What's your combination?

OLAS 484 April 24th 2010

My column this week is dedicated to our older cat, who rejoiced in the name “Cannabis”, who passed away last Monday morning, April 19th. In her 14 years on Planet Earth she truly lived up to her name (certainly more than Jonathan Spector lives up to the name “footballer”). She made you feel relaxed and happy. When she was sitting with you, or near you, all your troubles – even those of a long-suffering West Ham fan, floated away. Because we are Hammers we spend significant parts of our lives (well the weekends anyway, especially after 5pm on a Saturday), despondent, angry, disappointed, frustrated – and occasionally elated. Cannabis the Cat reminded me of Ron Greenwood’s adage after West Ham beat Sunderland 8-0 back in October ‘68 (I was there!) when he was asked to comment on how he felt after that incredible performance; he said “I don’t get too elated when things go well and I don’t get too depressed when things go badly.” She was the most equable, chilled out, happy-go-lucky pet you can imagine, facing life with a smile and, like most cats, with curiosity. Throughout her life she was fascinated by water systems – toilets, baths, showers – and mechanical devices. And maybe she’ll come back as a plumber or an inventor in another life. They say that cannabis can have detrimental effects on your long term something or other – oh yes, memory. Well after spending 14 years with Cannabis the Cat I can still remember the most obscure stuff about West Ham in the 1960s when I first started coming to Upton Park. So they don’t know what they are talking about. She only had good effects on those around her, spreading warmth and happiness. May her memory be for a blessing.

Now, everyone has got their favourite combination – Hurst and Peters, a pint of lager and a bowl of wasabi peas, sun and sea, bagels and cream cheese…but surely the best combo is a weekend when West Ham win and Spurs lose both of which for different reasons were about as unlikely a couple of weeks back as being able to spend a day looking up at a beautiful blue sky and smelling the cleaner air uninterrupted by the sight and sound of planes. As an old Chinese proverb says, we are condemned to live in interesting times.

And hasn’t the sky been beautiful? As for Iceland though – you should see the size of the fucking cloud they left over West Ham just the other year.

Portsmouth’s season has crumbled into (non-volcanic) dust so they were at least relieved of any expectation of victory against Spurs. Nothing to lose, but instead, a chance for a great day out for their shattered fans, and the none too enticing promise of an opportunity to play in the cup final against the team that recently thumped them 5-0 on their home vegetable patch.

Spurs have been riding high most of the season under Harry, and although the taxman is in sight he keeps dodging away from him. Much as it pains me to admit it, the Artful Dodger has assembled an excellent squad of fast, aggressive attacking players, many of whom are capable of hitting the net. Their defence often looks dodgy but it’s more than compensated for by their goal-scoring, match winning options. They have a few players - Bale, Lennon, Huddleston, Modric – I would so love to see playing in claret and blue – not that we are in a position to attract any but bargain-basement, has-beens and never-will-have-beens at the moment. We all expected Portsmouth to make a game of it but I felt sure that if Spurs took the lead, Portsmouth heads would go down and they were well capable of losing by three or four. But they performed magnificently and thoroughly deserved their victory. The displayed exactly the kind of self-confidence and determination to succeed that we could have done with in our encounters against most of the top-half sides in this torrid season.

Our own desperately needed victory over the “mighty” Sunderland 24 hours earlier was a reward for grit and determination if not for quality or creativity. There was a rather long period earlier in the season when we couldn’t buy an ugly 1-0 win for love nor money and this one was so timely. Although those who closely follow my column will know that I suggested we were in for a high scoring game, half an hour before kick-off I disagreed with myself and decided to put my money on 1-0. As it turned out this was my first successful correct score bet of the season. And I won back about half the money I had thrown away on the Grand National. It seems that Ladbrokes, like God or the taxman gives with one hand but takes, and takes, and takes with the other.

Those four points from the Everton and Sunderland fixtures brought our dismal run of spineless defeats to an end and set us up nicely for our annual nightmare of a fixture at Anfield. With Hull and Wolves only able to register draws at the weekend things looked even more promising, but then Wigan pulled a victory out of certain defeat and against all odds stretched four points ahead of us again. And with Bolton having come from behind to win full points, the need to play out of our skins and get something from the visit to Liverpool was surely staring every one of our players in the face.

Out of our skins? We hardly got out of our half! It was an abject performance all round and we deserved to get trashed by more than the three goals a half-hearted Liverpool managed without having to break sweat before their more important European game. The only Hammers to emerge with any credit were the fans who could be heard throughout trying to lift the players and instill the pride that amazingly we still feel in identifying with our team – a team that must be our weakest, least talented or creative, and without doubt the least committed that I can ever remember.

I don’t suppose we’ll be told, but they showed every sign of a squad that had had a huge falling out with each other before the game. The team spirit that has been missing most of the season but was so evident against Everton and Sunderland, was not present at all. Zola and Clarke looked defeated at Anfield before a ball was kicked and they seemed totally devoid of ideas during the game. The players were barely going through the motions. If this isn’t sorted out by today then there are no two ways about it – we are fucked and thoroughly deserve to be. There are no excuses for our (lack of) performance at Liverpool though no doubt someone will probably say it was something to do with volcanic ash getting into our engines and slowing us down...

I remember a game against Liverpool just a few months ago when we were full of ideas and courage, when we played our hearts out and got narrowly defeated. We were in need of points at the time but not desperately fighting relegation. Surely we were entitled to expect at least that level of performance last Monday, when that threat hung over us so obviously and so menacingly. For all our efforts we might have been narrowly beaten again – Liverpool after all do have world-class players rather than the second-raters, the cast-offs and the inexperienced youngsters whose self-confidence is at rock-bottom that we possess – but psychologically it would have been so different. A battling defeat would have meant taking some spirit and pride and fight into today’s game. Instead we will be approaching it with a combination of desperation and gloom and not like any of those combos I mentioned earlier.

If we play like we did on Monday, and Wigan get the first goal, we won’t come back. But if we are too nervous about conceding then we won’t be brave enough going forward. I don’t know what the answer is – the season was lost in so many other games – but the 11 players who played the other night won’t do it. Scott Parker will be in for one of those places (hopefully Kojak’s); I’m praying that Daprella gets the nod over Spectator. And, though he may be a total nutter, Diamanti needs to be there – his passion is infectious and with a team so surprisingly lacking in attacking ideas it may only be from his powerful expertise in dead ball situations that we can hope to threaten Wigan’s goal. We can do it – but it is absolutely vital that we get the first goal. And let’s pray for Hull and Burnley’s opponents. If we fail to beat Wigan, and Wigan have hauled themselves to safety by the time they have to play Hull, you don’t need to be Mystic Meg to predict that result.

A few weeks ago when I interviewed Billy Bragg for OLAS and asked what results he wanted by the end of the season he said: “I’d like to see the BNP soundly defeated in Barking & Dagenham and the Hammers pull clear of the bottom six.” Since then we have definitely seen progress on the first, if not the other. Last weekend people in Barking and Dagenham who have been trying to expose the lies and racism of the BNP were joined by hundreds of others (myself included) in making sure that every home in the borough received a tabloid paper from Hope Not Hate – urging people to vote for the first by rejecting the second. Meanwhile we’ve seen serious in-fighting within the BNP – some of their candidates have stepped down and others have been expelled. One of their leading officers it seems had allegedly threatened to kill their leader Nick Griffin and has had to explain this to the police. I hope they get him for jumping the queue as well! Anyway OLAS readers – please, please, use your votes for Hope and not for Hate, and talk to your mates about it – this time it really is serious.

As for the second well, let’s see what can be done for “hope” at Upton Park this afternoon. Our next visitors here, after today, will be Man City on the final day of the season. Let’s hope that, by then, that will be one result that won’t matter because I can’t see us getting anything out of that game if they need the points too. Our team may be shite and look as if they don’t give a flying fuck, and in truth we probably deserve to go down, but if Hull and Burnley fail and our players find a way to keep us in the premier league I continue to believe that we can turn things around by the start of next season. We can begin then to restore the club to what it should be and what fans like us deserve to be part of. As the great philosophers of Sham 69 said: “They can lie to my face but not to my heart. If we all stand together, it will just be the start”. COYI!!!