{"id":12036,"date":"2025-10-03T19:23:34","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T18:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=12036"},"modified":"2025-10-05T12:13:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T11:13:11","slug":"wet-spam-a-dish-best-served-cold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=12036","title":{"rendered":"Wet Spam &#8211; a dish best served cold?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<a id=\"vWOo3zk3TLdpi0AgB3RDWQ\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2002713914\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" rel=\"noopener\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'vWOo3zk3TLdpi0AgB3RDWQ',sig:'wjgkgytVtAzIaJXZiPDGN1kBLqRt5gthAN68IY8Jvxc=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'2002713914',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\" async=\"\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p>West Ham have long since been regarded as the fourth biggest side in the capital behind Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs. They have never won a league title and have never won much of anything else either.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet you get the sense that their fans have a perception that they are much bigger than they actually are. Throughout David Moyes\u2019 tenure, a period in which they qualified for European football three years on the trot after not being there for decades and won a trophy to boot, large sections of the West Ham fanbase dismissed Moyes claiming his brand of football was dull and he wasn\u2019t to the standard of a self-proclaimed \u201cbig club\u201d like West Ham.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They may have had a point with the first one, after all, the football was dull. But when have you ever seen West Ham play attractive football for a sustained period of time? Not for a long time is probably the answer. And who cares about the brand of football if it brings about success, something West Ham have been starved off for the majority of their meagre existence. You\u2019re West Ham lads, not Barcelona. I could never understand it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But despite West Ham being remarkably mediocre they have caused us problems on many occasions, not least in the last few seasons despite our very obvious superiority.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, can Arsenal avenge West Ham for the last two damaging defeats they\u2019ve inflicted upon our title bids in each of the last two seasons?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A shock 2-0 defeat in N5 just after Christmas in 2023 proved to be one of the games that cost us the title in 2023\/24 and the 1-0 defeat in February all but ended our title aspirations there and then. In fact, West Ham are responsible for half of our four defeats in our last 42 Premier League games at the Emirates.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These two results were made even more baffling given our last two results at The London Stadium: a 6-0 demolition back in February 2024 and the 5-2 humbling last November in which all five of our goals came inside the first half.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are up 11-2 on aggregate over in East London but 0-3 down on our own patch over the last two seasons. Football is a funny old game as the saying goes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On paper tomorrow\u2019s match ought to be routine. We have enjoyed a positive start to the season, and we will leapfrog Liverpool at the top for a few hours at least with a win. Meanwhile, West ham have amassed a mere 4 points with just one win and they have sacked Graham Potter.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But we all know what West Ham have inflicted on us recently plus we may well have to contend with the famed \u201cnew manager bounce.\u201d&nbsp; Nuno Espirito Santo boasts a top CV (apart from his stint at Spurs of course) and has a reputation for setting his sides up to be very difficult to break down and often dangerous on the counter.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it is only a few weeks since we had to face a team with the famous NMB and that was of course against Nuno\u2019s successor, the hapless Ange Postecoglou as we trounced his Nottingham Forest side 3-0. A repeat of that against The Hammers would be very welcome indeed.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In terms of team news, we will be made to sweat over the fitness of Gabriel who limped off with a muscle problem in the latter stages of the win over Olympiacos. Piero Hincapie remains on the sidelines until after the international break.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As to West Ham, they will be without Thomas Soucek who is serving his suspension for his straight red card in the defeat to Spurs a few weeks ago.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite our recent struggles against West Ham, I would still back us to win comfortably. We have a much stronger squad than we did last year, and we now have the players to be able to win these types of games with relative ease even after playing in midweek.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We made six changes against Olympiacos from the last gasp win at Newcastle and we were still able to field a formidable side. Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice and Eberechi Eze all only played a small part of Wednesday\u2019s 2-0 win over Olympiacos, and you would fully expect all three to start on Saturday.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And even if Gabriel is unfit for the game he will be replaced by Mosquera who has been largely excellent since his summer move from Valencia.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We now have undoubtedly the strongest squad in the Premier League, and perhaps even the most complete squad in Europe. Playing three games a week is no longer much of an issue for us now. That isn\u2019t necessarily the case for our rivals.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We should certainly have enough to beat West Ham, who let\u2019s face it, aren\u2019t very good new manager bounce or not.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3-0 to The Arsenal. You heard it here first. COYG!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images West Ham have long since been regarded as the fourth biggest side in the capital behind Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs. They have never won a league title and have never won much of anything else either.&nbsp; Yet you get the sense that their fans have a perception that they are much [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12036"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12036"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12038,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12036\/revisions\/12038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}