GIANFRANCO'S BAROMETER

OLAS 445 26 October 2008

How perfect would it have been to go into today’s game on the back of two winning performances? We arrive, instead, having suffered two successive defeats to average teams. Never mind, we are ready for Arsenal anyway. Arsenal’s defence is not as anally retentive as it once was and, in recent years we have enjoyed enough good results against them, home and away, to know that we can beat them. Pardew demonstrated for everyone the method to employ if you want to make Whinger lose his cool. Gianfranco is probably too much of a gent to use those tactics but he will know that the performances he can bring out of the players against the likes of the Arse and Manure the following week will be a barometer of how well he has stepped up to the demands of the premiership. Lots of teams treat points at the expense of the giants as bonus points. Bonus, shmonus – I’m confident we will get some.

Bad as the result was against Bolton, it was essentially down to two uncharacteristic and unforced errors by Rob Green, who is a consistently high performer. He won’t make errors like those again for many a moon. It was predictable that, after scoring early in each of our first three home games, a tough-minded team would come to Upton Park primarily to defend and keep as many players playing deep. Bolton did precisely that. For the first 25 minutes, though, we used crisp, short passes and purposeful one touch football attempting to drive a path through them. They restricted us mainly to shooting from a distance but some of these efforts were only just off target with the goalie beaten. I’ve no doubt that if we had scored first we would have gone on to win. Bolton would have been forced to chase the game and we would have found further opportunities.

As it is, their double strike in quick succession rocked us and the players were visibly disorientated. It was the kind of scenario that Steve Clarke ought to prepare the team for overcoming and I am sure, over time, he will. Zola made the right moves to try to retrieve the game – risking a three-man defence that only came unstuck right at the end. With more bite in the final third we would have got some reward from the game, even if some players (Etherington, Fuabert) were playing below par.

We didn’t succeed, but the game never felt beyond us until that storming third goal. And that strong sense that even when we were losing we could turn it around reminded me of our first season back with Pardew. Pards has his own problems these days at Charlton but his positivity and never-say-die attitude in 2005-6, and his desire that West Ham should play true to their traditions, has a new lease of life under Gianfranco and I am sure he will be pleased about that.

Curbishleyism is gone, the wasted passes across the field followed by the long hoof forward are gone and real football has returned. If our finishing was not so woeful at Hull we would have ran out easy winners. Bellamy and Cole need to sharpen up in front of goal. Certainly, if we are to get something from the game today and next week at Old Trafford, it can only be by playing real football and taking the few chances we will get.

Full credit to Hull, though, for riding their luck against us and winning so many points at this stage of their first premiership season. Good to see their fellow promoted club, Stoke, notch up a win at the weekend, too, though I can’t remember who it was that they beat. Oh yeah, now I remember!!! The only thing amazes me about Spurs this season is how they managed to get even two points.

It is such a warm and proud feeling to beat any premiership rival but it is especially fulfilling to beat the Arse. Undoubtedly, part of it is seeing Whinger shuffle around nervously like Mr Bean and then listening to him come out with his excuses scraped from the bottom of the barrel. He is Mr Bad Loser Number 1. And, to be honest, I can’t get away from my very first impression of him when I thought he looked like a cold-blooded Nazi bureaucrat – not the individual that personally commits mass murder, but the one who records it and checks that everything is in order and running smoothly.

We know from experience that everyone of us collectively – the crowd at Upton Park – can totally get underneath his skin and that of his players. So you know what is demanded of you today.

Blimey, that’s eight paragraphs and I’m still talking about the football on the pitch while the real story is, of course, the financial crash that is threatening the future of many clubs, not least ours. My friend Paul, for sins in a past life, I suspect, a Blackpool fan, reckons that West Ham would be better off purchasing their personnel from Iceland Supermarket than Iceland the country. He’s got a point. They offer family meals for £5 – so their football players and chairmen surely can’t cost that much more.

Of course the global financial crisis is not (that) funny, but I had to chuckle when I heard a newsreader say that, “Icelandic assets might be frozen”. I stated to imagine how painfully boring it would be to be a weatherman/woman on Icelandic TV: “Gott kvolld. A morgun vilja vera kuldi” - “Good evening: tomorrow will be cold (and the day after, and the day after, and the day after, and…) Á nótt það vilja vera frjósa. (At night it will be freezing!)”

No kidding. Still the word on the street is that our Mr Landsbanki will feel the pressure to cash in on his assets while he still can. And that is why we need to prepare ourselves for the name change.

I was chatting to my friend Ivor about an article I had read speculating that the financial crisis would force our Icelandic owner to sell and that a company from Abu Dhabi would be bidding to buy West Ham. For most of its existence West ham has typified the football club where one paternalistic local family business has remained in control, and players gave service to one club. These days it’s not just players but clubs too that are seen as short-tem disposable assets. Anyway, I said to Ivor that I thought, “this Abu Dhabi business wouldn’t be terribly keen on the ‘Ham’ in our name so we may have to become West Kebab.” I was only just stating to get used to our new name when Ivor said: “That will be East Kebab then – no, hang on, Middle-East Kebab!”.

So there we have it. A month from now, instead of West Ham United we could be “Middle East Kebab” – singing our new theme tune: “I’m forever roasting shwarma, gritty shwarma on a spit, it roasts so red, keeps us all well-fed, but my mate prefers felafel instead. Fortunes always hiding etc.” Okay it hasn’t got the pathos and underlying theme of proletarian resignation that “Bubbles” possesses, and it will take time to get used to it, but I’m sure we’ll adjust. We always do.

Anyway, dress warmly, make sure your assets don’t get frozen, keep up the pressure on Whinger and his team, and enjoy the game! COYI!!!