Disagree about Song again, he broke up play well, never stopped running and made some good passes too with very few mistakes.
this is the thing, he runs too much. Parker was a dynamo early season and last year, and almost completely ineffective. by pressuring to much, say charging forwards 10 yards, you leave space behind you, 2 passes and a player is around you and you're behind the game. Parker has improved dramatically in the past 20 games because he runs LESS. Think of Makelele, he doesn't run constantly, he was quite, he stayed where he needed to be, let players run into him by being in the right place and was in the way of all those throughballs. Song should not be getting near the box, shouldn't be running to the wings, its not his place. He's the DM, we were under a HECK of a lot of pressure, against a team with NO STRIKERS, because our midfield is non existant in terms of defence, that is his job and he's completely not doing it.
its supposed to be him staying deep that allows Diaby and the wingers to support but he runs blindly forward thinking he can help offensive, its not what we need. AS much as I don't rate Denilson in the DM position, lately he's actually gotten FAR better at not running fowards and defensively we've improved a lot due to that. less is more in the case of a DM, he's bloody awful at it. Denilson's improving but will never be world class and could have been a world class attacking midfielder in the Fabregas mould. I think we've totally screwed over what could have been a great back up to Fabregas or someone almost as good we could have sold on for 15mil in several years. Now he's an inbetween player whose great at neither. Randall's going the same way unfortunately.
As for Adebayor, its ridiculous, the old thing was a big and a small man, with the small man furthest foward to run onto knockdowns by the big guy. Ade rarely does that and as such we can't play a small man infront of him. Crouch and the like is normally used either with a Defoe/small guy ahead, or as a lone striker. Adebayor can't be played either as a lone striker, or a support big man, he's in no way any kind of traditional target man, as he can't play that position.
Largely West Ham have improved because they are so dynamic in attacking. Collison, Behrami, Illunga, Cole, they are all players who get the ball and simply drive forwards, rarely pass back and attack fast on the break. ARsenal have far to many players who like to pass incredibly slowly up the field. 4 years ago we would counter attack better than anyone in maybe the world, certainly the league. THese days few of our goals come from uber quick counter attacks, we've lost an entire dimention to our game. The reason I like Eboue is he's one of the few surviving players from years ago and gets the ball and looks to get forward instantly.
AS you said, Walcott, due to injuries was our best choiceon the right, but even then, he actually had very very few games, I think 50% is being VERY generous. But he's a striker, who we can't play in the Owen role because Adebayor is hopeless as the "big man" striker to knock on to him. Bendtner came on, and played the right wing, and frankly, was much better than Denilson there, he's not a right winger at all but has played there 2/3 times and done an ok job can't really complain about that.
