By Louis Nixon

Ollie Scarles made a poor error, which led to Fulham taking the lead late on, but his mistake shouldn’t be frowned upon too much, given the other issues that have been left unspoken. 

The top Football players aren’t prone to making mistakes, but even the best of the best often end up making errors, and sometimes they can prove to be costly. Unfortunately for Ollie Scarles, this evening, he fell victim to a mistake which led to Fulham’s only goal and therefore the Hammers ending up with nothing at all. 

However, I personally believe that many are focusing on the mistake – what about the other minutes he played, or perhaps the minutes that he shouldn’t have played?

People will be quick to forget that Scarles also had more threatening chances and created more attacks than the majority of typical ‘forward’ players. He had a good match, it’s a costly mistake, but he’s a defender who’s been forced to play despite coming back from a knock and there’s no option of a substitution in sight, which also needs to be discussed. 

Some could say that Scarles should’ve been substituted, but it wasn’t that a substitute should’ve been made because whilst it’s 0-0 and you’ve had a defence that’s been working to a relatively good level, why would Nuno change it?

It’s the fact that we’ve got no like-for-like, obvious replacement to use and that’s where you have to look at the board, look at Graham Potter, wonder why a player such as Emerson was allowed to leave for pennies and fathom why we didn’t have another alternative who could’ve perhaps been subbed on, there’s an absence of answers to questions that have to be asked. 

Whilst it’s a big if, but IF you were to take that mistake out of the equation, and the game were to end 0-0, the majority of the blame would’ve been pinned upon the forwards for not converting their chance, but instead, it’s a 20 year old who’s one of our own and was also brought to tears after the result in which he recieved little to no comforting from many in the squad, bar a few select individuals. 

His emotions emphasise how much he cares about this club and how much he wants to succeed and drive his boyhood club out of the relegation zone, and his sheer emotion is something that many West Ham players lack, and perhaps if all put in as much effort as him, we might’ve found ourselves in a different position. 

Now isn’t a time to tackle and go against one of your own, it’s time to back, provide support and say we go again for the next one in a few days time.