Did Greenie speak for us all?

OLAS 473 December 20th 2009

You’ve got to be careful what you wish for. I was so carried away with rubbing my neighbour’s face in the fact that his beloved Spurs were 1-0 down to Wolves after just a few minutes last Saturday, that I momentarily forget that Wolves are actually our competitors at that wrong end of the table, not Spurs. I should have taken more notice of the chat I had earlier in the day with another mate who is a Spurs fan. He was not looking forward at all to the impending visit of Wolves. I told him not to be a numpty and blithely assured him that Defoe might get another five. So what happens by the end of the day? Spurs lose, which ought to be a cause for great celebration and much piss-taking, but so do we – also to a team within the sound of the Crossroads Motel. And we are back in the bottom three, about to face Bolton who had attacked Manchester City with great flair and were unlucky not to beat them.

I’m writing this before the Bolton game but I’m not expecting a team so low on confidence and person-power as West Ham are at the moment to get anything from that game. I will be fairly astonished if I am wrong.

It’s another few days yet until Christmas, but West Ham’s defence has been true to the Christmas spirit well before December came upon us, with more give-away goals than you could dream of. Any visitors to Upton Park have absolutely been showered with free gifts from our non-existent defence, often aided and abetted by the ineptitude of our midfielders getting caught in possession.

Being a West Ham fan with a beard and glasses, I was brought up with Hanukkah rather than Christmas and at the heart of the Hanukkah story is a miracle (all about oil for an everlasting light lasting eight days instead of just one – you don’t need to know the rest though it is pretty interesting). So, if its OK with the rest of you, I think we all ought to do Hanukkah rather than Christmas this year and hope that some of that miracle-juice flows for us, if not today, then at least sometime soon. Ok you’ll miss your turkey and your tree an your midnight mass, but you’ll get turned on to “latkes” and doughnuts and I can guarantee you can still have a miserable time with your family.

We have to be honest and admit that only a miracle will get us out of the dog-poo this time around. At the moment an impossibly heavy burden is being placed on the least experienced shoulders, depending on them to solve problems that they didn’t create. Earlier this season I wrote:

“I don’t think many clubs, even among the top four, can boast such a crop of talented youngsters coming through. They could turn us into a bit of a surprise package this season and help us pull off some unlikely results, or they could really struggle with their confidence if the early results go against us.”

No prizes for guessing which of those avenues we have driven down at reckless speed. I think we all really feel for the 18, 19 and 20 year olds who have been given their dream opportunity of playing for West Ham but without any scaffolding or support of any kind. They are trying their best, and Stanislas against Fulham and Hines against Villa won us some of our precious few points – but generally they are failing and they look bereft.

The club has been asset-stripped leaving us with positions on the field without any competent professionals to fill them. No wonder we find it well beyond our reach to string one result together, let alone two or three.

I’m still reeling from the Scott Duxbury interview in the last OLAS. Two sentences stand out. One, when he says “we don’t have to sell a single player that we don’t want to sell.” This is superficially very reassuring, but then you realise that what it really means is that any player is for sale, the club merely have to posit a rationalisation for doing so. And when it happens they will say “we wanted to sell this player because of….” and Zola will be bullied into nodding along with it.

The second sentence, which really took my breath away, was: “Gianfranco doesn’t want to add to the squad in January…bringing more players in will have an unsettling effect on the squad.”

Either Duxbury is lying or Gianfranco has no appreciation whatever of the parlous state we are in. As someone who absolutely and excitedly welcomed the little man’s appointment I would like to think it is the former. If it really is the latter, the situation is hopeless because this current squad is so much weaker in almost every department to the last squad that got relegated. Yes there are key players in our team currently out with injury – Upson, Cole, Behrami for starters, but that is why premiership teams have squads – so that there are more than 11 perfectly competent players at this level to choose from for each game. That is not something we can currently boast. We will need at least two decent additions to the side to have any chance of staying up. and we will need at least three from a long list of clubs - Portsmouth, Wolves, Hull, Blackburn, Wigan, Burnley, not to improve their squads more than us for it to make a difference.

Meanwhile today we have the not inconsequential matter of getting through the Chelsea match without making our goal difference dramatically worse. it must be tempting for Zola to pack the midfield and play defensively, but we will come unstuck as we did against Man U if we attempt that. The only way to attack the game is to do just that – to attack and to keep Chelsea on the back-foot as much as possible and we might get away with a narrow defeat. They know that goal difference works at both ends of the table, and if we give even a hint of collapsing they will take us to the cleaners big time – just like Man U did. You can’t blame Greenie for puking up during the Man U game. He spoke for us all.

In the evening of the Man U game I met up with this friend of mine called Steve visiting from abroad. He’s been out the country about 25 years. As we emailed each other to make the arrangement I explained that I would be coming from the West Ham game.“ Didn’t they use to be a football team?” he asked, rather astutely. “That’s right” I replied.

There are so many reasons to hate Chelsea. I was disappointed when I came across a website recently that listed just 59 reasons. A few examples are:
3) They give their 'fans' cheap plastic flags to wave to create an atmosphere because they can't by themselves.
4) Where were all the fans before Roman and his dodgy Russian Roubles?
28) Players that leave good honest clubs to go to Chelsea just to be greedy for all the fucking money and warm the bench thinking they are cool.
54) Selling Robinho shirts when they hadn't signed him.
Although their number 1 reason actually says it all:
“Cheating, Diving C*nts!!!”
The full list is available at: http://www.oleole.com/blogs/manchester-united-remain-in-hunt-for-lyon-star-karim-benzema-report-1/posts/talking--few-reasons-to-hate-chelsea-fc

A poet friend of mine writes that “all useful hate begins with self-hate” and I guess there are a good few self-hating West Ham fans out there these days. But today needs to be about something different.

We can’t match their roubles and we don’t want to match them with cheating and diving. But I’d dearly like to see us match them in playing with pride. I don’t care what the score is today I just want to feel at the end that we have played our hearts out for each other and for us the fans for 90 minutes, and given us some reason to feel proud of their efforts.

And I want to see Zola with a good reason to smile even if we lose.
Enjoy the game if you can! COYI!!!!!