A very good night for us in many ways.
A brilliant win. The youngsters tonight were fantastic. Drury was particularly good, his precision balls and running were inspirational.
Not only that, but Blackpool came back from the dead to beat Coventry.
SEVEN POINTS CLEAR OF RELEGATION!
That takes massive pressure off the lads at the Ricoh. All we need to do is draw and ii keeps them right in it.
Not only that but Bristol City and Millwall are well back in it.
Great result and a Great night. Great game at the back by Sonko btw
Only dissapointment was the reinforcing of Nottm Forest. 2 very good defensive signings close to the deadline....

great result but shame we cant get the vital defender we have all been waiting for

Let's get 3 more points on sat and build on this!!! Up the town!!!

As a moaner I'm happy to be sitting here stunned,speechless and cautously happy.We can shout about this if we get a result on saturday wich I'm sure we will.Who needs pompey rejects!?

Where are all the ridiculous negative comments under this story then?! Oh yeah that's right we won and played really well. Passion and commitment in abundance

buzzing from one of the best performances since the premier league day's. looking forward to reading the london press tomorrow to see what excuses they say for west ham.

Everyone played a part, but Drury and Martin were fantastic from start to finish.

Give credit when credit is due. We have all seen some shocking defending this season but tonight Cresswell and Sonko worked particularly hard (Smith was caught out at times but C & S always cleared it up).Good team performance.
Good 3 points. Now need to win on Saturday to give us breathing space from relegation.
Can't see anything happening last minute at ITFC. Jewell does sound genuinely disappointed. He knows that Smith and Delaney aren't strong enough and Sonko is inconsistent.
Need a fair few loan signings. 2 centrebacks and a rightback will be fine.
Should have made a late swoop for the Hearts team. They have a few players there who given the opportunity would have come.
We had no plan b in the end, mistake.

Well well well.. did not see this one coming .. wonder what odd you would have got on this score before the game.. stunned.. happy but stunned. Please a repeat performance on Saturday please!!!!!

“I think he showed a calm head at times and him and Luke have done terrific in there. They're keeping senior players out of the team because their performances in the last three games.”

Jewell on Drury and Hyam.

Not wanting to quibble on a night like tonight, but I kind of hope they ARE now the senior players, and the ones that others will have to try and dislodge.

That result has taken my breath away and is a great tonic to the depressing days of the transfer window.

The manager & players deserve a massive pat on the back for tonights result and we really need to build on this now.

As Evans has said that he's backing the manager we may as well accept that and put our support behind the manager & team.  We've all got our own opinions as to whether Jewell, Evans, Clegg et al should be booted out of our club but for now we're stuck with them.  We have to face the fact that we are in a relegation fight and any bitching & moaning about the management of the club isn't going to do us any good.

What this transfer window has demonstrated is that even when our club can agree a transfer fee with a club players don't want to come and play for us.  People will say it's simply a case of throwing more money at those players but our club already loses millions of pounds each season and that cannot go on forever.

I only want players who really want to play for our proud badge joining our club.  That's the only way we'll move forward because a bunch of mercenaries just looking for a pay day won't do us any good long term.  Whilst I'm disappointed to have missed out on the Portsmouth trio what we need is our own players who demonstrate the same commitment to our club.

No that the window has closed we've got what we've got until the end of the season. Let's back the team & manager because we are in a relegation fight and need to scrap for every point between now and the end of the season.

Having missed out on our permanent transfer targets I really don't want us to turn to desperation loan signings.  These loan players don't give a cr*p about our club and I've had enough of them.  I want to see our players playing their hearts out to see us survive this season. On that subject no matter how promising McCarthy is he's never going to become our player and following his comments both in the build up & after the Leeds game I wouldn't be sad to see his loan terminated. Let's see ALB & Wright backed as our top two keepers until the end of the season & hopefully the promising Cropper will be back from injury soon.

Looking at other players what with around half the squad out of contract in the summer those who play their hearts out & show their commitment to Town can stay and good riddance to the rest of them.  Then we can start to build again in the summer.  We've had ten years in the doldrums and it's not going to be an easy road back.

Looking at our recent results what we have to remember is that overall we were probably the better team against Blackpool before our late implosion. Even then we could have won that game at the death should Martin have stuck away his late chance.  Then at Leeds McCarthy and Sonko conspired to bring about our downfall after we'd been playing okay having got ourselves in a good position.  Today we've got a great result and lets back the manager and players to build on this and get the points we need to survive this year.

Whilst sacking the manager may seem like the logical quick fix I think the problems at the club run much deeper than that.  Things have got progressively worse ever since we finished 5th in the Premiership in 2000-01. Those in charge presided over the break up of a team which had brought us success.  In 01-02 we had a group of overpaid imports looking for a payday with no love or passion for our club.  The team spirit was broken and it ended in relegation. The fact that we threw money around on players & the stadium in a season which ended in relegation threw us into financial turmoil.  Those in charge of the club at that time played a massive gamble and it backfired in a huge way and we've been paying for it ever since. Yes we loved Sheepshanks & Burley and we enjoyed some great times then but I think at times we look back with rose tinted glasses. The decisions which led to our disastrous 01-02 season culminated in administration and some of our brightest talents for a generation being flogged of for a pittance.  We've never recovered from that and if the club hadn't been mismanaged in the first place then we would never have been in the position where we had to sell to Evans.  However the fact is that we were in a mess financially and had little choice in the modern era where you need deep pockets just to keep a club running.

We are where we are now & sacking another manager only 1 year into the job isn't going to be the magic wand which instantly solves all our problems.  Let us not forget that fans were calling for Sir Bobby's sacking not long into his management however he was backed and then brought us success. Now I'm not saying that just by backing a manager it will guarantee you success.  Plus there's a million & one reasons you can easily point out why the scenarios are very different now. However football is a very different game to the one that existed over thirty years ago.  Whilst the game continues in it's current vein with the big few getting bigger & bigger in this era of the billionaire owners it's unlikely that a team of our size will ever repeat the success that we had ever again.  Therefore success will be relative.

For tonight I'm just happy to enjoy having a smile on my face after a game for the first time in a while.  This one result in isolation doesn't instantly solve all our problems.  But having been extremely down & pessimistic for a long time I'm going to enjoy this dose of happiness.

Between now & the end of the season lets just all get behind the manager and team in what is a relegation fight.  Going back to years in the 90s we had seasons with small average crowds of the real hard core of fans. That didn't stop us making a noise and backing the team though.  So it will be good if we can collectively back the team and make some noise on match day.  If we can pick up sufficient points to avoid relegation it'll be a relief and then they'll be a massive rebuilding project ahead of us in the summer.

Should also note that West Ham missed a few sitters. Could easily have been closer

wonder if all the furore about getting 3 new players in from one club might have given the squad a boot up the ar$e they needed and get them pulling together and pushing on.......

pocketsout-noticeably 3 of those sitters were Smith's fault. I know hermann eats puffin doesn't want loan signings but we are desperate, absolutely desperate.
an experienced centrehalf and rightback are needed in the loan window.
shame about higginbottam.

pocketsout is obviously a West ham fan, great night great performance and great game by the boys in blue. Thats why we love ya, lets see more of it:-) Coventry are in trouble

Who needs Pompey players who don't want to play for us anyway !!!
Superb tonight, can we play West Ham every week !!!

who cares if west ham missed a few, so did we.

I have been very quiet on this site, and I have been reading so many negative comments. And rightly so!

But tonight has really shown what we can do. Stunned put not overly surprised.

We have a few hard months ahead, so come on, let's get behind the team.

Well down blue boys now lets build on this.

Great performance, all were immense! but we did look shaky at times, Gabor Gyepes has just been released from Cardiff, big CB, hes not brilliant but available!

Erica - agree. Tonight was superb, but the final score flattered a little and the underlying problem has not gone away. That said, we could always go down the Keegan route, f&ck defense, we'll just score more than you ;)

First and foremost and fantastic result, somewhat lifted me out of my depressive mood after following the failings of deadline day!

My main optimisim in the last few weeks has been the new centre mid partnership! Hyam has the passion and i believe that Drury is fastly becoming one hell of a player (not too get to carried away)! Just shows what confidence can be gained from a run in a side. Firstly at Crawley now back at PR. I think he is showing the quality on the ball as well as the will which ipswich have lacked for sometime! 3 points on saturday and we will hopefully be well on our way!

Well done to the lads, big mentions to JET, Drury, Hyam and cressy - new faces showing their value

Hope the Portsmouth trio don't get paid for months and learn to regret their decision.
Portsmouth haven't raised the funds either. Interesting. What happens now?
They should be kicked into touch as a football club.
5-1? Never saw that coming. Good night for ITFC and hopefully means we can start to begin the wave goodbye to relegation.

Well done, great win, let's build on that.

Herman! How many words a minute?

Really enjoyed tonight, well done Paul jewell and well done to the players, just keep it going. Got loads of hammers fans at work, can't wait to speak to them in the morning!