Peter Withe

I have to be very careful about what I write today. Step over the line a little or act too confident and I'll have 200 comments from West Ham fans sitting in internet cafes all over East London. There you go, that should do it.

Anyway, it's not just the West Ham fans I've got to be worried about as I've got to be careful about how I write about resting half the team for the match in Hamburg also.

I don't know where to start really. We deserved it - the team MON put out was always going to struggle against a team of Hamburg's ability.

Zat Knight is probably the worst player I've seen in claret and blue. And that includes West Ham, Burnley, Hearts and Weymouth. Harewood is probably pretty close too.

Sidwell was sent off - two yellows - for repeated fouling, although the Hamburg players did fall over pretty easily whenever he came near them.

Today has seen 1 rumour revisited, 1 new one started and 1 continue from earlier in the week. Dean Ashton, Charles N'Zogbia and Milan Jovanovic are those rumours.

We all know about Dean Ashton. He's a fairly decent striker that appears to have become injury prone since joining West Ham. That's the only consistancy that the Hammers appear to have, so let's hope we can get 3 points on Saturday.

Standard Liege's Milan Jovanovic has been rumbling on for a week or so now but apparently today we're stepping up our interest and asking Liege to name their price.

He might not actually be at home but Martin O'Neill has today insisted that Ashley Young is not for sale and that he's heard nothing from Real Madrid speculation.

First things first, we are through to the next stage of the UEFA Cup and as tournaments go, winning this group might not be the best thing in the world that can happen and I'm not convinced Martin O'Neill is overly concerned, however I suspect he'd love to finish in first place.

The away support are going to want to see a bit of fight though and I don't think they'll be disappointed, however it's likely that Martin O'Neill will use this match to rest a few players and that a few fringe players will be starting.

One of the papers yesterday ran with the story that Peter Crouch is a target for Martin O'Neill and if Harry Redknapp was still at Portsmouth I'd say this was false, but I really wouldn't be surprised if this was true.

I was a big fan of Crouch when he was at Villa but got a lot of stick for it as I used it as one of the reasons to demonstrate that David O'Leary didn't know what he was doing and at the time most were still thinking O'Leary was walking on water.

When Liverpool came knocking for Gareth Barry in the summer, it was easy for Martin O'Neill to say no, and put a stupid price tag on the payers head.

Liverpool, while a big club and historically very proud are not Manchester United, Real Madrid or Barcelona. If one of those clubs had come in for Barry, maybe the summer would have been different.

Maybe all the talk in the week that Ashley Young is a world class player, on a par with Messi and Ronaldo actually helped, because yesterday, it was his day and he took a step closer to maybe becoming that player Martin O'Neill sees.

Bolton have won more games away from home than we've won at home this season and whenever I have sort of expected a result this season, it's not happened.

This game has the potential to go horribly wrong. So horrible in fact that the cynical side of me, reserved for a Barry post later, could really go to town on this prediction, but I'm not. I've got it in check.