Lo and behold, he gets the team selection correct and we win the game. Who'd have thought it eh?
We've all been able to see that Gallas is way past it for a long time now except AVB. Today he finally saw sense and started Dawson - a particularly smart thing to do given that Dawson is the best defender we have at attacking high balls, which West Ham were obviously going to throw lots of at us. Dawson shat on even Carroll in the air which was great to see. And I worried that, despite Lloris' good form, he'd go back to Friedel today, which would have been a disaster considering how Brad likes to stay on his line when those balls come in. Instead, we had correctly had Lloris, who was quick off his line, quick to deal with loose balls in our box and made one top save in the second half.
Tactics were correct today for the first time in fudging ages, and we get a win for the first time in fudging ages. I just hope that AVB understood the reasons why it all worked and that he can learn from his mistakes. My only gripe with him today was the fact that it took him so late on in the game to make his first substitution with a game taking place on Wednesday. He also left Defoe on for too long IMO - I know he wanted his hat-trick but he almost got sent off and if we'd had both strikers suspended for Wednesday we'd have been fudged!