West Ham's Italian Job

Alan Pardew remains upbeat about West Ham's chances in the return fixture against Palermo and clearly thinks we are still in with a shout. Speaking on the West Ham official site, Pardew praises the performance of his players and also has some harsh words about the refereeing,

"I feel a bit hard done by. Although, Palermo's organisation and ability to press the ball was always going to make it difficult for us, I thought that we played well under pressure.

The performance level was high from both sides but things just didn't go our way and we even stopped, momentarily, for their goal because we thought that the ball had gone out of play. It would be so easy to say that we got caught out, but I honestly believe we could have got something out of tonight's game with a couple of breaks.

And without making excuses, I was unhappy with the referee during the opening stages, too, because some of the Italian tackling should've been punished with more yellow cards. That would've put one or two of their players under serious wraps for the rest of the game and although neither side came out of that late, heated pushing and shoving match with any credit, that whole incident was a build-up of events that had gone on earlier.

Even though we lost, Palermo will still be in some fear of us. As far as I'm concerned, this tie is still very evenly poised."