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It seems a long long time ago that New Zealand captain Winston Reid patrolled his defensive line with his mix of confidence and physicality, and that is because it has been a long long time!
From this To this Has taken a year!

Having spent most of the entire season juggling with injury problems that decimated his squad, Hammers manager Manuel Pellegrini is in the enviable position of having top quality players available on a continuous basis. Only Andrily Yarmolenko, Winston Reid and Carlos Sanchez along with proverbial sick notes Andy Carroll and Jack Wilshere are unavailable for selection, a far cry from earlier in the season.

From a fan’s perspective, team sponsorships tend to blend in over time. However, they do affect things for fans, in that they help determine a team’s image and, of course, directly impact any kits or other ear people might invest in. Thus, every now and then it’s worthwhile to check in on your club’s sponsorship agreements, so as to get a feel for what partnerships are working, which ones may soon expire, and things of that nature.

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need - These old Rolling Stones lyrics pretty much sum up where West Ham United are in the great scheme of things, not tragic in any way but not where they were supposed to be. The issue of course is that compared to their European rivals, Barclays Premier league clubs are cash rich and therefore even relegation candidates are able to chase player targets that in the past would have been completely out of their reach.

West Ham signed Jack Wilshere last summer on a free transfer after his contract at Arsenal expired, he was offered a three year deal much to the chargrin of co-owner David Sullivan who argued, given Wilshere's injury record, that a 'rolling' one year contract would be preferable. Unfortunately Manuel Pellegrini stood firm and insisted on giving Wilshere the deal that he wanted, apparently Jack's agent would not sanction his client signing a deal for anything less than three years.

International breaks are always a stressful time for 'media influencers' and journalists as they struggle to generate copy for their viewers, the lack of much worthwhile news is an expense account breaker! So fair play to the 'click bait' reporter who 'broke' the Real Madrid interested in Felipe Anderson story, the only problem being that Real's interest is supposedly dependent on them missing out on getting Eden Hazard from Chelsea.

Be careful what you wish for....Having stumped up a not inconsiderable £90 Million or so to fund stage one of Manuel Pellegrini's three year plan to take West Ham to that legendary next level, the Hammers hierarchy find themselves in an unusual but not unpleasant situation depending on your take of the status quo.

The dust has now settled on last Saturday's extraordinary 4-3 victory over relegation strugglers Huddersfield Town at the London Stadium, however the fall out has not! It is difficult to explain how a 'top' team can perform so badly for so long against a team destined for the lower divisions and then suddenly play like Barcelona for the remaining 15 minutes unless it is because there is a 'bad apple' in the squad.

West Ham: Fabianski, Cresswell, Diop, Ogbonna, Zabaleta, Noble, Rice, Anderson, Antonio, Lanzini, Arnautovic Subs: Adrian, Balbuena, Snodgrass, Hernandez, Nasri, Masuaku, Perez
Huddersfield: Lossl, Lowe, Kongolo, Stankovic, Smith, Bacuna, Durm, Mooy, Rowe, Pritchard, Grant Subs: Hamer, Billing, Mounie, Zanka, Hadergjonaj, Daly, Puncheon

Having proved his point by dropping his top striker for several matches, Hammers boss Manuel Pellegrini is clever enough to avoid 'cutting his nose off to spite his face' by intimating that Marko Arnautovic will lead the line from the start in the match against Huddersfield town at the London (hopefully soon to be renamed Tesla) Stadium this Saturday.