That fantastic victory over Man City seems a long time ago. Remember it? City out-hassled and over-whelmed players of far superior ability, and proudly clung on for a 2-1 win. Saturday’s debacle at West Ham was the exact opposite. There are few more annoying things for a football fan to witness than to see their team being outworked, for the opposition to simply wan the result more than them. But that’s what happened. It really was a despicable showing.

The omens didn’t look good for a start. Andy Dawson is not the sort of player who wears white boots. He’s an old fashioned left back who does the simples things well, and he forgot that yesterday, giving the ball away ridiculously in midfield which led to the West Ham opener. His performance summed up the rest of the team; lethargic and flat-footed, with a refusal to take responsibility. City went behind after three minutes and never looked like coming back into the game, with only Mouyokolo, Boateng and Myhill offering any proper resistance.

The sending off of Craig Fagan summed up City’s afternoon. Two witless fouls when no challenge needed to be made on either occasion. I’m a big fan of Craig’s but I can’t defend that. Normally he can take a yellow card and be trusted to keep calm, but yesterday was just stupid, pointless and totally removed any chance of getting a result from the game.

The manager cannot be fully absolved of blame either. The preparation was clearly not right fro whatever reason, and why drop Altidore? The American has been in good form of late, and while his presence probably would have made little difference given the rest of the teams’ performance, his omission was still a bad move by a manager who has done well to build Altidore’s confidence recently.

Also, I thought Brown should have changed things as soon as Fagan was red carded. Instead, the Tigers boss left things as they were, exposing the right flank and leaving City extremely unbalanced. Brown only changed things when the second goal went, and the result was then academic.

So on the whole a bit of a rubbish day. Where do we go now? There are two tough games on the horizon against Everton and Arsenal, which makes it all the more annoying that City weren’t up for the fight against a relegation rival. We’ll be very fortunate to not be back in the bottom three by the end of the Arsenal game.

Are there going to be three teams poor enough to save us from the drop like last season? Wolves, Burnley, Bolton and Portsmouth all lost this weekend, and along with ourselves it now looks to be three from those five clubs.

Portsmouth probably should be doomed, but as I said in the last blog I still think they’ve got the quality to win a few games and make it interesting. The soul-destroying nature of their defeat to Stoke will have been a hammer blow to their morale though.

To answer Mike’s question, I’m not 100% sure what would happen if Pompey go bust. I know they’d cancel their points, which would work out well for City (because we’ve only played against them once and drawn) and move us up the table, but I don’t think it’s been decided yet. I’d guess that two others would go down and there’d be a 19 team division next season, which is what many clubs have been pushing for for a few years anyway.

I doubt that’ll happen anyway, and I really hope it doesn’t, as I’m looking forward to the trip to Fratton Park in march and booked my hotel this morning! Though I may regret that trip if Phil brown and the players don’t buck up their ideas. I’m not sure how many performances like that I can stand to watch.

Cheers,
TC