Complacency and Carlton Cole – 2 of 3 C’s to be wary of vs West Ham – Preview II
The third C-word to consider is choking. Can you have both ‘choking’ and ‘complacency’ in one game. I believe you can. Hello, Gooners wherever in the world you are reading this. As promised this is my second preview-ish post to the game against West Ham. Why two posts BEFORE a game? Special games need special focus.
It is easy to think about the Tottenham game next week (especially considering they lost today against Stoke) but the West Ham is equally if not more important. I wasn’t too critical of our performance against Alkmaar on Tuesday night. A few cited complacency for our draw in Holland. When you are on a good run like we were it is easy to say that. So tomorrow’s Derby against the Hammers is a good game for the boys to dismiss this notion. Given that Zola’s men are in the drop zone, it is a natural tendency to assume that they won’t pose much of a challenge. And usually the table doesn’t lie. But on this occasion it might. West Ham haven’t been bad enough to occupy 19th position.
But they do rely on Carlton Cole too much, he has been heavily involved in their goals. It illustrates his consistency and he is definitely going to be the man to be marked and marked well. Couple of other players to watch out from the Hammers are Stanislas and Diamanti. Not because they have interesting names but the former has good trickery (he made Carragher look pretty stupid when Liverpool played them, not easy to do) and the latter just has that feeling that he can do something positive on his set pieces.
The good news for us is that Eduardo is back. He scored on his last appearance against the hammers on New Years Day 2008. Zola’s team are one who generally like to play good football and don’t have the strong mental attributes to grind out games. Derby games normally throw the form notion out of the window. But I think Eduardo should he feature, will pose plenty of problems for West Ham on the wings.
Considering there is a Carling cup match mid week I expect Cesc, Arshavin and Van Persie to start. No one had a significantly bad performance against Alkmaar so unless there are fitness concerns I expect the same team to start as the one against Alkmaar.
Last year we beat West Ham 2-0 at Upton Park. It was the strange match to watch as the tempo of the game was atypical of derby matches. We were frustrated in our attempts to win by a well organised West Ham unit. It required a couple of good substitutions from Wenger to turn an unexpected draw to an expected win.
The significance of a win tomorrow? We move up one place and close the gap on Chelsea and Utd. If this doesn’t motivate the players I don’t know what will. I just hope such an incentive doesn’t push the players towards choking. And when even the Hammers are expecting us to win, this can happen.
Feel free to add your pre-match thoughts and predictions on our second London derby.
Thank you very much for deleting my yesterday comments.
VERY IMMATURE.
they aren’t. will you stick to posting comments on the content of the post? like other gooners usually do on here.
Eduardo will be bench for sure. He is too injury prone at the moment so he won’t start many games for a while.
We’ll win but probably a close one 1-0 or 2-1.
this one is going to be a comfortable win for us. we’ve beaten west ham at their ground for two years in a row. yes last year was tough but we still won 2-0 without playing the very good stuff. And the difference between them and us is even greater so I expect a 3-0 cruise.
We will surely gun the hammers down,hope wenger wont start with bendtner.
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I would gladly take a 1-0 win to the gunners as the 3 point is all i ask for