Stoke may be in the relegation zone, but they have had to play Chelsea and Liverpool in their first six games and managed to hold out quite well – they have certainly not rolled over.  The terrible starts of two established ‘big’ clubs, Spurs and Newcastle, are giving the new boys a much better chance of staying up as well.

And still West Ham cling onto a top five place, although we need good performances from Portsmouth and Wigan tomorrow to stay there, and Crawley Town show just what they can do when they don’t have to start off with minus points.

I’m enjoying the footie season so far except for the nagging fear that this is as good as its going to get.

Early days yet, but are we going to have a ‘fortress Upton Park’ season?  So far we have won all three home games, giving the Hammers the best home record in the league.  At the same time we lost both away games putting us right at the bottom for away games.

There is no way that we will still be in fourth place after tomorrow’s games, so I shall be looking at the league table often for 24 hours.  Fulham next week:that would be a good time to turn around the away record.  From the highlights on Match of the Day it looked like we stand a good chance.

Crawley Town do not have such a good home record – they lost a game, but won the other four – but they have also been OK on their travels, winning three and only losing once. Having the third best home record and second best away record is enough to be first overall.  As Chris Kamara would say “Unbelievable Jeff!” Not only did they hang on to their top spot in the Conference, but they opened up a two-point gap.

The continuing poor performance of Dynamo Horsham is a disappointment, but two out of three ain’t bad.

Meanwhile West Ham’s caretaker manager sent the team out with Boa Morte in the starting line-up, showing why he wasn’t in the running for the permanent position, and we ended up on the wrong end of a 3-2 scoreline after an entertaining game.

So at the end of the day we have Hull fourth in the table, Man Utd. down at fourteenth, albeit with a game in hand, and Fulham a place above the Hammers thanks to the players we flogged them in the summer, with Tottenham propping up the table with their solitary point.  

Go down a few divisions and its equally interesting, with Crawley Town now sitting on top of the Conference. 

Bad luck (and bad management) continue to dog Dynamo Horsham in the fantasy football.  After an opening week where Ashton was on my bench so his two goals didn’t count I had him in play this week instead of Adebayor – so of course Ashton came off injured while Adebayor scored a hat-trick.  If Ashton’s looks injury-prone again this year I might swoop for Robinho… I’ve still got £8.4m spare in the kitty.  Its still going to take a miracle to liftme into the top 20,000 though.

No.  I think they are visiting Spurs supporters who just haven’t got round to going home after seeing Crawley Town beat the Totenham XI 6-nil

All together it was quite a good day for the family’s teams, with Crawley Town getting a 5-1 away win and Spurs putting 6 past Reading. That didn’t do much for me, but Jayne and the kids were happy with it. (Its encouraging to see that Spurs’ defence is still leaking goals though) A shame that Southend and Brighton both lost, but you can’t have everything can you?

West Ham now have Portsmouth and Blackburn in their sights, but have to play at the Emirates next – and then the transfer window opens. Perhaps we will get rid of a few of those players who we have not been using, (Quashie? Boa Morte?) and see if any of those rumours about chasing Nicky Shorey turn out to be true.

There was an interesting article in the Guardian the other day about betting on football which had some calculations based on regression to the mean. I think the gist was that teams which over- or under-achieve in the first half of the season compensate after the holidays. I reckon that means Man City and Portsmouth, maybe Blackburn and Villa too will get fewer points in the second half of the season and (unfortunately) Spurs will pick up a bit. With any luck Fulham will do better too.

I am quietly confident about West Ham’s chances…

In other words, its a pre-season friendly but being played a week and a bit into the season. Very strange, but its a strange season all round so far with Man Utd. not only dropping 4 points behind Chelsea after two games, but also dropping 4 points behind Man City.

Not a great start for West Ham. Its some sort of consolation that after all their heavy spending and talk about breaking into the top four Spurs also lost.

Looking on the bright side, Crawley Town beat Stevenage so they now only need another win to reach zero points.

Of course we are now relying on getting decent results from two hard games and having two teams out of Charlton, Fulham and Wigan really slip up.

Looking on the bright side, Crawley Town survived the last day of the season and will be in the Conference (or whatever it is going to be called next season) again – as long as the Majeeds don’t do something silly with the finances…

Not a bad achievement when you think back to the start of the season and the team had a 10-point deficit, no players under contract, law suits flying around, and the rest of the league free to take their pick of the few players we had.