Written by Lukas Volskis (@lu_thirty_1)

First things first, what a positive result for us on Sunday! Coming into that game, I wasn’t feeling too confident at all, even though Chelsea has been misfiring lately. Still, you always have to be mindful going to Stamford Bridge with the quality Chelsea has at its disposal. But, as the game went on, my belief grew and grew and by the end of it, I was waiting for us to score a winner.

Yes, it WAS a penalty!

It’s funny how a few decent performances change the mood and fortune around the club ey? To me, it’s even more interesting how fans’ perception of players changes every week. In my opinion we are too quick to get upset and WAY too quick to get excited.

Arnautovic is a prime example of this. Slated and slated until the villain became the hero. Albeit, we had every right to be harsh on him but, in my opinion, those seven games shouldn’t have had him written off as a failure. One thing to remember, Arnautovic was a good player going through a bad patch.

Joe Hart is the opposite and a good performance shouldn’t have him labelled as a good player.

When he first signed, I was pretty damn excited. Yes, he had his troubles at Manchester City and then in Italy but in my opinion, he spent those two seasons playing with the lowest confidence imaginable. If someone’s always telling you you’re bad at something, you’ll start to believe it. However, I was still confident he could put that in the past and go back to being a very good goalkeeper, one that I was accustomed to seeing before Pep rolled into town.

However, as the season went on, it was clear to see that Hart’s best days were behind him. Yes, our defence was worse than stepping on a plug in the morning but even the simplest situations seemed impossible for Hart to deal with. He looked lost. And he definitely had me fooled when we first signed him.

Let’s appreciate that his performances got so bad that we were crying out for Adrian to return in goal. And, if you go back a few months before Hart got there, Adrian wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire. We were in a serious goalkeeper crisis with neither of the two good enough to play at this level.

Credit where credit’s due, the City game was impressive for Adrian (just like Hart’s at Chelsea) but then everything slowly started trickling back down to what it was before; a pile of misery.

Anyone for some déjà vu?

Now, don’t get me wrong, if Hart is our goalkeeper for the rest of the season, I will support him and the team until the end. I also appreciate the passion he has for our club and it was nice to hear him put West Ham before England in his recent interview.

However, I do not think Hart is a good goalkeeper anymore and the truth is, he’s the best out of a bad bunch. Sadly, that’s the predicament that we have been dealing with all year. To be honest, you could probably say the same for a lot of things at West Ham, especially some of our players. But, the one thing we have and always will do is support this team through thick and thin, except for those who chose to forfeit their season tickets after we went 1-0 down in a home game that we could have  easily recovered. But, don’t get me started on that. That’s a whole ‘nother story that I don’t have enough words to write about.

The point I’m making here is that we shouldn’t let a good performance by a poor player trick us into believing something that isn’t there. I’ve read a lot of things on social media about how great Hart has become all of a sudden. That simply is not true. And he certainly shouldn’t be England’s first choice in Russia.

For our sake and sanity, let’s hope we see more Chelsea-esque performances during the last 6 games and address our keeper situation in the summer, just like we should address everything else.