West Ham United London (Home) 17.01.2026

Twenty seconds into his debut, Conor crashed heads with Pablo when jumping for a header, so while both players were receiving treatment, Castellanos was receiving a yellow card for asking for a yellow card when it was just a challenge for the ball.  When the play restarted Spurs looked to attack down the right wing, with Pedro Porro’s ball looking for Wilson Odobert, but it was put out for a throw and from that a bit of haphazard play brought the first shot on goal.  Pedro’s cross was headed to Odobert, who shanked his shot across goal, fortunately finding Mathys Tel on the other side of the box and his first-time hooked shot was always rising over the top.

Gallagher was snapping into tackles early on as Spurs tried to prevent West Ham settling on the ball, as West Ham fell into a 4-4-2 formation and when Wan-Bissaka crossed from the right, Summerville headed the ball down from a position level with the far post for Castellanos to hook a shot that went narrowly over the bar with Vicario unable to react to the effort.  Following a free-kick for Spurs, the ball was turned over in the West Ham half and played forward to Bowen, just inside the Spurs half,  Ben Davies came sliding in, but the ball had been turned forward.  Fernandes fed Summerville out on the left, who came inside two Spurs players to shoot right-footed.  Vicario had the shot covered until it hit Micky van de Ven to take it into the net to his right as he dived left.  0-1 down within 15 minutes and more worrying was the fact that Davies was still on the ground on halfway and that signalled that it was going to be a bad injury, as Ben doesn’t stay down for nothing.  And that proved the case, with the physios spending a long time dealing with the injury before he was carried off on a stretcher, with the indignity of the referee waving a yellow card at him as he left the field.  

The discontent among the South Stand was building already, probably fuelled by the concession of the goal rather than the miniscule demonstration before the game that made little impact of itself.  More frustrating is the erratic referring of Jarred Gillett, who plays to Aussie Rules.  When Randal Kolo Muani looked to make a run past Mavropanos, the lumbering defender took him out off the ball with the referee totally unaware of what was going on (not an unusual occurrence when he is out in the middle).  When Spurs were allowed to attack unhindered, Tel put in a cross from the left wing with the outside of his right boot that Odobert headed at goal with Areola blocking it at close range and the ball fell to Davies’ replacement Djed Spence, who couldn’t force it in from just left of the goal with the keeper getting another block on it.  Soon the ball was at the other end, with a similar break to the goal, as Micky got turned just inside the West Ham half and brought down Summerville, with play allowed to go on, with the away team having a 3 v 2 attack and fortunately, Bowen’s pass was behind Pablo and Porro got the ball off him at the expense of a corner.  When it came in, the ball was flicked on at the near post, with Castellanos unmarked at the back stick, heading over the top from one yard out.  Tel was running at Wan-Bissaka and as he backed off, Mathys drove a shot at goal that swerved away of the far side of the goal.  

The crowd’s impatience with the speed of playing out from the back only ramped up the anxiety within the team.  The reason that the player knock the ball about from the back is two-fold.  Firstly to try to pull the opposition out of shape and also because their are few targets to pass to further forward because of the lack of movement to find some space or to pull opponents out of their position.  Working hard off the ball is just as important as working hard to win it, but the lack of options to move the ball onto.

Just after Archie Gray tackled Soucek to concede a corner and limped away from the challenge.  The ball was cleared initially, but Summerville was in lots of space in the box with his shot chested at goal by the Czech midfielder Soucek producing a fine reaction save from Vicario, with the ball dropping in front of goal for Bowen to plant it back past the Spurs goalkeeper.  The linesman’s flag went up and then there was a VAR check that confirmed the linesman’s decision.  For all the world, it looked as though West Ham had more men than us, as their work-rate was seemingly higher than ours.  When Todibo was pulling Kolo Muani’s shirt off him, again, the ref allowed play to continue that ended up with Archie receiving a booking for a foul on Summerville.  Every time a West Ham player went down they took an age to get up, making sure that they didn’t have treatment to avoid going off in an attempt to break up the game.  Unfortunately, Gillett fell for it every time and was complicit in the stop/start nature of the first half.

Following Gray’s foul, the free-kick was played in to the left-hand side of the goal and Soucek nodded the ball into the middle and then Mavropanos won a free header that Vic stretched well to push it away with a dive to his left, getting a good hand on it to get the ball wide five minutes before the break.  The fans were riled as Porro shaped to take a long throw, ran up stopped and then ended up taking it short, but the failure of team-mates making space for him to find them left him with few options.

As eight minutes of added time were being shown by the fourth official, a ball up to Summerville ended with a yellow card for Romero, who caught the winger as the Spurs captain tried to get in first.  Interestingly, the referee had allowed play to go on for West Ham before going back to book Spurs players, but when Mavropanos caught Gallagher late with a tackle, the official decided not to, which just showed his lack of consistency in his decision-making.  Also choosing not to book Soucek when he and Kolo Muani went for a bouncing ball.  It looked like a 50-50 ball and if he was giving a free-kick for the Irons’ midfielder’s challenge, surely it was to be a booking for a raised foot.  Just before the interval, Wilson had space inside the right of the box and tried to shape the ball over Areola but didn’t catch it right and the ball went harmlessly wide.

The obligatory boos from Spurs “supporters” followed the half-time whistle and when the teams returned, Yves Bissouma replaced Archie Gray (carrying an injury and on a yellow card) for his first appearance of the season having just returned from AFCON.  Within a couple of minutes, the midfielder was linking play and then firing a shot into the body of Areola from just outside the box.  Running onto the ball to his right, Djed tried a shot but was off balance and from a central position sliced his shot wide to the right of the goal.

More poor refereeing allowed Wan-Bissaka to get away with a second tackle from behind on a Spurs player and his positioning around the middle of the pitch meant that he didn’t always have the best view of things, but also meant that often he was in the way of the ball.  His judgement was weak when Bowen had a snide swipe at Xavi as he ran away from the Irons captain and then he claimed that he played the ball when in actuality, he was nowhere near it.  It was a dangerous tackle and one which almost brought another stretcher as Simons needed a lot of treatment.  Quite why he then had to leave the field when Bowen had been cautioned, I’m not sure, as I thought that wasn’t the case when a player received a yellow card.  It looked as though the physios were telling Xavi that he couldn’t continue, but he made it clear he wanted to play on.  Then Micky got a yellow for late tackle on Bowen, with Fernandes and Todibo then racing in to stir things up.

Apart from a couple of opportunistic falling volleys from Pablo and Castellanos, there wasn’t too much danger around the Spurs goal.  There was still too much space being given to West Ham and when Summerville went through in the left-hand channel, it took a burst  of speed from van de Ven to get across to put in a perfect sliding tackle in the box to stop the winger getting a shot off.  When Tottenham did move the ball quicker, they looked a better team, as Odobert found space on the right, came inside and played a square pass to Biss to have another shot, looking for the top left hand corner of Areola’s goal, but the keeper threw two hands to push the effort wide.

Mathys Tel was substituted to boos from the Spurs faithful and was not happy, with Dominic Solanke thrown on to replace him.  West Ham were dropping into a low block trying to squeeze the space available for Spurs to play in their half, but it didn’t work.  From a throw-in on the left, the ball was played back and across the pitch, with Porro playing it down the right for Wilson, who touched it back for Pedro to deliver the perfect cross and Cristian Romero had stayed forward, siding to power a header past the keeper from six yards out that he had no chance of stopping.  The Spurs skipper beat Wan-Bissaka to the ball with his determination to win the ball and this is the sort of leadership we need from Romero.

When Mavropanos caught Xavi with late boot that hit the midfielder’s shin it wasn’t another booking, even though it appeared to be made with excessive force and a free-kick that was headed away, but not far and as it dropped Romero and Bissouma were both closing in on it, with Biss hitting a volley way too high, with Cristian not too happy.  The same Irons defender then tripped Kolo Muani as he got away and only got a talking to, with the referee showing poor consistency in his application of the laws of the game.  If the first one wasn’t worthy of a booking on its own, you have to query some of the previous yellow cards he handed out.  He then had no option but to book Soucek who pulled Conor back when he turned away from him by hauling him back, stretching Gallagher’s shirt to its limit.  The free-kick found Romero at the far post, but his header went over, but banging heads with Soucek and then the Argentinian won the ball in midfield, but slipped, looking like he might have done a groin, but he carried on.  He then put in a crashing tackle on Pablo that left the striker on the ground, as he won the ball but his trailing leg brought the Iron down.

Another tackle another booking when Spence deflected Bowen’s cross off for a corner, but going down holding his leg, the linesman right in front of it didn’t give it, but the referee a long way off the incident did and decided that it was Spence’s third foul so waved yellow at him.  In comparison, he had allowed Mavropanos to get away with as many fouls, which were fouls, without cautioning him.  Gillett is one of the Premier League’s referees who doesn’t understand the game and constantly annoys fans with his weird officiating of matches.  A substitution showed the lack of control the referee had over the game.  Pablo’s number went up with him in the Spurs penalty area.  He went to leave the field behind the goal, then sauntered back on to go off at the halfway line.  No hurrying up from the referee, who was oblivious to what was going on.  Scarles tried to whip the free-kick in at the near post, but Micky headed it out with a well-timed intervention.

Djed launched a long pass into the West Ham box and with Solanke and Gallagher both going for the ball, it hit Todibo and fell behind both Spurs men.  Wan-Bissaka’s late tackle on Bissouma was not given as Spurs were allowed to play on, but did he go back and book the defender … No, of course not.  When Spurs found Conor Gallagher on the right side of the box, he made inroads along the dead-ball line and crossed, with the ball coming back in, only for Xavi to be knocked to the ground by two hands in the back by Rodriguez and then the ball ran outside the box where a foul was given for exactly the same thing when Romero knocked over a West Ham player.  As usual, there is confusion as someone on the West Ham bench got a yellow card, the VAR wasn’t looking at the push on Simons, but was looking at a handball, which on seeing replays after the match looked like Scarles knocked the ball with his fingers in the box as Gallagher went past him.  But, you know that when it’s Spurs involved, the decision will always go the other way.

A corner two minutes from time ran through to Xavi, who shit a shot that bounced just in front of Areola and the keeper did well to push it out for another corner.  That was cleared to the far side and Spurs brought on Lucas Bergvall for Wilson Odobert and he was called upon straight away to hurl a long throw into the box.  Bissouma helped it on and Romero went for the overhead, got nowhere near the ball or the player behind him, but the ref gave a free-kick to West Ham anyway.  The game was being dragged out with Castellanos taking forever to leave the pitch when substituted and then Areola delaying taking a free-kick and having been warned previously, not being warned again of heaven forbid, even booked for it (well, it was the 92nd minute).  From it, the ball was played forward and found its way into the box, where sub Wilson took the ball down and hit a shot from too much space and only a diving block by Porro stopped the ball finding the net, but going off for a corner.  it came in to the middle of the goal, it dropped down as players got under Vicario and Wilson knocked it over the line.  As usual VAR looked at it, for offside this time, not the challenge on the keeper, but also as usual, the referee pointed to the spot.

In the aftermath, Fernandes lingered in the Spurs half celebrating and was being substituted, but despite being told to leave the pitch by the ref, as soon as his back was turned Fernandes stopped to applaud the Irons fans with the referee totally unaware.  There was a determined run by Bergvall to get into the box past three players, but his cross was blocked for a corner that was headed wide by Romero.  Then another long throw caused panic, with the ball headed across the face of goal by Kolo Muani, but it was cleared.  And that was that.

Careless passing and lack of care in possession is making things harder for us.  Passes that lack the right weight to find their targets leaves the opposition with the ball and sells our players stranded up-field as the other side break forward.  The inability to play a pass to where the receiving player wants it (either to feet or in front of them to run onto) is a fairly basic skill and the failure to execute it prevents any cohesion in our play.  The massive gap between the defensive unit and the attacking unit still exists, meaning there is little opportunity to move the ball through the midfield.  In addition, our pressing isn’t co-ordinated, leaving teams able to play the ball out without too much trouble, putting us on the back foot.  People criticise Porro, but he if more often than not the player looking to progress play and get forward to deliver decent crosses into the box, which the forwards aren’t getting across their markers to get to first.

Today there was an issue with most of our corners being on on our right side and then Porro having to take them, so they would naturally swing away from goal making them less dangerous than one that swung in on the goal.  The need for balance in the team also comes when taking set-pieces, as Porro seems to be the one who is designated to take them all, but often they do not always suit a right-footer.

And we lose another player to what looks like serious injury for Ben Davies.  Another player out for Tuesday, which reduces our Champions League squad even further and if it keeps Ben out for a prolonged period, it could be his last appearance for Tottenham as his contract is up in the summer.  I’m hoping that isn’t the case, as he has been a really good servant to the club over his 12 years in N17 and to leave in these circumstances would be a sad end to his time with Spurs.

The game was played out between two struggling teams and it was West Ham who came out on top with two bits of good fortune, whereas Spurs had none.  One deflected shot that found the net for the away team and the deflections on Tottenham shots took the ball wide.  A late scramble in the Spurs box and the ball goes in.  Scrambles at the other end and it stays out.  When things aren’t going your way …

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