West Ham lies at the bottom of the Premiership - a scenario hardly contemplated by the likes of Alan Pardew and Kia Joorbachian when they signed on Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano. West Ham should have been challenging Bolton Wanderers for the top four spots in the League.
West Ham was the brightest of the clubs, with a nucleus of potential players, the future of the English squad, with Nigel Reo-Coker, captain of the U-21 team, Dean Ashton, Marlon Harewood, Paul Konchesky, Anton Ferdinand, Bobby Zamora, and Carlton Cole. The season started with the terrible news that Ashton was going to be out for a good part of the season with an ankle fracture. But Bobby Zamora and Marlon Harewood took up the challenge with Zamora an absolute beast, starting the season with a flurry of goals. The signing of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano threw the English football world into a tizzy. It had all the football pundits anointing West Ham as the upstart Chelsea, with a smaller budget, sure to finish in the rarified echelons of the Premiership.
Two months down the line, West Ham finds its season in ruins. They are in the 19th spot, one spot removed from bottom dwelling Charlton Athletic. They have not won a single match since the first match they played in the season.
Alan Pardew has failed to convince his players to play football. There was a lot of expectancy that with Tevez and Mascherano, West Ham would stroll through their matches. A perfectly understandable feeling. You have signed on players, that have been singled out for praise by Diego Maradona and Luis Pekerman. We saw glimpses of the wonderful stuff that Tevez and Mascherano are capable of the World Cup. But Nigel Reo-Coker, Anton Ferdinand, Marlon Harewood, and Danny Gabbidon have all but disappeared. The nucleus that understood how the Premiership is played that got them to the 9th spot and the FA Cup final last season has dissolved.
There is an element of complacency and even surliness, that has crept into the West Ham team, with the team's elevation because of the two Argentinians, without them playing a single match in the Premiership. It is as if the rest of the team wants to see how far West Ham goes with Tevez and Mascherano, without them playing. That question has been answered, not too far!
The present situation benefits no one, least of all Tevez and Mascherano, who have obviously set their hearts on another Premiership or a La Liga club and look at West Ham as a springboard. Alan Pardew has to be more astute with getting his players to play and assure his players, especially Reo-Coker that he is invaluable to West Ham. Especially with the news that Reo- Coker is understandably aggrieved that he was the target of transfer talks in the last days, wooed by Man Utd and Arsenal, news that he was ignorant of, and now reflected in his lacklustre play.
To most West Ham fans and supporters, it has been frustrating. In the beginning Tevez and Mascherano, were a wonderful distraction. They just might just become the millstone that sinks West Ham. In the end it is the XI players on the field that win matches.
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