Tempting as it is to think about West Ham's match against Birmingham City tonight solely in terms of Angelina Jolie mudwrestling with Jennifer Aniston (in front of Brad Pitt, sporting for the occasion a limited edition David Sullivan crushed velvet smoking jacket and David Gold half-beard), we must also use the fixture as a stimulus for considerations of a football nature. In particular, we may wonder whether the encounter between Sullivan and Gold's current and former darlings will alleviate or aggravate West Ham's relegation worries.
This is the sort of game that Gianfranco Zola has long been talking about winning. Eight of West Ham's 14 remaining matches are at home, and since the away ones include duels with Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal, it is with victories at Upton Park, against supposed lesser sides, that Zola expects to ensure survival. That expectation has not looked especially well-founded in recent games, and the Italian may find himself having instead to place his trust in the probability that at least three rival strugglers will perform even worse than West Ham.
Messrs Gold and Sullivan will want to see a rousing exhibition of prowess from their new club against their ex tonight, as opposed to a repeat of the limp display that Zola's side mustered to mark the new owners' first home match. That was 10 days ago against Blackburn, another of those lowly opponents from whom Zola had anticipated taking three points at Upton Park. As it turned out they were lucky to scrounge one, as Sam Allardyce's team produced what meagre quality materialised in an insipid encounter only to be thwarted first by a crossbar and then by a referee who failed to spot a Gaël Givet shot being deflected on the line by Mark Noble's arm. That match was sandwiched by trips to Portsmouth and Burnley, from which West Ham returned with one paltry point. Things aren't going to plan for Zola.
The Italian has maintained throughout this difficult campaign that an inability to put the ball in the net is what has undermined West Ham's otherwise fine play. Distributing the goal-scoring burden beyond Carlton Cole was the guiding principle of his recent recruitment and the arrival of three strikers in January (Mido, Benni McCarthy and Ilan) suggests an intention to shift to a more directly attacking formation by providing Cole with at least one dedicated partner, rather than expecting the likes of Alessandro Diamanti to flit profitably around him, a strategy that has worked only intermittently. Not that there has been a lack of flitting – that's what most of West Ham's attackers have spent the season doing.
Zola has hitherto been trying to cultivate some class of intuitive, amorphous offensive unit in which advanced players continually duck and dart around Cole (when he has been fit), picking impromptu passes and confounding opponents with their cutting unpredictability. That ploy hasn't worked as often as the manager would have liked – possibly because incessant line-up changes enforced by injuries have prevented the team from developing the familiarity that enables fluidity to flourish, or possibly because the would-be conjurers aren't all that magical.
The result is that West Ham have often plodded aimlessly, the dearth of invention accentuating the absence of humbler qualities such as pace and width. On a couple of occasions, at home to Liverpool and Aston Villa, Zola has been able to introduce something dynamic and different in the form of up-and-at-'em speedster Zavon Hines, but, being just 21, he, like Junior Stanislas, doesn't yet offer consistency, and is injured now anyway. So with Valon Behrami, Noble and Jack Collison out of form, Jonathan Spector lacking the injured Herita Ilunga's enterprise down the left and Julien Faubert still too busy grappling with the alien demands of full-backery to offer a constant option down the right, the question remains as to how Zola will consistently supply his strikeforce, whether it consists of one man or two.
For all that, failure to score as many goals as Zola would have would like has not, in fact, been West Ham's primary problem. Indeed, they are currently averaging more goals per game (1.25) than they did last season (1.11), when they finished ninth.
The reason they are now in the relegation zone, then, is that they are conceding much more regularly than they did last season. Even in the one match this season in which they did manage to convert most of their chances – against Burnley at home – they contrived to collapse and nearly threw away a five-goal lead, ultimately becoming perhaps the first team in history to stagger to a 5-3 win.
Again, injuries and enforced sales are significant factors in this, but also there is reason to believe the increased porosity betrays psychological frailty. Elementary errors have proliferated, and not just from youngsters or newcomers to the Premier League but from some of the club's most experienced players – from Rob Green dropping the ball at the feet of Ivan Klasnic against Bolton and flapping at crosses in, well, most other games, to Matthew Upson allowing David Nugent to get the jump on him to shoot Burnley into the lead at Turf Moor on Saturday. That match had been billed as a six-pointer and West Ham only started playing after about an hour, by which time they were 2-0 down. Following the no-show for Sullivan and Gold's loudly-trumpeted first home game and the draw at Portsmouth, such an opening was ominous for the relegation fight.
Already West Ham have shown that when things are tight and tense it is they who tend to wilt – no Premier League team this season has gained fewer points than them when drawing at half-time in matches. Zola yesterday suggested the club owners' announcement of imminent pay chops could have a negative impact on his players, but has the off-field rigmarole already been weakening their resolve for some time? West Ham may have more accomplished players than at least three other teams in the bottom half, but do they have stronger stomachs? And a more auspicious atmosphere? And a more experienced manager?
