Wilde Thing

OLAS 435 MARCH 15TH 2008

OK, I’m paraphrasing, but I suspect that Oscar Wilde, if he was alive today, would have commented: “To lose one game by four goals may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness; and to lose three games by four goals can only mean that you are playing like total tossrags.”

His quotes are undoubtedly very clever. I found one where he seems to be talking to Alan Curbishley at first about his approach to football but then switches to a comment on Luis Boa Morte’s inimitable style:
“It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.”

His one actual known quote about the beautiful game is: “Football is a game for rough girls not suitable for delicate boys”. And it’s certainly the case that our delicate boys have been struggling lately.

If we are brutally honest, we’ve been struggling since the new year. In 12 games in 2008 the players can only be proud of their performance in two of them – away to Man City in the league, where we were very unlucky to come away with only one point, after playing them off the park but finding their goalie in terrific form; and at home to Liverpool where a steely performance of total commitment, and a determination to out-do Liverpool at their own passing game on the ground, was handsomely rewarded in the final seconds of injury time.

The other performances in 2008 have been variously lacklustre, flaky, indifferent or mediocre. It is 10 games since we have scored two goals in one game – a less than impressive 2-1 victory over Fulham. And in that time we have scraped the odd point in games we really deserved to lose.

Some of the most obvious reasons have been rehearsed several times by OLAS contributors. You all know where I stand on Curbishley and his (lack of) ability to manage and motivate. Many of us have also had to commit the heresy of acknowledging that Deano either has deep psychological problems or he is just may not be the player we thought he was or would become. I’m not prepared to give up on him yet and still think he has massive potential but as we approach the tail end of the season we are getting close to the tipping point with him. Isn’t is ironic that at this moment in time Marlon Harewood seems like the one that’s got away?

I suspect though that the real issues go much deeper and have a lot to do with the craziness that surrounded and infected the club last season. Our success in 2005-2006 under Pardew gave us great hope but seemed to alert the football vultures. A young team with a forward looking manager had achieved remarkably well in their first season back among the big boys and come within a whisker of winning the Cup Final. Instead of collective decisions and careful investment to build on this very promising situation, a few people running the club were dazzled by what might be in it for them personally.

The transparently dodgy deal for the two Argentineans clearly undermined the whole team and the manager. I have great admiration for Mascherano and Tevez as immensely talented footballers – they were just pawns in this whole exercise – but the domino effect was devastating.

We alienated several players of real potential, lost an intelligent manager who was struggling against forces bigger than he could handle, and got lumbered with a completely uninspiring “yes man” to the new regime.

In football these days, when things go terribly wrong you don’t have a lot of time to repair them. Someone (and it might have been me) once said, “Every problem has a solution but every solution has a problem”. We are now suffering the full effects of the “solution” that was hurriedly found in the January 2007 transfer window. Silly money was paid to gain the services of average players at the kind of wages that inevitably caused resentment among the existing team. And a failure to show any imagination or determination in subsequent transfer windows means that many average players don’t have to work to earn their place in the team – they have little or no competition for their positions.

The final quarter of last season was a mirage, ultimately a pleasant mirage – but a mirage nevertheless. For some players it was West Ham pride that did it, for others it was fear of championship league obscurity but we all know that the team finally pulled out the stops to stage a miracle recovery. That was of course also due to the remarkable talents and form of Carlos Tevez, but the underlying problems have been allowed to fester and now they are only too apparent.

So where do we go from here? Fortunately our league status is not at risk, because I don’t see us picking up too many more points this year. There are enough poor teams below us to ensure that, at worst, we are likely to finish 12th or 13th. We need to find out well before the beginning for next season who is here because they want to be, and who is here for the ride. And we need to make a judgement who is here on merit and who is here because they face no competition.

• We need to make a commitment now to reassessing the wage structure of the club at the end of the season to make it more transparent and fair. That’s one way to find out who wants to be here.

• We need to be planning now to replace Curbishley with an intelligent and progressive manager with wide horizons and a long-term vision. If that causes too much of a problem of losing face then move him upstairs and give him a fancy title but as little responsibility as possible. And certainly don’t put him in front of a TV camera.

• Make sure that a new manager/management team is in place early enough to make a difference in the summer transfer window.

• Start to play our most promising youngsters now. Bring them on as substitutes and give them the occasional 90 minutes this season. Don’t wait until next season to give them experience. Why do you think Arsenals’ youngsters progress so quickly?

• Show Dean Ashton the video of Kayode Odejayi leaping to score the winner for Barnsley against Chelski. It was an object lesson in when to jump, how to jump and what to do with the ball when you make contact.

• Show the rest of the team a video of Martin Devaney putting over the type of cross that strikers need. We’ve hardly done that all season.

• Make an appointment for Luis Boa Morte to see a careers advisor. My recommendation is that his next move should not be within football.

And so to the game with Blackburn today. Our win up there in December was one of our better performances and our match winner was Dean Ashton. It would be nice to repeat that today. If our heroes can see or feel anything beyond their wage packets they might sense that they owe us something.

Keep smiling – as Oscar Wilde noted, “Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”