The Indian Hammers Poll
Part 1: Introduction and Rules
By Michael P.C.
Back in December of 2018, I proposed a poll where we, the members of the official Indian Hammers would vote for our own personal all-time favourite West Ham players that we’d watched play in each position and compile it to make a XI of our own.
The rules were as follows :
- The player should be someone we’d actually seen play live during our time as West Ham fans (which explains the lack of legends like Bobby Moore and Trevor Brooking)
- Each member was asked to choose 3 players for each position (2 for Goalkeepers) in the order of whom they thought was the best player, by no established criteria.
- The order was weighted. In each position, the player who was chosen as one’s first choice was given 5 points, the player chosen second choice got 2 points, and the third choice player got 1 point.
The polling for each position was done in a limited amount of time, 24 hours each to be exact, some extra time was given to accommodate members who hadn’t seen the poll at the time of initiation and wanted to put in their votes as well. The voting was done over a period of 10 days, Not all members voted, in fact, the total number of voters who participated (not necessarily for each position) was 11 people.
The following are the positions we decided to fill up :
1) Goalkeeper
2) Right Back
3) Left Back
4) Centre Back
5) Centre Mid
6) Right Mid/Wing
7) Left Mid/Wing
8) Attacking Mid/Second Striker
9) Striker
In the Centre Back and Centre Mid positions, the top 2 highest voted players were chosen to represent the positions, rather than any hypothetical partnership or combination.
The discussion around which formation to use was divided between two camps, the first — with 2 strikers up top and the second — one with a single striker and a more deep-lying attacking midfielder behind him. I left the choice open to the members who voted, ie, if a player who was more of a striker was chosen in the Attacking Mid/Second Striker choice, the formation would accommodate the players as expected and vice versa.
I’m writing this blog about 7 months late, and the next season is almost upon us. Considering how the 2018-19 season ended and how certain players’ behaviours (*cough* *cough* Arnautovic) may have created some sentimental bias since then, I believe this poll was a rather unbiased one — with a fair look at whom we all thought are our all-time favourite Hammers all the way back from when we first started following the Claret and Blue club from East London.
There was quite a surprising variety in the players chosen and many interesting (some obvious) choices for the positions filled, so I hope this will be as interesting to read as it was to be a part of and vote in.
Anyhow, this was the introduction post, I will be posting 2-3 subsequent parts after this which shall cover not only the results of our vote but also my analysis on how the voting went about with little tidbits about the players selected by me and my Hammers peers. 🙂
Links to the position wise posts in the formation.