Captain Fantastic

By: Daryl | June 7th, 2009

As you know, Fabricio Coloccini is out for two to three months with some sort of old man hip injury. There seemed to be some sort of agreement that no replacement was needed, so Andriy Rusol stepped in to replace the frizzy haired Argentinean/Argentine (is there a correct term for someone from Argentina?)

One thing I didn’t consider until right at kickoff was that Colo was my captain. Captain Colo.

Which means that while Captain Colo is out, Vice-Captain Pavel Pogrebnyak will wear the magic armband (it’s not really magic, but don’t tell The Pog). It went badly, very very badly…

…for West Ham that is.

For us it went great.

Since there were no objections in the last post, we went back to the ballsy attacking 4-1-2-1-2. Here’s the lineup:

Laurito and Fan Bo are still working their way back to full fitness, while Jonas was just back in time to get a place on the bench (his condition was 90%).

Captain Pog made a good case for wearing the armband full-time (he actually kicked up a small fuss when he wasn’t made proper captain at the start of the season) by scoring all four goals in a four-nil win. The man was incredible. Not only that, he had a hat-trick inside the first fourteen minutes. Again, incredible.

Even better (sort of), he was being marked by one of the guys I’d considered bringing in as a short term replacement for Colo: Mathias Jørgensen. That didn’t go so well for the young Danish defender. Pog got a 9.6 rating and four goals, while Jørgensen got a 4.7 and was substituted after 61 minutes. Ouchy ouchy.

Here are the final stats for our boys: (Click to embiggen*)

Can’t argue with that.

Final Score: 4-0

Going forward, we’ve got Portsmouth (14th) away. They play a Chelsea style 4-3-3 and have four former Toon men in the squad (Mascio, Joey Barton, Geremi and Peter Ramage). But they also have an injury + Africa Cup of Nations conbo crisis on their hands, with Crouch, Defoe, Verkapovskis and Aissatti all broken John Utaka, Song, Geremi, Mokoena all in Gabon for the Africa Cup of Nations (I was surprised to find that I have zero African players, which seems like a smart move while the tourney is on). Here’s the Pompey squad:

I’m leaning towards the 4-1-2-1-2 again, but could also be tempted by giving the 4-4-2 another chance given their three in midfield approach. More on that later.

Transfer wise, I’ve got a possible winter signing. Basically I don’t have enough Englishmen in the squad, and this young regen winger named Jamie Jones is is available for around £2 or 3m.

Yes, he looks a bit simple. And his av. rating for Reading is actually a bit rubbish. But he’s also young, quick, and English. I figure he’d make a nice pacy backup if Jonas and Marquinhos are ever out again (as they have been lately). What do you think?

Second, Big Lanky Per Mertesacker is available on a Bosman: