Bournemouth the opportunity to snatch a late point.
I’m not Dino’s biggest fan. He’s a lumbering defender at best. His physical strength is also his technical weakness - he’s clumsy in other words. Not all defenders can be as gifted as the likes of Van Dyke, Saliba or dare I say it Micky van de Ven – but they should know what they’re good at and stick to it.
Timing and tackling definitely isn’t on the list of Mavropanos’ attributes. Distribution isn’t either – but that’s for another day.
It shouldn’t be ignored that while Dinos' clumsiness undoubtably cost us two points in the final reckoning, it was without doubt Lucas Fabianski’s anticipation and alertness which saved us from what could easily have been another embarrassing result.
Our veteran ‘keeper, the oldest player currently playing in the Premier League apparently, made at least half a dozen top saves to keep us in the game. How his performance and contribution over the entire 90+ minutes was overlooked by Alan Smith in favour of one kick from a player who only joined the action in the 80th minute remains a mystery to most observers on the night.
So Lopetegui lives on – although there is no guarantee he would have followed in the footsteps of Wolves’ Gary O’Neil and Southampton’s Russell Martin and been sacked had we suffered defeat.
Our ‘Napoleonic’ style leader appears happy to surreptitiously stoke the fires of uncertainty around the future of the current head coach, currently on compassionate leave following the death of his father.
Yet he's far less happy and willing to act to end the turmoil we have witnessed on the field of play far too often for comfort – or the similar turmoil and unrest widely reported off the field and behind closed doors at the club.
So on now to Saturday’s visit of Brighton – somewhat of a nemesis for us in recent years. Victory would take us into Christmas in a far better position results wise. But with the knowledge our board has been sounding out possible alternatives to Lopetegui, should results go badly again, the unease and uncertainty which has plagued us for so much of the season so far is unlikely to disappear any time soon.
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