westhamfans.org

Manuel Pellegrini snuck under the radar, returning from his trip to Chile far earlier than had previously been scheduled, the ex Real Madrid and Manchester City manager spent most of this week working with those players who were not on international duty, one of those players was Declan Rice. Having been the subject of a bit of a tug of war between England and the republic of Ireland for his services as a full international Rice was able to concentrate on learning the role Pellegrini has envisaged for him, and that is as a central midfield destoyer/enforcer.

Well maybe they know more about Muscat than being Musketeers, but Manuel Lanzini, Andy Carroll and Winston Reid were, and have been, major players for West Ham United. Much has been made of the club's recent massive investment in players and their current lack of success, but it should be remembered that much of anything decent that happened in the last few seasons occurred when one or all of them were playing.

Historically the dreaded 'vote of confidence' from a football club's hierarchy was the portent to a manager being 'hooked', however that is not so much the case now, managers are paid vast amounts of money and terminating their lucrative contracts can prove to be extremely costly. The atrocious run of losses that West Ham have sustained during Manuel Pellegrini's four games in the Barclays Premiership has seen the odds on El Pel being sacked shorten to such an extent that only Manchester United's Jose Mourinho is priced shorter.

. Whenever there is an international break, sports journalists face a quandary, there are column inches that need to be generated, after all that expense account has to jusify itself doesn't it? So spurious heresay becomes the order of the day, West Ham find themselves truly in the cross hairs due to their dreadful start under Manuel Pellegrini and the continuing debacle regarding the London Stadium.

£2,394 buys you an Airfrance business class return ticket from London Heathrow to Chile, it is also around the price of a cheap season ticket to attend matches at the Emirates and to not be able to attend them at Tottenham's as yet unfinished White Hart Lane ground redevelopment. Both Tottenham and Arsenal have struggled fo finance their new stadia, with the result being eye watering ticket prices in order to offset the investment, West Ham on the other hand do not need to, the result being that Hammers are able to offer season tickets that don't require a mortgage!

All hell has broken loose as the LLDC has gone on the offensive gainst West Ham over the White Elephant that is the London Stadium. The very fact that it is still called the London Stadium hints towards rather inefficient guidance from those in control of the LLDC and E20 the company that is the 'figure head' of the 'beast'.

It has taken four days in order to be able to review the events of last Saturday with a clear mind, the day started well enough, there was a carnival atmosphere in the Olympic Park and along the canal banks where people picniced or were enjoying a drink or two either on the canal banks or on the floating barges. The sun was shining and all was set for a good day out, the previous three defeats Hammers had experienced were just a blip and put down to the fact that the players were just getting to know each other.

West Ham: Fabianski, Cresswell, Diop, Balbuena, Fredericks, Sanchez, Anderson, Wilshere, Antonio , Snodgrass, Arnoutovic
Subs: Adrian, Obiang, Chicharito, Yarmolenko, Rice, Noble ,Rice ,Zabaleta

Wolves: Patrício, Bennett, Coady ,Boly, Doherty, Moutinho, Neves, Castro, Hélder, Jota, Jiménez Subs: Gibbs-White Ruddy, Saïss, Vinagre, Hause, Bonatini,Traoré.

The Org is back on line following routine maintenance work that ran over schedule, and no we are not British Rail!

Hammers have been drawn against League 2 Macclesfield in the 3rd round of the Carabao Cup, sorry but we have to call it the Elk Cup. The match to be played at the london Stadium will be scheduled at a date as yet to be confirmed, the fixtures will be played during the week commencing the 24th of September.

Could have been worse!