Good luck with your NEBOSH course - nothing like the practical experience of supporting WHU to get you through it ... I mean Section 2 of the HSW obviously has us in mind (for 'employer' read 'WHU' and for 'employees' read 'supporters') cos there's certainly a risk to my health supporting West Ham. :)

Hasn't it sunk into Sam's head yet that this just isn't working? If I was at work and I kept doing the same thing with no result (oh sorry 1-1 is a result), I'd be told to change things around.

That said, the atmosphere was better than the last mid-week game which was surprising as there was definitely a depleted crowd - the club have it down as 27.250, the 3rd lowest home crowd this season. There was quite a bit of singing and something different from the north end of the Chicken Run but it still wasn't what I'd call vibrant. The way to get us up and enthusing is to have something to react to? I've said before that I think the club can do more and Kriss Akabusi made a rousing stab at the team sheet, but we need to be playing attacking pushing football for us to be on our feet cheering them on. Our midfield is woeful at the moment - Taylor was having a right old strop with Linda which went on a bit too long. He does strike me as being more temperamental than I first thought. And what on earth was that double substitution?

There are some occasions when we haven't needed to be prompted into vigorously supporting the team, but they are becoming more and more infrequent.. As I've suggested before, I think the club could do more to get the fans singing and to ramp up the atmosphere - there needs to be more than Jeremy Nicholas saying 'lets get behind the lads' before starting off Bubbles just before kick-off.

Usually at this time of the season, I'm checking to see how the others around us are doing to see how close we are to being relegated. It's obviously different this season (although in a lower league), however, I recognise that the behaviour I'm demonstrating is similar to that of the last couple of seasons as I'm trying to emotionally detach myself from caring about the team's results. I've started not to read all the emails Sam keeps sending me, or the RSS feeds from the official website, or even to read or post anything on here. Quite simply, it hurts too much and I care too much. This has all been put into perspective by what happened to Muamba on Saturday, but it still doesn't stop me caring. This means for all the remaining home games, I will be singing along and shouting encouragement from the Chicken Run ... but I won't be booing.

An aside - I was at my elderly aunt's on Saturday attaching a digibox to her TV when I saw we were 1-0 down and it took an act of enormous restraint not to start swearing and stomping around and to be patient when explaining to her in lots of different ways exactly what ITV1 plus 1 is all about. I only found out when showing her the BBC red button that we'd drawn. The joys of modern technology :)

Sorry, off topic but we've just signed Portsmouth's goalie Henderson on loan until end of the season with a view to making it permanent: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17350578 and here's the official site's news: http://www.whufc.com/articles/20120316/hammers-ca...

As Green has intimated that if we don't get promoted he's off, so Henderson could be his potential replacement with all the fuss about payment's for Stech.

Sorry, off topic but have you seen that Tomkins and NOLAN have been voted by all the Championship managers, into the top ten players. http://www.whufc.com/articles/20120314/duo-in-top...

Are we missing something?

A bit late in the day, but can I change my home season ticket for an away one please? :)

It's funny as I took the discussions we'd had about our responsibility with me to the game and I thought we were actually noisier than we have been recently. The only trouble is that it got more negatively noisy towards the end of the game. It also made me think we need more than Jeremy Nicholas saying to everyone before we kicked off that we all had to make as much noise as we could to support the team.

I like change, so I'd be willing to give something different a go. I take your point that it needs to be repeated a few times before it becomes more accepted and just because there'll be some that will say "I don't think so" that's no reason not to have a go. Perhaps they could orchestrate a sing-a-long before or at half-time? They could even get different parts of the stadium to compete with each other? Maybe get a WHU-supporting singer to lead it? OK, I doubt that Katy Perry's up for it now and off hand I can only think of Chesney Hawkes! Or we could have a simple canon that'd be easy to catch on and sing repeatedly?

I needed to eat something and have a cup of tea before I could post anything after going to see that game.

Cole - I can understand why Sam plays him o/a his holding up the ball/laying it off/target man, but hopefully he won't be in the first 11 next week after today's performance. Ye gods, why wasn't he substituted?
Collison - I like the lad and he was playing where he should be, central midfield but where's his skill gone?
Taylor - he battled/harried and made some useful tackles and I remembered that contributors here have said he was more a defender than midfielder. That may be, but understandably he didn't have much rapport with the central defence and that did on occasion cause problems. What's happened to his dead ball skills?
Vaz Te - loved the dive (which we all laughed at) early on next to the Chicken Run but then he carried on moaning and waving his arms around. For goodness sake, we all saw through him and there was no injustice so why didn't he just shut up and get on with it?
Baldock - looks sharp but there's no way he's a winger.
Faye and Tomkins - sound partnership. Rarely make a mistake and both are so reliable.
Green - aren't we lucky he's our goalie?
Lansbury - just seems to be running around a lot with little contribution.
Noble - solid in the middle, his distribution is generally sound but it all got too crowded with local traffic and his not seeing the long ball.
Allardyce - why did he play so many people out of position? Why substitute Nolan in the way he did? He was never going to bring on Morrison unless we were 2-0 up. This is what frustrates me with managers - why have him on the bench if you're not going to use him to open up the opposition? I know, it's because Sam wanted to defend the draw ... and that was a fortunate draw as well wasn't it?

(I hadn't quite planned on posting like that as it was going to be more 'Woe-R-Us', but it just came out that way!)

I didn't take offence at all mate - I could see how I'd misinterpreted what you'd put and I did start a reply but I went to another site which wiped out everything but it was along the lines of what I put to Birzo re club doing more (which is dodgy) and about your friend saying the Boleyn was better which reminded me of standing in the North Bank at a midweek game with a drink in my hand singing. Thanks for your nice comments - I follow what you've got to say as well as I think we're usually singing from the same hymn sheet aren't we?

Yes, until the end of the season: http://www.whufc.com/articles/20120309/hammers-sn...