Forum | General Discussion

David Croft has been the lead F1 commentator on Sky Sports since 2012, when the company obtained the Formula One rights. Since obtaining his role as a commentator, he has also made it known that he’s a massive West Ham fan.

He has been very vocal about West Ham over the past couple of years and has made numerous appearances on Podcasts and Interviews, speaking about the club as well as the good, the bad and the ugly.

Yesterday, he went live on Sky Sports and had a segment discussing the situation at West Ham and spoke about how poor the club is, as well as a plea to the owners.

“I like stats in Formula One, so I’ll give you a stat Roman.

3.1% of our total game time, that is the amount of time West Ham have in the Premier League this season have been ahead. 25 minutes and 6 seconds.

Opening stages against Chelsea and the last few minutes against Nottingham Forest, and that is it. The next worst is Fulham on 13.3% that’s how bad West Ham are, we’re not sleepwalking to relegation, we are hurdling 225mph top speed down the Mexico City Straight here at that pace towards relegation.”

West Ham, at the moment are currently sitting on 4 points, and with the upcoming games ahead, you have to question where we will start to pick up points?

Typically, people use Christmas as a period of time to question whether they’ll go down or not and in recent times, the last team to escape from relegation from the lowest points tally was Leicester, who were on 10 points come Christmas in the 2014/15 season.

Crofty’s comments continued to the owners, bellowing: “David Sullivan and Karen Brady, your time’s up! You’ve got to go, I don’t know what decisions you’re making that you think you’re getting right, but you’re not.

If this was a series at The Apprentice, Karen Brady, you’d have been fired after Episode One quite frankly and David Sullivan, it seems like you’re running my club, our club as a vanity project. Stop doing it, get out now while you can while West Ham have a chance of staying up.”

Whilst fans may not have their voices heard the majority of times, pundits or people of stature have a voice of meaning and the more of those types of comments that occur, the more the pressure is put on.

West Ham: Areola, Diouf, Scarles, Kilman, Todibo, Wan-Bissaka, Soucek, Irving, Summerville, Bowen (C), Paqueta
Subs: Hermansen, Walker-Peters, Igor, Wilson, Fernandes, Rodriguez, Magassa, Potts, Marshall

Leeds: Perri, Bogle, Gudmundsson, Rodon, Bijol, Ampadu, Longstaff, Tanaka, Aaronson, Okafor, Calvert-Lewin
Subs: Darlow, Justin, Struijk, Gruev, Stach, Harrison, James, Nmecha, Piroe

West Ham United's overwhelmingly disappointing result on Monday night has brought much attention to many players and individuals, but if you had to single a soul out from that game, many would look towards the defence and more specifically, Max Kilman.

Kilman had a poor game against Brentford, whilst fans heckled and boo’d others, the stats don’t lie, and as a central defender in the Premier League to play a fixture which consisted of around 100 minutes and to not attempt a tackle all game is a cause for concern.

His zero tackles might’ve seen fans pose the question… was he not focused for the game?

Garry O’Neil was one of three presenters on MNF; however, one section that caught the attention was the segment on the Ex Wolves Captain, where he commented:

“At Wolves, we did a lot of work with him, on not switching off the engine. We used to speak to him, because he’s big & he looks for a rest a lot. ”

“He’ll be involved in the game and if he gets a moment to switch the engine off, he’ll take it.”

O’Neil’s comments on Kilman have sent fans into raptures, discussing now how bad Kilman appears to be pound for pound, seeing as the club paid £40,000,000 for the 27-year-old.

The Hammers are in dire need of Nuno to ‘drill’ it into Kilman, which O’Neil explained would take time to achieve, but the Hammers, with Mavropanos out, have only got Kilman to play and with an upcoming fixture tomorrow, West Ham currently cannot afford time with wins needing to be around the corner.

The Leeds game is se-… oh sorry, did I get distracted there?

After one of the most woeful performances that most have ever seen, Nuno Espirito Santo wasn't afraid to criticise the performance and understands why the fans are ‘concerned’.

His opening comments said: “difficult evening, and it’s going to be much harder. Nobody’s going to sleep today. And rightly so. It was not good enough… Was not good enough.”

Upon being asked about the substitutions he made, “Some of them not so good today, but it’s part of the challenge ahead.”

And despite the Leeds game being in such proximity, Nuno claimed “the good thing is it’s coming soon” and that “We have to show another face if you want of ourselves. We must improve so many things.”

It's obvious that the Hammers know they need to improve; the London Stadium managed to be more soulless than ever before, and over 20,000 season ticket holders would boycott the game.

Overlooking the boycott and Nuno’s comments, the pair of the central defenders on the night summarised why we’re in the situation we find ourselves… between £70-£80m for the pair, in which a total of three tackles were made between them… Kilman off, which would make a total of zero across the 90’.

Mavropanos, who’s been the best of a bad bunch in recent times, ended his cameo on a stretcher, which has subsequently left us with Brighton loanee, Igor Julio, as the only other senior defender we have.

The first half performance saw Walker-Peters and Scarles on opposite sides in comparison to their usual positions, which is something that the Hammers will have to succumb to in the near future, seeing as once AFCON comes around, Malick Diouf and Wan-Bissaka will be away, and no other options will be available.

Leeds away in now just three days time and there’s the overwhelming feeling of the inevitable… or is it just the persistent pessimistic mindset that Hammers fans have accumulated across the two years?