WHAT A LIBERTY!

OLAS 441 27th August 2008

Twenty pounds to see West Ham play Macclesfield? Oh, plus a booking fee of £1.50. And that’s on top of nearly £900 I’ve paid as a season ticket holder, to watch 19 league games. I don’t want to sound like Cath Tate’s grandmother but, really, what a fucking liberty!

Tonight’s match (and the next round, if I can admit a little optimism) should have been thrown in gratis for season ticket holders, set at no more than a tenner for other adults, and allowed kids in for a quid. The players are on annual salaries, not on sweatshop piece-rates, so tonight’s game entails no extra costs for them. Yes, you’ve got to pay the non-playing staff and there a bit of leccy on the floodlights, but, come on West Ham, give something to the long-suffering Hammers fans and we’d have a packed house for a game where we might see the ball hitting the net a few times.

After all, that guy Stanley, from Accrington, beat Macclesdfield 2-0 all on his own at the weekend and we’ve got 11 players. And, you know what, West Ham? With a full house you sell a lot more booze, pies and programmes. Everyone’s happy, fed and watered.

Disregarding a few historical slip-ups, a tie at home against League 2 opposition ought to be the kind of game that we win comfortably, and when the result is beyond doubt, it is the perfect opportunity to blood some of our younger players. Do we want them to play in a half-empty stadium or would we like them to be cheered on by a full house?

But this lot running the finances at Upton Park have got so used to ripping us off at every single turn, I don’t think they can see it that way at all.

There are several clubs you could go to where your season ticket includes some cup games and even European games. Here, they are probably working out how much more they could charge us should we ever get anywhere near Europe in the next few years.

So who wants it to be like this? What do the players think? Do they believe that the crowd should continue to be ripped off? I don’t think so, and I can’t believe that many of the people who work for the club below boardroom level agree with shafting the fans either.

I don’t know if you are familiar with the company called Philosophy Football who have marketed some excellent shirts over the years, but their new one has a simple statement that is so apt for our situation and that of a good few clubs in the Poundstretcher Premiership. It just says “AGAINST MOD£RN FOOTBALL” (www.philosophyfootball.com)

We’re not asking for the Earth – just a bit of value for money and the occasional gesture to show that there is more to a football club than an economic enterprise run for the benefit of its shareholders.

So the season began with West Ham taking three points. There were quite a few positives to take from the Wigan game but likewise the concerns were only too obvious. I was losing patience with Deano last season but he played a blinder against Wigan and did everything that we hoped he would do when he joined the club. He was a constant threat in the first half, when the midfield were more energetic and the wingers were seeing more of the ball.

When Deano first arrived at Upton Park, without trying to be hyperbolic I wrote in OLAS that there was something about him that reminded me of Geoff Hurst. Well, the manner in which he took his first goal against Wigan - a quick turn and an unstoppable rising shot from 15 yards – took me back many years and reminded me of the goals I used to see by Geoffrey week after week.

Deano’s second was a matter of being in the right place at the right time. But what pleased me apart from the goals was the hunger with which he played throughout the game. Although at the point when hunger became greed, in typical West ham fashion, he injured himself. There was no way he was going to score from a free kick 35 years out. He’s no Nobby Solano. The guys sitting next to me were taking bets as to which row of the Bobby Moore Upper it would land in.

What was striking as the team came out was how tall they were (apart from the mascots). I thought for a moment that I had got smaller over the summer, which is possible. No exaggeration, It was like “Land of the giants” out there. Having Upson and Davenport in defence and Cole and Deano up front actually winning the ball in the air, really made a difference in the first half. Last year we were pathetic in the air and we paid for it at both ends. Wigan’s solitary goal in a poor second half, when we could have been hammered by a stronger team, followed one of the few times they outjumped us in our penalty area.

Upson and Davenport did well for most of the game, and Faubert gave more than a few hints that we can expect much more quality from him this year. He was involved in both goals and he gave us good width. Mattie was in and out of the game, fading particularly in the second half, but the reason we nearly gave the game away was the collapse of the central midfield. Parker and Noble ran out of puff by half time and neither offered much creativity.

Of course it would be stupid to make judgements for the season from the first game. But I’m just praying that the pattern of starting brightly and fading away displayed here does not herald another Charlton Athletic type season of hope and plummet.

Nice to see Zamora play a terrific game against Arsenal using pace and power to take players on. Shame it wasn’t for us. At the end of the day, though, it was three points at Wigan’s expense. And that was at least three more than Spurs got. Seeing Spurs get defeated again in their second game kept me smiling of course. Only I’m not smiling now.

Last year one of our best performances of a disappointing season was at Citeh, where we deserved much more than one point. This year we go there on the back of a first day win, to a club who let four goals in on day one, are missing most of their forwards, and have trouble in the boardroom. We offer nothing and let them walk all over us. Pathetic. West Ham? Same old, same old………(insert any word that starts with “sh” and ends in “t”)

I’m writing this before listening to Curbishley’s lame excuses, because I know that will depress me further and you won’t want to read all that “moan, moan, kill Curbishley, moan, moan, sack the board” stuff in August. So I’m sparing you that. But, I’m looking for a big result tonight and on Saturday to get us back on track immediately, otherwise I’ll…otherwise I’ll… well, I don’t know, I’ll start supporting Accrington Stanley or something!

Final word on Macclesfield. Apparently the local nickname for the town of Macclesfield is “Treacle Town”. This dates back to an alleged incident where a merchant spilt a load of treacle on Hibel Road in the middle of the town, and the poor rushed out to scoop it off the cobbles. Have to say that scooping treacle off me cobbles sounds a bit more enticing than watching West Ham and listening to Curbishley at the moment. Come on West Ham – prove me wrong!