Depleted Irons Narrowly Miss Out

Having to send a team out devoid of its entire first choice in defence was hard enough, but to then be deprived of your main striker with only a few hours notice made it almost mission impossible for David Moyes West Ham away to Tottingham in the Carabao Cup semi final.

The end to end game was decided by a three goal spell ALL within the space of five first half minutes, the home team took the lead only for it to be cancelled out by a superb bit of improvisation by Jarrod Bowen following a miss hit by Nikola Vlasic. Unfortunately the parity only lasted a couple of minutes before the home team scored again.

Matters weren't helped by Hugo Lloris deciding to have a mater class in goal as he deprived Hammers of at least three certain goals, he somehow kept an energised Hammers from equalizing right up until the very last minute of play. No one can say Hammers didn't give it a real go, on another day the outcome could have gone West Ham's way, alas it was not to be.

There is no disgrace for a severely depleted team to have been beaten by a home side that was at full strength, one that had the benefit of having been able to rest and recuperate their players for THREE additional games more than the Irons had.

Losing important players like Michail Antonio to Covid will be more frequent, as unfortunately the Omicron variant is more than likely going to be the main team selector for many team's line ups for the foreseeable future, at least in the short term and it will hit clubs irrespective of their size, although those with huge squads will obviously be able to cope much better than those with limited squads, such as West Ham.

Hammers can now concentrate on the LEAGUE and the FA Cup, ahead of the last sixteen of the UEFA Europa League Cup, a competition that has qualification for the champions League as a prize whereas the Carabao Cup doesn't! - LN