That’s it from here - now go join Alan Smith on Brighton v Arsenal, starting shortly from the Amex.
So, the Premier League side bucks the trend this weekend by averting calamity at a lower-league side, doing what will presumably be called a ‘professional job’ on Bristol City. They were frankly outplayed in the first-half, but settled things down after the break and Sakho’s goal, with plenty of help from Carroll, settled things.
Full-time: Bristol City 0-1 West Ham
Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
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90 mins + 2: Close! JET lollipops and lumbers down the left, clips a cross over to Smith who loops a header towards goal, but it drifts just wide, ushered by a briefly-concerned Adrian.
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90 mins: Three minutes of added time. Adrian is dragging his feet about taking a free-kick. The ref gives him the hurry-up.
89 mins: Carroll seems to be playing largely in defence now, but he can’t stop fellow lump Smith get to a cross and head towards goal, but it lacks power and Adrian saves easily.
87 mins: Final sub for West Ham - Guy Demel is on for Nolan.
85 mins: Great chance for Smith, as Williams find himself on the right, puts over a left-footed cross but is penalised for a push on a defender as he heads just wide.
82 mins: A brace of changes for City in response to that goal - Marlon Pack and Kieran Agard are on, Freeman and Saville off.
81 mins: Splendid work by Carroll on the right side of the box, trying to bring a bobbling ball under control and just manages to keep it in and hook a cross over Fielding and to the back post, where Sakho is waiting to head into an empty net.
GOAL! Bristol City 0-1 West Ham (Sakho 81)
A goal, for someone, had been coming.
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80 mins: And West Ham go close now, as Amalfitano tries a curled effort from way out, but Fielding saves with relative comfort. Freeman is then pulled back by Noble but referee Mason waves play on, remembering to book the Hammers man when play eventually stops.
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79 mins: Big chance for City, as Bryan gets down the left and puts a cross to the far post, where Ayling appears from nowhere to beat Cresswell to the header, but he puts it over with the goal at his mercy.
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78 mins: Ooh, the home crowd aren’t happy as Nolan goes in hard on Bryan. Not a massively violent challenge, but the West Ham skipper gets a yellow card for his troubles nonetheless.
75 mins: Change for Bristol - Scott Wagstaff is on, Little the man hooked.
74 mins: And almost immediately Sakho comes within a whisker of giving West Ham the lead, brilliantly flicking the ball over a defender’s head then mullering a shot goalwards, but it flicks the top of the bar and goes over.
73 mins: Half chance for West Ham, as Aaron Cresswell gets down the left, reaches close to the byline and cuts back to Sakho, but his shot is rather easily blocked by Aden Flint.
70 mins: Nearly a nasty moment as Bryan goes up for a header but goes over his opponent’s back and lands painfully on his shoulder from on high. He’s fine though, as it turns out.
69 mins: However, no amount of strength-giving veg can stop Smith winning that header, rising high above the defence to get his nut on a cross, but his header goes well over the bar.
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68 mins: For the third time in a few minutes, Reid eases Smith out of the way. He’s been at the spinach at half-time.
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66 mins: Freeman loops a free-kick from deep out there on the right, but while Derrick Williams does well to win the header, he can’t get much behind it and Adrian gathers.
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65 mins: Downing befuddles everyone by advancing down the right and not cutting back onto his left foot, instead swinging a cross over with his right, but the ball is headed clear with Carroll a-lurkin’.
63 mins: Quiet couple of minutes. Smith tries to muscle out Reid on the edge of the box, but in an unusual development the West Ham man comes out on top in that tussle.
61 mins: Lovely work by Downing on the edge of the box, skipping around one and then playing a nice one-two with Nolan, but he struggles to find the right angle to shoot, and when he eventually does it sails well over the bar.
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59 mins: Great chance for a break by West Ham, but Sakho can’t control a firm forward pass by Reid, with Carroll screaming for the thing out on the right.
56 mins: Double change afoot for West Ham - Diafra Sakho and Morgan Amalfitano come on, departing the scene are Song and Valenca.
54 mins: Song, with his all-black boots, concedes a free-kick around 25 yards out with a clumsy challenge on Smith. JET takes the shot, it’s fairly weak and straight at Adrian, but it could have been slightly hairy with a rough bounce just in front of the keeper, and he did pretty well to hold on.
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52 mins: Then Carroll is lucky to escape a booking for a from-behind-chop on Korey Smith, as the City midfielder looked to create something from deep.
51 mins: West Ham imposing themselves a little more now. Carroll has dropped deep a couple of times and while he’s not exactly Zvonomir Boban, he’s made a couple of half-decent passes.
48 mins: A glitch in the matrix as Nolan misreads a Carroll knock-down. In this uncertain world, those two being able to read each other perfectly was one of the few constants. Anything can happen now. Chaos, pandemonium, cats and dogs living together.
46 mins: Away we go, which is also the title of a lovely little film by Sam Mendes. Bit sentimental, but there are some nice moments of humour and...oh hang on a second here’s Valencia, taking advantage of an errant pass from Saville, but he can’t get a proper shot away.
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And the players are out for the second-half. Difficult to tell if Allardyce looks annoyed or whether that’s just the way his face falls.
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Some half-time entertainment, and I’ve been reminded this absolutely outrageous dive by Daniel Harris. Step forward ‘Flash’ Gordon Watson, tumbling to win a penalty against Leeds in 1991/92.
Well, City should be most pleased with their form so far, the only disappointment being that they haven’t converted their domination - which, for long spells of the 45 minutes, it was - into something tangible. Like, y’know, a goal. One imagines rockets are being fired up bottoms by Allardyce in the dressing room.
Half-time: Bristol City 0-0 West Ham United
Peeeeeeeep.
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45 mins: Valencia goes down as if his leg has been removed by a slightly late Bryan challenge, but in fact it’s just a simple foul. No yellow card, a couple of minutes added time are signalled.
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44 mins: “MOVE THE BALL,” bellows Steve Cotterill from the sidelines, and his players oblige, although an errant pass puts paid to a promising attack.
41 mins: Noble has a chance to create something after picking the ball up in the middle of the West Ham half. He skips around one man, then another, then has a chance to either shoot or play in Carroll, but he does neither and merely plunks the ball into Ayling’s shins. City counter, but it’s curtailed as Freeman, not for the first time, tries a through-ball that is just smart enough for him to conceive, but not able to execute.
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38 mins: Fielding is forced into his first proper save of the day as Carroll stabs a low cross from Jenkinson towards goal. West Ham still stuttering, but at least they’re vaguely creating something now.
37 mins: More comic hi-jinx from Nolan as he attempts an acrobatic overhead volley from a Jenkinson cross to the far post, which he fails quite miserably to execute properly, and immediately claims a corner, despite the ball never at any point threatening to go out of play, as Fielding ambles over to collect it.
35 mins: From said corner, Smith is penalised for climbing all over Reid, and in one of those delightful moments of basic irony, Kevin Nolan flaps his arms about in protest/tantrum at such penalty box rough-housing.
34 mins: Ayling puts in a low and awkwardly-bouncing cross from the right, and it nearly befuddles Reid, who slices his clearance out of play for a corner.
32 mins: Bit of aggro as JET chops down Reid as the defender tries to usher the ball out of play, but no further action was taken by the referee. Fair amount of rough and tumble from the hosts, here.
31 mins: Nolan has a go at creating something with an attempted through-ball to Valencia, but the pass has too much on it and Frankie Fielding, who sounds like he should be an East End gangster from the 1950s, comes out to gather.
29 mins: Valencia tries to lift West Ham from their torpor out on the left, but while he manages to beat Ayling he can’t get past George Saville.
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28 mins: Carroll drops into the No.10 pocket, and gets whatever the opposite of a nosebleed for a striker going up field is, dragging an optimistic shot well wide.
25 mins: Whiff of handball on that Carroll clearance, looking at the replays. Unintentional, but a whiff nonetheless. Smith really is bullying this West Ham defence, which will be a worry for Allardyce.
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24 mins: Another off the line! JET and Freeman combine from a short corner on the right, the former dinks a cross directly onto Matt Smith’s bonce and he heads beyond Adrian, but Carroll was there behind his keeper to head off the line.
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22 mins: Very flat from West Ham so far. Alex Song tries to play Carroll in with a diagonal pass from somewhere around halfway, but it’s intercepted and the midfielder sinks to the turf, seemingly contemplating the pointlessness of existence in the centre circle.
20 mins: Ach, brilliant chance for City as Joe Bryan advances into the area from the left, exchanges a smart one-two with JET and shoots across goal from a tight angle, and it zips wide. Replays suggest Jenkinson got a toe on that, but no dice on that occasion for City. Their bright start continues, mind.
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17 mins: Mark Little, not the one who used to be in Neighbours, tries a cross from the right aiming for Smith at the back stick, but Carl Jenkinson is there to tidy things up smartly.
15 mins: City’s fans firmly nail their colours to the mast in the great ‘Which Is The Worst Of The Four Fundamental States Of Matter’ debate, as they sing ‘Stand up, if you hate the Gas.’
14 mins: Freeman lines up an ambitious shot from range but it’s heavily deflected and arcs high into the air. Fortunately for West Ham, the arc takes it directly to Adrian’s grateful grasp.
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13 mins: West Ham tentatively feeling their way back into the game. Well, sort of. They’ve managed to string a few passes together, at least.
10 mins: City win a corner which Freeman hurls over from the right, Smith rises high and blunders towards the ball, the snag being that Kevin Nolan was in the way and is barged half into the net. Free-kick.
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8 mins: JET (aaah aaah aaah aaaah), barrels through the middle, playing it in front of him and there’s time for Smith to smartly step aside from an offside position, and the ball is slipped to the right where Luke Freeman has a run on goal, but Winston Reid intervenes to stop a good chance. City much the better team thus far.
6 mins: ...and from that corner, Smith gets his noggin to the ball and it loops towards the far corner of the net, but Mark Noble is there on the line to head clear and prevent a certain goal.
5 mins: More early pressure from the hosts. Jay Emmanuel-Thomas feeds Matt Smith on the left side of the area, and the big centre-forward clips quite a neat cross into the box back for JET, but he can’t direct the header at goal and it’s behind for a corner...
3 mins: Early chance for City, as the ball falls to Matt Smith in the area with his back to goal, he spins and fires a shot towards goal, but James Tomkins is there to block.
2 mins: The aesthetics of this are weird. For a start, half of Ashton Gate is under construction, with one end open and half of one side still being built, plus there’s the absolutely ghastly sight of rugby markings bespoiling the pitch.
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1 min: West Ham get us going (the game, I mean, not, like, get us going get us going), and they’re wearing that slightly odd purple third kit or whatever it is.
Weird note about Stewart Downing: his voice sounds a bit like a (very) dialled-down Robbie Savage, which is weird considering one is from Middlesbrough and t’other from Wrexham.
It’s a lump-off and no mistake out there today. Which is not to say the pair of lumps in question, Andy Carroll and Matt Smith, are not bad players, as their respective recent records display. Carroll has five in 11 in a season that quite literally didn’t start for him until November, while Smith, on loan from Fulham after Leeds’s vaguely bewildering decision to sell in him the final few minutes of the transfer window, has battered his way to nine in nine, including four in the JPT against Gillingham the other week.
But lumps they are. And it’s lovely to see.
Team news
Bristol City
Fielding, Little, Williams, Flint, Bryan, Ayling,Saville, Korey Smith, Freeman, Emmanuel-Thomas, Matt Smith. Subs: Richards, Osborne, Cunningham, Wagstaff, Elliott, Pack, Agard.
West Ham United
Adrian, Reid, Cresswell, Tomkins, Jenkinson, Nolan Noble, Downing, Song, Carroll, Valencia. Subs: Jaaskelainen, Demel, Poyet, Amalfitano, Jarvis, Sakho, Cole.
Referee: Lee Mason (Bolton)
Preamble, such as it is
This season has been weird enough for West Ham. Weird watching them win a load of games, weird watching them do so in many cases with no little élan, weird watching Sam Allardyce take the very deserved praise coming his way with something approaching grace and humility. They’re seventh in the table and have managed to forge the old and new, to marry playing vaguely stylishly with playing Andy Carroll up top. In short, it’s going bloody well for a team who, if the mob had ruled at the back end of last season, would have gone into this season with a completely different manager, and it’s tricky to see how that new manager, unless he was a fusion of Clough, Gutmann, Shankly, Herrera and Ferguson, could have done much better.
And now. Now West Ham are among the favourites to win the FA Cup, largely because most teams above them have been so calamitously bloody awful that they’ve managed to get themselves knocked out by assorted plucky sorts from the ‘Football League’, whatever that is.
Now, of course, they have to avoid their own plucky trip wire, in the form of League One trailblazers Bristol City, who have rediscovered some form recently after a November blip knocked their magnificent start to the campaign off kilter a little. They’re second in the table, behind Swindon only on goal difference, and have won their last four on the spin. Logic states they could well leave Sam and chums with some sort of egg on their faces, but in this most illogical sport and illogical competition on a particularly illogical weekend, it’s best to throw sense out of the window. It’s on.
Kick-off: 2pm.
Good afternoon. Nick will be here shortly. Until then, here’s Stuart James chatting to Bristol City’s local hero, Joe Bryan:
After joining his hometown club at the age of eight and coming through their academy, Bryan has earned rave reviews with his displays at left wing-back as part of a resurgent City side who are promising to make 2014-15 a season to remember. Joint top of League One on points and only 90 minutes from reaching Wembley in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, City welcome West Ham to the building site that is Ashton Gate – the stadium is being redeveloped at a cost of £40m – in buoyant mood.
“People always say that it’s a sleeping giant. I think you can see the interest here, people realise we’re winning games,” Bryan says. “The thing is, I think the fact that we’re redeveloping the stadium this season is a bit of a hindrance. If all the stands were still there, I think they would be full every week because we’re winning. But it will be nice when the ground is done. It’s good to see development on and off the pitch. It’s a positive time.”
You can read more here.
