Not that impressive, really

It was a few days after the fact, but I finally got around to watching Everton's tie last week at Goodison Park against Zenit St. Petersburg in the UEFA Cup. I wanted to watch it as a preview of West Ham's two matches this week against Everton at Upton Park: Wednesday in the quarterfinals of the Carling Cup and Saturday in the Premiership. Everton beat Zenit 1-0, and it wasn't the most impressive display for the Toffees. Zenit played 10 men for about an hour, and yet, they had nearly as many chances going forward as Everton. Playing at home against a 10-man side, Everton seemed tentative attacking. Given how tightly West Ham are playing at the back of late, I like their chances this week. Everton, unlike the three top sides in the Carling Cup final eight (only Manchester United among the top four has been eliminated), are going to be taking this one seriously.

West Ham have been taking the League Cup seriously, too. Will manager Alan Curbishley be taking the cup tie seriously enough to start Robert Green for the first time in the Carling Cup this year? Curbishely won't say. Freddie Ljungberg is expected to be back for the match, taking the place of Nolberto Solano, who is cup-tied and therefore ineligible. I was disappointed to find out that this match does not seem to be available on TV anywhere in the U.S. The match was moved up a week before the rest of the Carling Cup quarterfinals to accomodate Everton's UEFA Cup match next week.

Dec. 12 also marks one year since Curbishley joined West Ham as manager two days after the dismissal of Alan Pardew. Besides a good League Cup run, Curbishley seemingly would be happy with a nice, quiet season with a mid-table finish. I'd love to see more, but I can't say a solid 9th or 10th in the Premiership would be so bad. I have my own anniversary regarding West Ham coming up on Dec. 17. A year ago on that date, I happened to catch the end of West Ham's 1-0 win over Manchester United at Upton Park, which was Curbishley's first match at the helm. That 15 minutes or so that I saw are what hooked me on football in general and West Ham in particular. For the first five months or so, I wasn't sure that was a good thing.

I have a ton of notes on the Blackburn game, but I haven't organized them into a post. I hope to get to it soon.