Last week against palace I thought Zaza played very well without reward as for yesterday I have not seen the match and cannot comment on his performance but I know that he has not scored and that is why we have him but playing upfront on your own what do you expect....I was happy to see Slav change formation but still to have just one man upfront on his own really means we will struggle to score more than one in a match...I would rather start with two strikers get into a nice winning position then haul one off and bolster the mid/def....until then I think this season is going to get harder and harder for us goal wise.

Whats the bleedin point of having this Claret membership, when you are only allowed to book 1 ticket for the match?!? So frustrating, the one time I see tickets actually available to purchase and im restricted to how many I can get! You should be able to get two tickets at least!

Another Carroll delay and coming up to nine weeks since he got injured. Everyone is just fed up with this. I think Carroll should surely think of retiring soon. I dread to think what this has cost us over the years. Good new on Ayew and Sakho at least.

back 3 seemed to work very well. we had more of the ball in mid and even antonio looked good on right. is this what we should stick with? or was it a 5-4-1 with wingbacks?

Stanislas seems to be makng a habot of scoring these days. Why didnt we keep him ?

Just to highlight an article from today's Metro paper -

Callieri featured in their football weekend feature with an interview, where the man stated he wanted to replicate the impact of his fellow countryman Carlitos Tevez...

He has hardly hit the ground running since he joined us on loan and his previous record was nothing to brag about but according to the interview, the young man has high aspirations of cutting it in the English Premier League and hopes to become a contender for our club.

Feel like perhaps he has been a little unlucky for us, probably half of the chances he has had up front on the end of the ball could have been goals - I think he has been better in this respect than Zaza by simply being on the end of stuff but at the same time he has missed some sitters.

He has 6 months to prove himself at the Olympic Stadium - could he come good?

As a side note - the other feature had Raphael Spiegel commenting on why our season hasn't really taken off... Really... why pick our 3rd choice keeper to give an 'insight'???

Feel like papers don't even try these days!

Now that the completely pointless International break is out of the way, I can actually look forward to some football again. Of course the way WH are playing atm it's tough to look forward to another 90mins of the same, but that's what we do and it'll never change.
So looking back at my July predictions, I had us down to lose this 2-1. Now considering I tipped us to have 5 wins out of 7 by now ( we have the total opposite), this could be seen as a good omen. Unfortunately the pessimist in me see's no change to that result. Anyone else got a more positive outlook for the game?

At long last Rooney has been dropped for tonight's game against Slovenia. England may not win it tonight though (probable draw imo)
I have always said England had a bright future with the U21's (they have qualified for the European U21 championships already under Southgate)
Gareth Southgate ensures his teams retain possesion and counter attack which they were unable to do against minnows Malta due in my mind to the reliance on Rooney who slowed the game down far too much and for that reason he has been relegated to the bench and rightly so, he is not good enough..........end of.
Deli Ali is far better and will take players on as do most of the midfield players under Southgate
Is he good enough as England senior manager??? only time will tell over the next three games! For me he fits the bill knowing and working with all the bright young players who are now coming through to the senior squad.

It's not been confirmed by anywhere official yet but I've seen (in 2 different places) Rigobert Song, after waking from his coma 2 days ago has died. Very sad news.

West Ham Vice chairman Karren Brady has been speaking today at a Leaders in sport conference in London.

Among the audience was Guardian journalist Owen Gibson who has been relaying her speech via social media which can be found below.

“Karren Brady says Olympic Stadium was an opportunity to “rebrand” the club. Also says club had “no culture” when she arrived. To be clear, Brady was speaking at the “Leaders” conference – fair to assume she was talking about the corporate culture.”

“Brady went on to explain that part of her aim was “getting the culture right, being a place where something is expected of you. We saw that as a real opportunity to change the brand values of the club. At least she’s explicit” said Owen.

“Brady goes on to say people, not the stadium, make club “Protecting their traditions and their values and their integrity is very important” Brady says the club is making a movie called Iron Men, following 5-7 fans in the transition from the Boleyn to the London Stadium.

“Brady: Rebranding ourselves was really important with our new stadium. We’re in the London Stadium.”

Owen Gibson has since deleted his tweets and Karren Brady claims she was misquoted saying “At Leaders was asked about corporate culture at WHU explained our world renowned heritage is what sets us apart shame not reported that way”