The first 40 minutes yesterday were as good as I've seen us play for a long time, it was actually very similar to the second half in the 3-1 victory against Derby in November in the way that we passed it around nicely and had them pegged back into their own half and piled on the pressure.
So what went wrong? Well a free header from a corner and a poor clearance from Julien Faubert may well have cost us promotion, simple as that! Having seen the replay of the penalty decision a few times since and I'm very disappointed in it as Faye does line and he does miss the ball but he doesn't touch the Reading man, and the contact was absolutely minimal if so, but that's obviously just me being biased!
Big Sam has indicated that we need to win all six of our remaining fixtures to stand any chance of automatic promotion and who can argue with that? Even that might not be enough with Reading seeming unstoppable, though. What REALLY rubbed salt in the wounds was Blackpool's surprise 3-0 defeat of Southampton which would have reduced the gap between ourselves and Saints to just 3 points had we beaten Reading and with the top 2 yet to play each other we know that one of them will still drop points so it is far from over - although it's not looking good.
A lot of talk in the build up was about how much harder Reading's run in between now and the end of the season is but in a strange way that might have just turned on its head. We still have to go to Leicester and we still have to play Hull and Brighton at the Boleyn with confidence extremely low whereas the Royals go into their final 6 - including trips to Southampton and Birmingham - on a high.
So to say that our beloved hammers are teasing us as we approach the finale of the 2011/12 season is an understatement. We should not still be in the race for automatic promotion and it still baffles me that we are. Let's assume Southampton beat Reading at St. Mary's and Reading take a point from their trip to Birmingham, if we can pick up wins in our respective matches in the same round of fixtures and match their results in the other 4, we will go up and although that's a lot easier said than done, it does mean we're still in with a shout. I will believe we can do it and support the mighty hammers until its mathematically impossible and I hope that you will all do the same.
I don't like Sam Allardyce and never wanted him at Upton Park but as we're stuck with him for the time being we have to support him as best we can as anything else will just have a negative affect.
One last thing I would like to say is that I hope the Upton Park faithful don't get on the players' backs in our next home game and support them as they were truly terrific for most of the first half when we were right behind them, let's emulate that from now until the end of the season!
COME ON YOU IRONS!
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