Mission accomplished yesterday as West Ham scraped through in a tricky away fixture against ‘plucky’ third tier Burton Albion. In the grand scheme of things nobody will care about the standard of the football on display: Does anybody remember the quality of Crystal Palace’s performances leading through to their Wembley win last season?
For the second time in as many weeks, West Ham players were involved in a mass brawl towards the end of the game. There is a fine line between ‘team spirit’ and ill discipline.
After the Chelsea mini-riot, which was perhaps more understandable given the circumstances, yesterday’s descent into ‘handbags’ could easily have led to further player dismissals and suspensions.
As thesun.co.uk observed yesterday:
“Burton vs West Ham FA Cup clash descends into chaos with mass brawl after Potts sent off…
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“….players squared up to one another directly in front of the referee, before other players rushed to get involved in the confrontation. Burton forward Kain Adom was perhaps lucky to avoid a red card after appearing to shove a player near the neck in the melee, before being dragged away by Konstantinos Mavropanos.
Ugly scenes for the second time in as many weeks
Even Burton keeper Bradley Collins ran to the halfway line to get stuck into the clash, receiving a yellow card for his troubles.”
Nuno’s side can count themselves lucky that there was no VAR to pick over the detail looking for players to punish.
With one of the smallest squads in the Premier League, West Ham can do without losing players for extended periods: Freddie Potts’ three game absence comes at a time when Pablo is already missing injured for the foreseeable future. Jean Clair Todibo’s three game suspension has now been served and the Irons do not need a repeat performance.
Compared to the meek surrenders of Potter’s era, in one sense seeing a side who are prepared to fight for one another is no bad thing. Siege mentality can achieve wonders and the Hammers are -finally – doing a great job of fighting for their Premier League future.
Fine to battle for each other and to foster a team spirit but you’d sense that this ‘all for one, one for all’ mentality needs dialling back just a little if the Irons are to avoid further sanctions by the FA and, more importantly, further player bans in the crucial last twelve games of the Premier League season. Nuno needs a quiet word with his team and encourage them to be smarter rather than punchy ahead of the resumption of the campaign next weekend.