The Joint-Chairman pays tribute to the Hammers faithful on Claret and Blue Day...
I’m always fearful that I go on about this too much but, having been in football for nearly 25 years and supporting it for longer than I care to remember, I continue to be amazed by the West Ham fans. They are just superb. They are so spirited and as long as they see endeavour like they saw in the second half against Leicester City on Saturday, they will get right behind you. They drove us on in the second half and if we’d got anything from the game if would have been down to them. It would have made Claret and Blue Day all the more special.
Overall, like everyone else, I’m disappointed about the result as it was a game we felt we could get something from. It’s true that we knew Leicester have been on a long run and have brought in good players and it would be tough, but we didn’t think we would lose the game.
I remember speaking to Mark Noble just before kick-off and he said he thought it was a going to be a very tough game and that turned out to be the case. I think it’s undeniable that they were the better team in the first half and they led 2-0 at half time and that’s hard to come back from.
But Slaven made the change to bring on Pedro Obiang and I think that changed the whole dynamic of the game and for a moment you thought we were going to go on and win it 5-2. We looked positive and went on to score an early goal.
I thought Pedro made a huge impact and there was a lot of running in him and he wanted to get forward. Sadly, although we pressed and pressed, we didn’t get that breakthrough and I think it was Diafra Sakho who had a wonderful chance and the goalkeeper made the save it could have been 2-2.
We could have gone on to win the game at that point as they were on the back foot and took off their striker and went more defensive but sadly we couldn’t break them down.
What that result means now is that Saturday’s game against Bournemouth is a big, big game. I know it is only the third game but having beaten all the odds by beating Arsenal we couldn’t consolidate our position by beating Leicester. So now we must try to get three points against Bournemouth, particularly as we have Liverpool the following week.
I know it will be another capacity crowd and, with support like we saw on Saturday, I am confident we will have a better outcome.
David Gold