Up for the Cup, Round 3

When the draw for the Third Round of the FA Cup was made, it was sort of inevitable that we would draw West Ham as my son-in-law is an avid Hammer with a Season Ticket in the Bobby Moore Stand. We decided we would attend the match together.


However as the game drew nearer and West Ham suffered a few reverses in the league, his ardour decreased. Then, when Big Sam declared that he was going to field his Under 21 team, his desire completely vanished. And I don't blame him. Sam had a choice, Premier League survival, try to win their League Cup semi-final v. Man City or a third round against Forest? No contest, put out his best team against us, get a senior player seriously injured and their fans would be in an uproar.


So they arrived at the CG with a few bit part first teamers plus some promising youngsters. Billy fielded a fairly strong Forest team for the game which, for some strange reason, was being shown on ITV. We don't usually do well on TV, but this time we bossed the game from start to finish.


The first half was gentle pressure from Forest being resisted stoutly by West Ham's mostly young defence, though they were marshalled by Diarra, a French International player with 44 caps to his name. After 12 minutes a promising attack by Forest resulted in Moncur upending Jamie Paterson in the box for a nailed-on penalty. After several penalty misses earlier in the season, Lansbury had decisively scored from the spot against Brighton and so I think most Forest supporters were expecting him to take the kick. Abdoun rushed up, grabbed the ball, refused to let go and after a furious argument with both Reid, our captain, and Lansbury, it was decided he would take the kick. He took a terrific run up to the ball, then stopped and placed a cheeky dink right down the middle as Adrian in the West Ham goal threw himself to the right. You can imagine the uproar there would have been if he had failed to score with that type of kick after such a kerfuffle with his team mates. As it was he celebrated with himself and the crowd, not many of the team bothered to enthusiastically embrace him.


There were other chances to increase the lead, but it stayed at 1-0 to the interval. Afterwards, both Forest and West Ham had chances, but Forest soon doubled their lead. Jamie Paterson this time scored himself, dribbling into the area and shooting across Adrian into the corner of the goal. It was all Forest now and the youngster had his second five minutes later, knocking a deflected shot into the net after a pass by Lansbury.


West Ham were working Darlow in the Forest goal on sporadic attacks, but Paterson then scored his third goal in 14 minutes by dribbling across the area and cracking the ball into the corner of the West Ham net. A hat-trick for the youngster in front of the Trent End, it doesn't get much better. The final goal came from an attack down the left by Abdoun, who put it on a plate for Reid to pop the ball into the top corner of the net for an emphatic 5-0 score line.


I think it was worse than Big Sam had envisaged and the fact that West Ham had played so many youngsters took a bit of the shine off the win for many Forest fans. So nobody was happy. Nevertheless, Forest went into the hat for the 4th Round and came out with another home tie, against Ipswich or Preston. The replay was at Deepdale and Preston won 3-2, so we meet Billy's former team on Friday 24th January. Yes, Friday evening. Apparently Notts have a home game on Saturday so we have had to switch.