West Ham are hopeless, and Paul Robinson

If you continually fail to win at home despite scoring three times, you’ll get nowhere in the Premiership. It’s a lesson that West Ham don’t appear to be learning. Despite Fulham and Spurs being notoriously poor travellers, they’ve found the Hammers easy pickings at Upton Park, even with Rob Green’s excellent form in goal.

Green’s form, a bright spark in an otherwise shocking season for West Ham, only highlights the faults of Paul Robinson even more. All season long the same things keep happening – probably ten times this season he’s been beaten, from long range, when the ball hasn’t even found the corner. Campo scored from 35 yards against him, not right in the corner, and he barely moved. Newcastle scored a few that an international keeper would expect to save.

And it happened again in Sunday’s match. Tevez’s freekick was well struck, and dipped below the crossbar, but it was central. Up and over the wall, and off the underside of the bar, right in the middle of the goal. Robinson was left flapping at air, nowhere near making the save.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai7gd0rMG5s

Quite simply, an international goalkeeper, England’s ‘number one’, should be stopping those. And it’s happening too often – he seems to be an excellent shotstopper, but his positioning for long range piledrivers is poor, along with his inability to get any distance on his dive either way. It seems a striker need not find the corner to beat him from 30 yards.

As an Arsenal fan, it’s hilarious to see Spurs concede such sloppy goals. But as England’s number one, it is more worrying, and a facet of his game that doesn’t appear to be improving.

West Ham fans, meanwhile, have bigger concerns, and they’re justified. There is only one place they are headed, and that’s the Championship.