OLAS 476 10th January 2010
If I wanted to see “A Comedy of Errors” I would have gone to Stratford upon Avon, but it seems that I managed to find it nevertheless just a stone’s throw from Stratford East London last Sunday.
Arsenal’s mainly second-string side were there for the taking. Whinger knows that with Man U and Chelsea sliding, they have got a serious chance of challenging for the league title. The F A Cup is one diversion they needed like a hole in the head. And they don’t have a terribly good cup record against West Ham.
For much of the game they spurned our generosity. We repeatedly handed them the ball on a plate, gave them all the space in the world to move from defence to attack, but when they got down our end of the pitch they opted to belt the ball over the bar, or crash it against our defenders. And for a side whose attacking game depends on precision passing, they often failed to make their last pass tell. With Arsenal’s profligacy, our patched up side were muddling through and occasionally threatening their goal through Diamianti and Junior Stan, but unfortunately we found their goalie, Fabianski in rather fab form. A goal out of nothing in the 45th minute provided the prefect platform to wrap the game up in the second half.
Halfway through the second half you could see the frustration on the faces of the Arsenal players and Whinger was clearly getting more and more twitchy and agitated. He started pacing quickly, then stopping to hold his hands out like a scarecrow. He’d be quite good as a scarecrow – he would frighten me and small children any day. The Arsenal crowd, very upbeat early on and taunting the home fans for being so hushed, had all gone rather quiet. We were still in front and it looked like staying that way.
To be honest neither team deserved to win, as the quality for much of the match was poor. But with 15 minutes to go I actually fooled myself into thinking it was going to happen for us, that despite a display full of huff and puff but hopelessly mistimed or panicked passes and needless mistakes, it was seriously looking as if effort rather than skill would see us through, that we would hang on.
My mind began to wander. Having very much enjoyed a two week break from the school where I teach in Islington which is, not surprisingly dominated by Arsenal supporters, I was imagining the scenario and looking forward to the pleasure that only a 52-year-old West Ham fan could get by winding up a few of the primary age kids who take it all too seriously. But within a few minutes, Arsenal’s substitutions had made the difference, comedy had turned to tragedy we were dumped out of the cup. Wembley has been officially struck off my list of exotic destinations this year.
Once Arsenal had equalised we all knew which way it was going to go. The only surprise was how quickly Arsenal grabbed their second. No doubt many of our supporters will be relieved that we won’t be adding a replay to our fixture list. After all, our players are dropping like flies, while others are getting ready to make themselves pretty for the shop window for the post Christmas sales to bigger and more ambitious clubs. We knew we were going to be without Franco (suspension), the injured Cole, Hines and Parker, and Noble, who took quite a knock against Portsmouth. But what about Jack Collisson? His non-appearance and therefore non-cup-tied status will certainly keep me worried until the end of the window.
Still it’s nice to know that Zola uses my column to help him with the team selection. I had proposed that Daprella was given a try out and made the case for Nouble to join him on the pitch against Arsenal. One of them made a big impression and I had been expecting it to be Nouble. As it was he seemed completely overawed with the occasion, frozen by nerves, and increasingly clumsy as he tried to get things right. There was so much expectation but he made a bit of a hash of it, and he must be kicking himself and feeling pretty low.
As fans we need to forget this performance, mark it down to inexperience, and treat his next start as his real debut. He looked desperate to do well but clueless as to how to go about it. Yet when he last had a proper run out – against Millwall earlier in the season – he showed considerable promise. So I think we need a bit of understanding and a bit of encouragement for a youngster who is physically mature but wasn’t really prepared psychologically for what he was going to be involved in during this cup tie. If Gary’s info on Cole’s injury is true – and with Franco no spring chicken – we may be seeing quite a lot of Nouble in the next two months.
Daprella – also a youngster – was far more prepared for the occasion and gave a fine display. He looked comfortable on the ball and was not afraid to burst forward. it was a performance that made me feel much less disturbed by Ilunga’s injury tendencies. Most importantly it proves we have adequate cover without having to resort to the piss-awful Spector – who is possibly the crappiest full back I’ve ever seen at Upton Park (or in any park come to that) - and I’ve been coming here since ’66.
Other players who can hold their head up high from the Arsenal game are Faubert (apart from a couple of lapses), Behrami who gave a high energy Billy Bonds- type performance and Junior Stanislas who drove forward whenever possible and was unlucky not to get on the scoresheet.
Diamanti was excellent for the first hour then faded. Jiminez gave a more committed performance, with some nice touches, but has not convinced me yet. Upson did well but looked as if he was going through the motions. He showed absolutely nothing as a captain who is supposed to be motivating the players around him. Tomkins won some crucial balls in the air but his distribution on the ground was very poor. Greeny made a couple of fine saves but his kicking was inconsistent and his ability on crosses was again left open to question. Kovac underperformed once more over the 90 minutes, though he had a better first half.
Despite being dumped out of the cup, one bright spot was the return of Freddie Sears who looked lively and confident, though his failure to hit the net on any occasion during his loan period at Palace does not bode well. But he seemed to be very glad to be back playing in the West Ham colours again. I was tempted to say he’s grown as a player but he still looks three foot six to me, so I won’t say it.
Today, it is back to the relegation dogfight. And for the benefit of any pedants out there, apparently you can have a dogfight with wolves on account of them being from the same species as dogs (Canis Lupus – if you really want to know). What did you think they were - some kid of angry short haired sheep? Some scientists claim that Dingos are a kind of missing link in the history of the connection between wolves and dogs. And I thought it was a game for bored grannies who had outlived their husbands – shows how much I know.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Wolves at Upton Park (though I’ve seen a few dogs…) and I think Derek Dougan was playing last time out. Now that dates me. But I like Mick McCarthy with his mis-shapen nose and great northern drone when he’s interviewed. and if they weren’t in the diogfight with us I’d want them to stay up. But there can’t be any room at all for sentiment today.
We did a job on them in the first game of the season and we need to repeat that in our first home league encounter of 2010. January and February are all about points, and much as I hate the “targets” and “assessment” culture that is invading every aspect of our lives poisoning so many ordinary simple human interactions, I hope that Gianfranco has set the team some tough targets for the number of points to be in our possession come the end of February. We have to look at getting a minimum of 12 points from the 8 games between now and then – and if possible, more t help us climb away form the relegation zone.
So West Ham – what will you serve up today – comedy, tragedy – or - a spellbinding performance of what Alf Garnett described as “working class ballet”? The stage is set – don’t let us down.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Let's kick arse
OLAS 475 January 3rd 2010
Most people like new experiences. Who can forget the first time they tasted ice cream, flew on an aeroplane, or robbed a bank? For Robert Green, getting through 90 minutes of football without having to collect the ball from the back of the net would have been such a distant fading memory, that it must have felt like a totally new and unearthly experience. Though he had made a hash of a couple of clearances, he was unlucky to be beaten once by Chelsea – and then only from the penalty spot – but against Portsmouth he was much more commanding, especially after West Ham decided to sit back on their lead and surrender Pompey the initiative in the second half. So his clean sheet on Boxing Day could not have come at a more opportune moment.
If someone stopped you in the street and asked you, as a West Ham supporter, whether you would rather beat Chelsea or Portsmouth, well, nine times out of ten you would surely say Chelsea. The thought of getting one over those rich arrogant tossers is very appealing, while Portsmouth are quite cuddly really. But when you stop and think about our current predicament in the league and who we really need to be taking points from. You realise how valuable it was that, if we were taking four points from these encounters, it was so much better that we failed to beat Chelsea but succeeded in beating Portsmouth.
It was an odd game against Pompey, given how much urgency we had shown against Chelsea, as this one counted far more. It was played at a snail’s pace with neither team showing much adventure, though West Ham were good in parts, and deserved to be ahead at the interval if only for showing slightly more endeavour and purpose. We came good again towards the end and with more accurate finishing would have won by three or four goals. Collisson had three good attempts in the game and should have buried at least one. But that is the part of his game that he most needs to improve.
Collisson has the potential to be a West Ham great if we can hang on to him. He is the nearest thing I have seen over the years to another Trevor Brooking – extremely poised and unselfish, very thoughtful when the ball arrives at his feet, drifts nimbly past defenders, reads the game extremely well and ghosts into good positions. Clever Trevor also didn’t’ score many goals but then again he had Geoff Hurst/Clyde Best/Jimmy Greaves/Pop Robson to take responsibility for putting the ball in the back of the net. At this moment we have one ageing Mexican international and an injury list as long as a blue whale’s penis (which I have been assured on good authority, rather than personal experience, is pretty substantial)
After the Portsmouth game the friendly press were bigging up Kovac and Jiminez. Now many philosophers will argue that actuality as perceived by different individuals is a tricky thing and everyone sees things through their own window, but I honestly don’t know which window some of these characters are using. Yes Kovac took his goal superbly, and showed other premier-level strikers how to bury a header, but for a fella his size he should really be bossing the midfield. And Patrick Viera he isn’t. His tackles are often lightweight and half-hearted, his vision poor, his timing of passes frequently lacking in awareness. I don’t doubt his effort or commitment – just his ability – and cannot fathom how he captained Spartak Moscow, unless he won that title in a raffle. I hope he will prove me wrong in 2010 and show that my window on reality has the curtains drawn and that the plaudits he has received recently are totally merited.
When Jiminez first kicked a ball for the Hammers in the pre-season friendly against Napoli I was impressed but maybe it was another trick of the reality lens, with the other players being relatively less fit or bothered. In the cut and thrust of the Premier League he looks so pedestrian. Many of his passes come to nothing; and when he wants to receive a pass, if the ball doesn’t come right to his feet, he makes little effort to win it. He made two good contributions against Portsmouth and luckily for him they both ended with goals – getting bundled over for our penalty in the first instance and floating a superb curling free kick for Kovac to head in for the second. Between those moments I saw a rather indifferent performance from a player who either lacks confidence, commitment or ability. If I’m wrong, Luis, then prove it in the new year. I want you to succeed. But at the moment I would rather see Junior Stanislas in your place because he knows how to advance up the pitch rather than go square and how to strike a bit of fear into defences with his aggressive forward runs.
On a more positive note, the return of Upson has seen the defence beginning to operate again much more like a unit. Tomkins is developing extremely well given his age and experience and Faubert and Ilunga are playing more consistently, though with Ilunga picking up yet another injury that will be disrupted again. I hope we are not going to see the imposter Jonathan Spector out there today, trying to fool the public again that he is a professional footballer. Some players suffer from being one-footed – Spector suffers from being no-footed. Why not give Daprella a go?
The crucial aspect of the win over Portsmouth was that it lifted West ham out of the bottom three, a position that at the time of writing we have sustained despite the fairly inevitable setback against high-riding Spurs. We go into 2010 one point above the drop zone but only four points off 11th place and with a substantially better goal difference than four of the teams immediately above us, which at the end of the day is worth a point. so I’m less pessimistic than I was a few weeks ago.
I know how much the annual fixtures with Spurs mean to every West Ham fan, but I’m not too disheartened by our failure at Shite Hart lane. They have a much stronger squad than us, were able to bring in four players rested on boxing day, and we lost two key players to injury early on – so we need to keep it in perspective. Let’s hope we will have a stronger squad again by the time we face Wolves on January 10th.
But today we can put the league to one side anyway and savour what ought to be quite a spectacle in the FA Cup. Neither team will want to add more fixtures to their schedule unnecessarily so both will certainly be playing an attacking game to force a win. We have the psychological advantage of going into the game as underdogs on our home patch, with our home crowd as our 12th man, and in the knowledge that when Arsenal came here in the league game we gave them a mighty fright in the second half and they were the ones clinging on near the end for a point even though we were down to 10 men.
We need to start with our best team but be prepared, if we are clearly heading for defeat, to give a couple of subs a proper run out, to prepare them for league action, especially Nouble. With Franco struggling to maintain his strength as a lone striker, and Carlton and Zavon still sidelined we need more options up front and Nouble could be an important player for us in the second half of the season, but he needs to get the chance to play more than a couple of minutes at the end of a game.
You don’t need me to tell you how important January is to the future of the club. We can do all the speculating we like but won’t really know what kind of shakedown will have been effected until January 31st. We may get hints today though – if certain of our stars don’t appear and we are fobbed off with excuses like “a cold”, “flu” or “a virus”. You don’t need to use a translation search engine like “babel fish” to know that this means “We’re selling them, despite any of Duckbrain’s promises, and we get more money if they are not cup-tied”.
Anyway, after the home game against Chelsea we have shown that we can play without fear against big clubs at Upton Park and I fancy that we’ll give Arsenal a run for their money today with Diamanti being our surprise package I haven’t been to Wembley for a while – and that’s been mainly to visit my dentist. I would love another trip there that doesn’t involve excruciating pain. And I’m old enough to remember seeing Billy Bonds holding the cup there. So come on West Ham, show us what you can do. Get out there and kick some arse! COYI!!!!!
Most people like new experiences. Who can forget the first time they tasted ice cream, flew on an aeroplane, or robbed a bank? For Robert Green, getting through 90 minutes of football without having to collect the ball from the back of the net would have been such a distant fading memory, that it must have felt like a totally new and unearthly experience. Though he had made a hash of a couple of clearances, he was unlucky to be beaten once by Chelsea – and then only from the penalty spot – but against Portsmouth he was much more commanding, especially after West Ham decided to sit back on their lead and surrender Pompey the initiative in the second half. So his clean sheet on Boxing Day could not have come at a more opportune moment.
If someone stopped you in the street and asked you, as a West Ham supporter, whether you would rather beat Chelsea or Portsmouth, well, nine times out of ten you would surely say Chelsea. The thought of getting one over those rich arrogant tossers is very appealing, while Portsmouth are quite cuddly really. But when you stop and think about our current predicament in the league and who we really need to be taking points from. You realise how valuable it was that, if we were taking four points from these encounters, it was so much better that we failed to beat Chelsea but succeeded in beating Portsmouth.
It was an odd game against Pompey, given how much urgency we had shown against Chelsea, as this one counted far more. It was played at a snail’s pace with neither team showing much adventure, though West Ham were good in parts, and deserved to be ahead at the interval if only for showing slightly more endeavour and purpose. We came good again towards the end and with more accurate finishing would have won by three or four goals. Collisson had three good attempts in the game and should have buried at least one. But that is the part of his game that he most needs to improve.
Collisson has the potential to be a West Ham great if we can hang on to him. He is the nearest thing I have seen over the years to another Trevor Brooking – extremely poised and unselfish, very thoughtful when the ball arrives at his feet, drifts nimbly past defenders, reads the game extremely well and ghosts into good positions. Clever Trevor also didn’t’ score many goals but then again he had Geoff Hurst/Clyde Best/Jimmy Greaves/Pop Robson to take responsibility for putting the ball in the back of the net. At this moment we have one ageing Mexican international and an injury list as long as a blue whale’s penis (which I have been assured on good authority, rather than personal experience, is pretty substantial)
After the Portsmouth game the friendly press were bigging up Kovac and Jiminez. Now many philosophers will argue that actuality as perceived by different individuals is a tricky thing and everyone sees things through their own window, but I honestly don’t know which window some of these characters are using. Yes Kovac took his goal superbly, and showed other premier-level strikers how to bury a header, but for a fella his size he should really be bossing the midfield. And Patrick Viera he isn’t. His tackles are often lightweight and half-hearted, his vision poor, his timing of passes frequently lacking in awareness. I don’t doubt his effort or commitment – just his ability – and cannot fathom how he captained Spartak Moscow, unless he won that title in a raffle. I hope he will prove me wrong in 2010 and show that my window on reality has the curtains drawn and that the plaudits he has received recently are totally merited.
When Jiminez first kicked a ball for the Hammers in the pre-season friendly against Napoli I was impressed but maybe it was another trick of the reality lens, with the other players being relatively less fit or bothered. In the cut and thrust of the Premier League he looks so pedestrian. Many of his passes come to nothing; and when he wants to receive a pass, if the ball doesn’t come right to his feet, he makes little effort to win it. He made two good contributions against Portsmouth and luckily for him they both ended with goals – getting bundled over for our penalty in the first instance and floating a superb curling free kick for Kovac to head in for the second. Between those moments I saw a rather indifferent performance from a player who either lacks confidence, commitment or ability. If I’m wrong, Luis, then prove it in the new year. I want you to succeed. But at the moment I would rather see Junior Stanislas in your place because he knows how to advance up the pitch rather than go square and how to strike a bit of fear into defences with his aggressive forward runs.
On a more positive note, the return of Upson has seen the defence beginning to operate again much more like a unit. Tomkins is developing extremely well given his age and experience and Faubert and Ilunga are playing more consistently, though with Ilunga picking up yet another injury that will be disrupted again. I hope we are not going to see the imposter Jonathan Spector out there today, trying to fool the public again that he is a professional footballer. Some players suffer from being one-footed – Spector suffers from being no-footed. Why not give Daprella a go?
The crucial aspect of the win over Portsmouth was that it lifted West ham out of the bottom three, a position that at the time of writing we have sustained despite the fairly inevitable setback against high-riding Spurs. We go into 2010 one point above the drop zone but only four points off 11th place and with a substantially better goal difference than four of the teams immediately above us, which at the end of the day is worth a point. so I’m less pessimistic than I was a few weeks ago.
I know how much the annual fixtures with Spurs mean to every West Ham fan, but I’m not too disheartened by our failure at Shite Hart lane. They have a much stronger squad than us, were able to bring in four players rested on boxing day, and we lost two key players to injury early on – so we need to keep it in perspective. Let’s hope we will have a stronger squad again by the time we face Wolves on January 10th.
But today we can put the league to one side anyway and savour what ought to be quite a spectacle in the FA Cup. Neither team will want to add more fixtures to their schedule unnecessarily so both will certainly be playing an attacking game to force a win. We have the psychological advantage of going into the game as underdogs on our home patch, with our home crowd as our 12th man, and in the knowledge that when Arsenal came here in the league game we gave them a mighty fright in the second half and they were the ones clinging on near the end for a point even though we were down to 10 men.
We need to start with our best team but be prepared, if we are clearly heading for defeat, to give a couple of subs a proper run out, to prepare them for league action, especially Nouble. With Franco struggling to maintain his strength as a lone striker, and Carlton and Zavon still sidelined we need more options up front and Nouble could be an important player for us in the second half of the season, but he needs to get the chance to play more than a couple of minutes at the end of a game.
You don’t need me to tell you how important January is to the future of the club. We can do all the speculating we like but won’t really know what kind of shakedown will have been effected until January 31st. We may get hints today though – if certain of our stars don’t appear and we are fobbed off with excuses like “a cold”, “flu” or “a virus”. You don’t need to use a translation search engine like “babel fish” to know that this means “We’re selling them, despite any of Duckbrain’s promises, and we get more money if they are not cup-tied”.
Anyway, after the home game against Chelsea we have shown that we can play without fear against big clubs at Upton Park and I fancy that we’ll give Arsenal a run for their money today with Diamanti being our surprise package I haven’t been to Wembley for a while – and that’s been mainly to visit my dentist. I would love another trip there that doesn’t involve excruciating pain. And I’m old enough to remember seeing Billy Bonds holding the cup there. So come on West Ham, show us what you can do. Get out there and kick some arse! COYI!!!!!
It's what you do next Saturday
OLAS 474 December 26th 2009
By the smiles at the end of the game you’d think we had won handsomely but psychologically the single point we gained from last Sunday’s 1-1 draw was worth as much as a victory. The extraordinary results on Saturday with Portsmouth winning comfortably against Liverpool and Fulham hammering Man U simply built up the pressure for our game against Chelsea. Portsmouth were now level with us on points at the bottom, on the same goal difference, but having scored fewer. So a defeat even by one goal against a free-scoring Chelsea side would have made us bottom at Christmas. The statisticians would be out in force gleefully telling us what almost inevitably happens to the team in that position. Meanwhile with Man U faltering but Arsenal keeping pace, Chelsea knew they could extend their lead at the top if they completed what looked on paper like a routine task of rolling over the team that had succumbed so meekly at Birmingham and Bolton recently.
But the unexpected happened. The Hammers played as if their lives depended on it and were unlucky not to snatch all three points. The team kept its shape, was not fazed by losing a key defender early on (Tomkins was magnificent as substitute), worked for each other, ran off the ball to create passing options, harried Chelsea when they were in possession, tackled with fierceness and determination and even won some balls in the air. Most of Chelsea’s efforts were long range and they had few opportunities to plant dangerous crosses. When they did get through, Green was determined no to be beaten making two crucial saves. And going forward Diamanti was inspirational, Franco was always a threat and Noble, Collisson and Parker were outstanding.
And had it stayed at 1-0, I would have been in the money too. Gambling has been part of my family heritage. I always thought my dad should have been given some kind of “lifetime service” award from Ladbrokes, having crossed their threshold religiously every day for decades to make a small investment in their growing empire. When I was very young I would hear my mum ask him how he got on with the horses and he’d invariably answer – “I was winning but then I gave it back”, and for years I thought he was just such an honest decent guy he couldn’t even bear to take his winnings – it was just the idea of winning by forecasting the future that thrilled him. Then one day it dawned on me what “and then I gave it back” really meant! Though he was indeed a thoroughly decent and honest guy from whom I inherited not just a tendency to gamble but support for the underdog, an intolerance of racism, and a quirky sense of humour. Thanks.
My granddad too, on the other side of my family was smitten young with the gambling bug. One of this first jobs was helping to install one-arm-bandits in pubs and his contribution to the Home Front during World War 2 was managing an amusement arcade in East Ham. Throughout his life he couldn’t resist a bet. It got him into trouble in the late 1960s when he was working as a porter in Billingsgate Fish Market, and would sometimes go out on the van, delivering to fishmongers and bringing back their payments to his boss. He had this rather enterprising idea that this money, which was not his, might be used to make more money on the way back if it was invested on the right horse. Trouble is he knew fish better than he knew horses. He blew the money, and I guess his face would have been as red as smoked salmon as he tried to explain what happened to it. His boss took him to court and he was lucky to escape a custodial sentence.
Towards the end, in his mid to late 80s, he was beginning to suffer from dementia and my mum was pulling out all the stops to find him a place in a decent care home. She found one with a special secure unit for people suffering similarly who could easily get lost and confused. On the first day he absconded from the home’s secure unit. No one could find him but he was eventually tracked down in a bookie’s about half a mile away. Now what would be the odds on that? Not too steep I guess.
So as I was walking past William Hill near Queen’s Market on my way to the Chelsea game I had half a mind to have a little flutter on a correct score, but the correct scores going through my head that were most likely and were so unbearable I couldn’t put money on them and I started to walk away. But I was drawn back – as if under the family spell – and once inside I knew I couldn’t bet against West Ham so I wrote two bets – one for West Ham to draw 0-0 and one for West Ham to win 1-0. As you can imagine I got pretty good odds.
I was ecstatic as a pig in shit at half-time to see that not only were we winning but at least one bet was still on. I momentarily thought that it would be so West Ham to score another, trash Chelsea but fuck up my bet too! But I could live with that.
As I handed over my betting slip for West Ham to win or to draw, the guy behind the counter was visibly smiling to himself as if to say “Thanks, mug, do come again”. If you’re employed in that job you are supposed to be professional and look neutral when people put their bets on, however left-field. OK, so in the end they kept my money but it was a mightily close run thing.
As I came out of the ground though, beaming with delight not just at the score but at the manner in which we won that point, the words of one of the world’s great philosophers were in my ears. We‘re not talking Socrates, Descartes, Wittgenstein or Charlie Marx here but that true fount of wisdom, the great and revered Ron Greenwood, who told us:
“Football is a game of tomorrows. It’s what you do next Saturday that counts.”
That could not be more true. Our fantastically hard-worked for and richly deserved point at the expense the league leaders will only truly count if it spearheads an equally committed performance against our lowly rivals Portsmouth – who also head into this encounter on the back of a great result. We have home advantage and the knowledge that on the same weekend last year we ripped them to shreds 4-1 on their manor.
Portsmouth gave warning, though, that they are determined to pull off an unlikely escape and they have sharpshooters up front who can do the business, so it will clearly be a tight game, but we surely have the quality to win.
For me personally it would be the perfect early birthday present. I was born on January 1st and West Ham stuffing Portsmouth will satisfy me more than any other present I might receive marking my 52 years on the planet.
On my actual birthday we are reviving a tradition in our household that has lapsed for a while, of visiting Highgate Cemetery for a walk with friends among the graves of some people who have inspired us. We’ll be among those of Claudia Jones – the American woman deported for political activities who was the moving force behind the Notting Hill Carnival, George Eliot, the female author who needed to adopt a man’s name to get published in Victorian England, Michael Faraday, who discovered electricity, the painter Henry Moore, and of course Karl Marx who knew a thing or two back then of what life promised for ordinary working people under the rule of the bankers and wankers.
What he would have made of those financiers whom OLAS writer Gary Portugal dubs the “Icelanpricks” would have been enlightening. Karl Marx described landlords, as those “who love to reap where they never sowed”, and capital in general as ‘dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour”.
We, and the team we love, have undoubtedly been sucked dry, but at least on the pitch last week we saw there is still some fight left. Just 7 points separate 11 teams at our end of the table, so despite the pessimism we have all been expressing there is everything to play for. And we can continue where we left off by winning 2-0 today. Three points and a clean sheet would be worth its weight in gold (and Sullivan).
The team showed in those 90 minutes against Chelsea that they have the wherewithal to rescue us on the pitch. But that is only half the battle. We, the fans, need to be more vocal and act collectively off the pitch, to win back the club that is so important in our lives. Enjoy the game. COYI!!!!!!
By the smiles at the end of the game you’d think we had won handsomely but psychologically the single point we gained from last Sunday’s 1-1 draw was worth as much as a victory. The extraordinary results on Saturday with Portsmouth winning comfortably against Liverpool and Fulham hammering Man U simply built up the pressure for our game against Chelsea. Portsmouth were now level with us on points at the bottom, on the same goal difference, but having scored fewer. So a defeat even by one goal against a free-scoring Chelsea side would have made us bottom at Christmas. The statisticians would be out in force gleefully telling us what almost inevitably happens to the team in that position. Meanwhile with Man U faltering but Arsenal keeping pace, Chelsea knew they could extend their lead at the top if they completed what looked on paper like a routine task of rolling over the team that had succumbed so meekly at Birmingham and Bolton recently.
But the unexpected happened. The Hammers played as if their lives depended on it and were unlucky not to snatch all three points. The team kept its shape, was not fazed by losing a key defender early on (Tomkins was magnificent as substitute), worked for each other, ran off the ball to create passing options, harried Chelsea when they were in possession, tackled with fierceness and determination and even won some balls in the air. Most of Chelsea’s efforts were long range and they had few opportunities to plant dangerous crosses. When they did get through, Green was determined no to be beaten making two crucial saves. And going forward Diamanti was inspirational, Franco was always a threat and Noble, Collisson and Parker were outstanding.
And had it stayed at 1-0, I would have been in the money too. Gambling has been part of my family heritage. I always thought my dad should have been given some kind of “lifetime service” award from Ladbrokes, having crossed their threshold religiously every day for decades to make a small investment in their growing empire. When I was very young I would hear my mum ask him how he got on with the horses and he’d invariably answer – “I was winning but then I gave it back”, and for years I thought he was just such an honest decent guy he couldn’t even bear to take his winnings – it was just the idea of winning by forecasting the future that thrilled him. Then one day it dawned on me what “and then I gave it back” really meant! Though he was indeed a thoroughly decent and honest guy from whom I inherited not just a tendency to gamble but support for the underdog, an intolerance of racism, and a quirky sense of humour. Thanks.
My granddad too, on the other side of my family was smitten young with the gambling bug. One of this first jobs was helping to install one-arm-bandits in pubs and his contribution to the Home Front during World War 2 was managing an amusement arcade in East Ham. Throughout his life he couldn’t resist a bet. It got him into trouble in the late 1960s when he was working as a porter in Billingsgate Fish Market, and would sometimes go out on the van, delivering to fishmongers and bringing back their payments to his boss. He had this rather enterprising idea that this money, which was not his, might be used to make more money on the way back if it was invested on the right horse. Trouble is he knew fish better than he knew horses. He blew the money, and I guess his face would have been as red as smoked salmon as he tried to explain what happened to it. His boss took him to court and he was lucky to escape a custodial sentence.
Towards the end, in his mid to late 80s, he was beginning to suffer from dementia and my mum was pulling out all the stops to find him a place in a decent care home. She found one with a special secure unit for people suffering similarly who could easily get lost and confused. On the first day he absconded from the home’s secure unit. No one could find him but he was eventually tracked down in a bookie’s about half a mile away. Now what would be the odds on that? Not too steep I guess.
So as I was walking past William Hill near Queen’s Market on my way to the Chelsea game I had half a mind to have a little flutter on a correct score, but the correct scores going through my head that were most likely and were so unbearable I couldn’t put money on them and I started to walk away. But I was drawn back – as if under the family spell – and once inside I knew I couldn’t bet against West Ham so I wrote two bets – one for West Ham to draw 0-0 and one for West Ham to win 1-0. As you can imagine I got pretty good odds.
I was ecstatic as a pig in shit at half-time to see that not only were we winning but at least one bet was still on. I momentarily thought that it would be so West Ham to score another, trash Chelsea but fuck up my bet too! But I could live with that.
As I handed over my betting slip for West Ham to win or to draw, the guy behind the counter was visibly smiling to himself as if to say “Thanks, mug, do come again”. If you’re employed in that job you are supposed to be professional and look neutral when people put their bets on, however left-field. OK, so in the end they kept my money but it was a mightily close run thing.
As I came out of the ground though, beaming with delight not just at the score but at the manner in which we won that point, the words of one of the world’s great philosophers were in my ears. We‘re not talking Socrates, Descartes, Wittgenstein or Charlie Marx here but that true fount of wisdom, the great and revered Ron Greenwood, who told us:
“Football is a game of tomorrows. It’s what you do next Saturday that counts.”
That could not be more true. Our fantastically hard-worked for and richly deserved point at the expense the league leaders will only truly count if it spearheads an equally committed performance against our lowly rivals Portsmouth – who also head into this encounter on the back of a great result. We have home advantage and the knowledge that on the same weekend last year we ripped them to shreds 4-1 on their manor.
Portsmouth gave warning, though, that they are determined to pull off an unlikely escape and they have sharpshooters up front who can do the business, so it will clearly be a tight game, but we surely have the quality to win.
For me personally it would be the perfect early birthday present. I was born on January 1st and West Ham stuffing Portsmouth will satisfy me more than any other present I might receive marking my 52 years on the planet.
On my actual birthday we are reviving a tradition in our household that has lapsed for a while, of visiting Highgate Cemetery for a walk with friends among the graves of some people who have inspired us. We’ll be among those of Claudia Jones – the American woman deported for political activities who was the moving force behind the Notting Hill Carnival, George Eliot, the female author who needed to adopt a man’s name to get published in Victorian England, Michael Faraday, who discovered electricity, the painter Henry Moore, and of course Karl Marx who knew a thing or two back then of what life promised for ordinary working people under the rule of the bankers and wankers.
What he would have made of those financiers whom OLAS writer Gary Portugal dubs the “Icelanpricks” would have been enlightening. Karl Marx described landlords, as those “who love to reap where they never sowed”, and capital in general as ‘dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour”.
We, and the team we love, have undoubtedly been sucked dry, but at least on the pitch last week we saw there is still some fight left. Just 7 points separate 11 teams at our end of the table, so despite the pessimism we have all been expressing there is everything to play for. And we can continue where we left off by winning 2-0 today. Three points and a clean sheet would be worth its weight in gold (and Sullivan).
The team showed in those 90 minutes against Chelsea that they have the wherewithal to rescue us on the pitch. But that is only half the battle. We, the fans, need to be more vocal and act collectively off the pitch, to win back the club that is so important in our lives. Enjoy the game. COYI!!!!!!
Sunday, 20 December 2009
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!!!!!
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!!!!!
Averting a disaster
OLAS 472 December 5th 2009
It was an unsettling and unexpected image that appeared before my eyes just a few minutes before the game against Burnley kicked off. As I was about to leave the toilet a man came in holding his kid with one hand and his ketchup-sodden chips in paper in the other. His kid needed help to reach up high enough and the chips needed to be kept upright. He just about managed to avert a disaster…and for some odd reason this image reminds me of the game itself last week.
We found ourselves almost effortlessly 5-0 up on 65 minutes with barely a shot on target. Though Franco was unlucky with a brave header that hit the top of the bar with their goalie beaten, he hardly had a save to make or a difficult cross to contend with, but had to bring the ball out of the net five times. At 1-0 I felt less edgy, as Burnley were controlling the game at that stage. At 2-0 I was pleasantly surprised. I know many of you have been there with me when we’ve been 3-0 up at half time and come away with nothing. And on the basis that we were not exactly playing fluid and sparkling football, I wasn’t convinced this time that a three goal lead was going to be enough. so I didn’t feel comfortable until Franco netted the fourth on 52 minutes.
I relaxed, anticipating that the very worst that could happen would be that we would win 4-3. Sometimes it seems I know the team only too well. Anyway we all know what happened. We pissed on their chips by getting a fifth but then effectively threw our (ketchup-sodden) chips all over the toilet floor and said “go and have a few shots at our empty goal while we clear up.” They scored three and could have had more p all from very basic defensive errors and lack of awareness.
My mind drifted back to the legendary Malcolm Allison, the ex-West ham player renowned for the size of his cigar, or was it the size of the brim of his hat? In his management days a commentator asked him how his team had managed to pull off an unlikely victory. He replied, “We scored more goals than they did”. And I suppose in essence that’s what happened last week, because that is the only bit of the result I understand. We scored five goals, they scored three. End of.
And good goals they were too (ours that is). Quick thinking by Parker and a cool finish by Jack Collisson for the first. An even cooler finish by Junior Stan for the second, after a clever pass by Franco, a couple of penalties where fouls in the box were invited by perfectly weighted through balls, and great determination by Franco to get there first for his own much-deserved goal.
Last time round I commented that Parker doesn’t have the right temperament to be captain, but he was absolutely outstanding and led by example against Burnley for most of the game. Instead of doing those tidy 360-degree turns, coming away with the ball but going backwards or sideways, he went directly forwards at every opportunity to set up chances. But even he, with his immense performance, was unable to counteract the effect of those sleeping tablets on our defence during the last third of the game .
The performances around him though were something of a mixed bag. Franco and Cole worked well up front, Junior Stan had moments of creativity but was too easily blown off the ball; Collison worked hard but didn’t look comfortable on the right wing; Kojak had a solid first half, then played like a donkey in the second.
Meanwhile, Da Costa looked the most secure at the back, but one out of four defenders on task doesn’t leave a lot of cover for Greenie, and we were lucky to concede only three in that nervous final 25 minutes. We must consider ourselves especially fortunate that we weren’t having to play someone like Man U, though I can’t imagine them being obliging enough to let us ghost into a 5-0 lead in any case. My view is that we need to avoid them until we have sorted out the defence a little bit. Only the fixture fairy disagrees.
I noticed there were celebrations recently for the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down – we could have done with borrowing a bit of that wall and placing it about 10 yards in front of our goal. We’ve been treated to some ropey defenders at West Ham over the years, going all the way back to Tommy Taylor – who looked comfortable with everything except a football at his feet - and not forgetting Gary Breen, Rigoberto Song, Gary Charles, Wayne Quinn, and the inimitable Christian Dailly. But they would have looked solid as a rock compared with our defenders towards the end of the game last week. It’s a case not so much of having gaps and holes as fucking craters. But maybe Man U will feel sorry for us and play for a draw. They always struck me as the kind and sentimental sort, especially that absolute sweetie, Wayne Rooney.
Last week, in my clumsy efforts to portray what the West Ham experience feels like at the moment I used the analogy of a circus, though in retrospect “fairground ride” would have probably been more accurate. Watching the game I felt like I was flitting between the rollercoaster, ghost train, screaming swing and the megadrop (though fortunately we were still on the rollercoaster at the end. Just.)
I honestly had no expectation of what would happen during that 90 minutes. And now having seen it I can’t begin to explain what really happened. Except at the end of the day we did get three points and reduce our goal difference, and we had five different players score for us, which will do a lot for their self-confidence.
I suspect we will see a tighter game today. Our hope for getting something out of this one and lifting ourselves further away from danger in the next few weeks lies in the confidence that comes from our ability to find the back of the net both home and away. But when confidence clashes against quality, any sane person would have to fancy quality. However, our free-scoring ways do suggest that we are never totally out of a game at the moment. Paradoxically, though, our lack of meaningful defensive skills, means that however free-scoring we are, victory is not assured. Which, I guess, means that should we find ourselves 5-0 up against Man U after 65 minutes, we might have to settle for a draw.
The more important date arises a few days after the Man U game – on December 11 by which time Straumur have to secure agreement from their creditors for the restructuring of their bank, and if we are not in the process of being sold by then we are in much more danger of just dropping chips down the toilet.
No point speculating, everyone out there in the media is doing lots of that already. But good to see, in terms of a longer –term plan, that Johnny Ballantyne is drawing our attention to the initial moves by Newcastle supporters to find a way out of the powerlessness that so many fans feel, to bring their club under the ownership of the fans. We know that we pump loads of cash into the club week on week and loyally support the players, we are the ones who live for the club but also give life to the club – and we are the ones who ought to be in control.
In school I’ve been doing some work with young kids (8 year olds) recently about what independence means for a country. I ask them “How do you know when a country is born?” They usually respond at first with bizarre geological answers about volcanoes and such like, but then they say things like, you have your own flag, you’ve got your own money, you make your own laws. I tell them that I think the day a country is born is the day everyone living in that country, old, young, male or female, black or white, newcomer, old-comer, can say: “This country belongs to me, this country belongs to all of us. I can participate, I have the power to help decide what happens in this country.” What would it take for us to feel that about West Ham? Can we make it happen?
Enjoy the game. For those of you into betting on correct scores I can absolutely guarantee it won’t be 0-0. Hope that helps you to your fortune and that our fortune today is not always hiding. COYI!!!!
It was an unsettling and unexpected image that appeared before my eyes just a few minutes before the game against Burnley kicked off. As I was about to leave the toilet a man came in holding his kid with one hand and his ketchup-sodden chips in paper in the other. His kid needed help to reach up high enough and the chips needed to be kept upright. He just about managed to avert a disaster…and for some odd reason this image reminds me of the game itself last week.
We found ourselves almost effortlessly 5-0 up on 65 minutes with barely a shot on target. Though Franco was unlucky with a brave header that hit the top of the bar with their goalie beaten, he hardly had a save to make or a difficult cross to contend with, but had to bring the ball out of the net five times. At 1-0 I felt less edgy, as Burnley were controlling the game at that stage. At 2-0 I was pleasantly surprised. I know many of you have been there with me when we’ve been 3-0 up at half time and come away with nothing. And on the basis that we were not exactly playing fluid and sparkling football, I wasn’t convinced this time that a three goal lead was going to be enough. so I didn’t feel comfortable until Franco netted the fourth on 52 minutes.
I relaxed, anticipating that the very worst that could happen would be that we would win 4-3. Sometimes it seems I know the team only too well. Anyway we all know what happened. We pissed on their chips by getting a fifth but then effectively threw our (ketchup-sodden) chips all over the toilet floor and said “go and have a few shots at our empty goal while we clear up.” They scored three and could have had more p all from very basic defensive errors and lack of awareness.
My mind drifted back to the legendary Malcolm Allison, the ex-West ham player renowned for the size of his cigar, or was it the size of the brim of his hat? In his management days a commentator asked him how his team had managed to pull off an unlikely victory. He replied, “We scored more goals than they did”. And I suppose in essence that’s what happened last week, because that is the only bit of the result I understand. We scored five goals, they scored three. End of.
And good goals they were too (ours that is). Quick thinking by Parker and a cool finish by Jack Collisson for the first. An even cooler finish by Junior Stan for the second, after a clever pass by Franco, a couple of penalties where fouls in the box were invited by perfectly weighted through balls, and great determination by Franco to get there first for his own much-deserved goal.
Last time round I commented that Parker doesn’t have the right temperament to be captain, but he was absolutely outstanding and led by example against Burnley for most of the game. Instead of doing those tidy 360-degree turns, coming away with the ball but going backwards or sideways, he went directly forwards at every opportunity to set up chances. But even he, with his immense performance, was unable to counteract the effect of those sleeping tablets on our defence during the last third of the game .
The performances around him though were something of a mixed bag. Franco and Cole worked well up front, Junior Stan had moments of creativity but was too easily blown off the ball; Collison worked hard but didn’t look comfortable on the right wing; Kojak had a solid first half, then played like a donkey in the second.
Meanwhile, Da Costa looked the most secure at the back, but one out of four defenders on task doesn’t leave a lot of cover for Greenie, and we were lucky to concede only three in that nervous final 25 minutes. We must consider ourselves especially fortunate that we weren’t having to play someone like Man U, though I can’t imagine them being obliging enough to let us ghost into a 5-0 lead in any case. My view is that we need to avoid them until we have sorted out the defence a little bit. Only the fixture fairy disagrees.
I noticed there were celebrations recently for the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down – we could have done with borrowing a bit of that wall and placing it about 10 yards in front of our goal. We’ve been treated to some ropey defenders at West Ham over the years, going all the way back to Tommy Taylor – who looked comfortable with everything except a football at his feet - and not forgetting Gary Breen, Rigoberto Song, Gary Charles, Wayne Quinn, and the inimitable Christian Dailly. But they would have looked solid as a rock compared with our defenders towards the end of the game last week. It’s a case not so much of having gaps and holes as fucking craters. But maybe Man U will feel sorry for us and play for a draw. They always struck me as the kind and sentimental sort, especially that absolute sweetie, Wayne Rooney.
Last week, in my clumsy efforts to portray what the West Ham experience feels like at the moment I used the analogy of a circus, though in retrospect “fairground ride” would have probably been more accurate. Watching the game I felt like I was flitting between the rollercoaster, ghost train, screaming swing and the megadrop (though fortunately we were still on the rollercoaster at the end. Just.)
I honestly had no expectation of what would happen during that 90 minutes. And now having seen it I can’t begin to explain what really happened. Except at the end of the day we did get three points and reduce our goal difference, and we had five different players score for us, which will do a lot for their self-confidence.
I suspect we will see a tighter game today. Our hope for getting something out of this one and lifting ourselves further away from danger in the next few weeks lies in the confidence that comes from our ability to find the back of the net both home and away. But when confidence clashes against quality, any sane person would have to fancy quality. However, our free-scoring ways do suggest that we are never totally out of a game at the moment. Paradoxically, though, our lack of meaningful defensive skills, means that however free-scoring we are, victory is not assured. Which, I guess, means that should we find ourselves 5-0 up against Man U after 65 minutes, we might have to settle for a draw.
The more important date arises a few days after the Man U game – on December 11 by which time Straumur have to secure agreement from their creditors for the restructuring of their bank, and if we are not in the process of being sold by then we are in much more danger of just dropping chips down the toilet.
No point speculating, everyone out there in the media is doing lots of that already. But good to see, in terms of a longer –term plan, that Johnny Ballantyne is drawing our attention to the initial moves by Newcastle supporters to find a way out of the powerlessness that so many fans feel, to bring their club under the ownership of the fans. We know that we pump loads of cash into the club week on week and loyally support the players, we are the ones who live for the club but also give life to the club – and we are the ones who ought to be in control.
In school I’ve been doing some work with young kids (8 year olds) recently about what independence means for a country. I ask them “How do you know when a country is born?” They usually respond at first with bizarre geological answers about volcanoes and such like, but then they say things like, you have your own flag, you’ve got your own money, you make your own laws. I tell them that I think the day a country is born is the day everyone living in that country, old, young, male or female, black or white, newcomer, old-comer, can say: “This country belongs to me, this country belongs to all of us. I can participate, I have the power to help decide what happens in this country.” What would it take for us to feel that about West Ham? Can we make it happen?
Enjoy the game. For those of you into betting on correct scores I can absolutely guarantee it won’t be 0-0. Hope that helps you to your fortune and that our fortune today is not always hiding. COYI!!!!
What is to be done?
OLAS 471 November 28th 2009
The plans for building a new stadium have gone rather quiet. But when they are revived no doubt we will be promised one of those soulless, state of the art, bowl-shaped structures, with standardised seating all tastefully coloured in claret and blue, and every naff corporate touch you could imagine. And toilets fit or human beings? Naturally.
I have a simpler suggestion – it’s called “The Big Top” first developed apparently by an American called J Purdy Brown. Because that is what we seem to be fit for at Upton Park. Clowns are supposed to make you laugh with their clumsy lolloping feet and their exaggerated klutz-like behaviour; superannuated professional footballers are not. But can anyone honestly say that recent performances, especially away from home, where we have thrown away 2-0 leads twice in succession and then failed on both occasion to win these games against 10 men, are anything other than the stuff of clowns whose natural home is not a football stadium but a circus tent?
I’ve been a loyal supporter of the Zola Revolution and am still a believer, but I am starting now to get just a little tired of hearing vacuous garbage such as: “it was a strange game”, or “it was a crazy game’. I think we need to face the grim truth and have a solid and thought-out strategy for dealing with it that goes beyond what he and Steve Clarke have already attempted and, so far this season, failed miserably with.
The fight-back against Arsenal and the crucial win over Aston Villa seemed to indicate we might be approaching a turning point, but the pathetic collapse to a very ordinary Everton reserve side, and the farce of handing a lifeline to Hull City, one of the poorest teams in the league – to the extent that we needed to conjure the equaliser to rescue a draw – suggest that we have not reached that turning point yet.
Everyone likes to look for positives. We scored three goals away from home; Carlton Cole is back (even if he has forgotten which end he needs to head the ball into); Da Costa scored a neat goal; the weather wasn’t too bad… (help me, please, I’m running out of positives). But I do think we have to face up to how bad it is sooner rather than later.
I’m quite expecting our circus-like goings on to continue at least up to Christmas. We may win or draw a game or two along the way but if we continue to “defend” in the manner we have done so far this season, we are also likely to suffer some very heavy defeats (especially to Man U and Chelsea) which will seriously affect our goal difference – and in the scramble at the bottom goal difference may be a decisive factor (Wigan take note).
So what is to be done? Well, here’s a little mantra for our back four to start chanting: “Giving away free kicks just outside our penalty area is not big and not clever. Don’t do it.”
Perhaps our defenders should remove the SBOBET logo from their shirts and replace with “FRAGILE: Do not shake. Handle with care. Keep upright” because they are showing serious signs that they just can’t cope. Faubert was unlucky with the penalty decision but he plainly does not know how to defend. Slow-motion Gabbidon looks a shadow of the player he once was. Upson looks about as interested and motivated as my cat when it’s shagged out and sleeping on the washing pile. He also shouldn’t be captaining the team (that’s Upson not my cat) as he shows no leadership or inspirational qualities. And if he’s not sure what “inspirational” means he should think about what ex-hammer Jimmy Bullard meant to Hull last week. Upson was very lucky not to have been responsible for handing Hull a fourth goal because his challenge on a Hull forward near the end of the game was a far more obvious penalty than the one the ref had already given.
This time last year I was mightily relieved that the irrepressibly boring Curbishley had been dumped. And quite rightly too. Despite the lack of many points on the board by the end of October I had faith and optimism that what Zola and Clarke were doing would pay off in the longer run.
Of course I don’t want Curbs or anyone like him back here but I have to admit that I’ve run out of optimism and faith – and patience. I have no expectations at all of us progressing, just a faint hope that a few teams will struggle even more than us and by some miracle we survive. I have no idea what Zola and Clarke are expected to achieve with the piss-poor squad we have. Selling our better players and either not replacing them or bringing in injury prone dodos or second rate Italians from Serie B, cannot do anything but weaken us. We are seriously missing James Collins, and don’t tell anyone you heard me say this, but we are missing Lucas Neill too.
For the first time in more than four decades of following West Ham I am craving a really boring 1-0 win, followed by another excruciatingly boring 1-0 win. Six points and two clean sheets would do wonders wouldn’t it? How to do it I don’t know because, in order for that to happen, we need to playing teams of our level – like Grimsby or Darlington. I’m not sure that Burnley fit the bill and as for Man U…
We have literally taken our eye off the ball. While we were focussed on how lightweight we were up front, with Deano permanently crocked (like we just noticed) Keiron Dyer almost permanently crocked, and Bellamy long gone, we hadn’t noticed the huge hole that had been dug in our defence especially around the right back position. I think we have all been surprised that given our lack of any natural goalscorers, we have actually managed to score 19 goals in our 13 league games to date and that 9 different players have found the net for us. While a proven goalscorer would be a welcome arrival in January, the key areas that have to be strengthened if we are to give ourselves the best chance of survival must be the full back positions. There is no adequate cover for Ilunga, who hopefully will come back soon from injury, and we have no right back. Any club with speedy or tricky wingers will want to play us every week.
Of course any speculation about what might happen in January must rest on some mugs investing in the “going concern” that West Ham masquerades as. The likely scenario if we are not taken over is not nice. It is total meltdown…which kind of means that the players have to somehow lift themselves to get results in the next few weeks so that not only will someone out there want to buy us but that players may want to come here to build an exciting and successful future for themselves. I’m trying hard here to remain positive but to be honest I can’t even convince myself.
Back on the pitch, I don’t think we will be able to hold on to Upson in January (even though he is playing poorly). He wants to maintain his England place to go to South Africa next summer and he won’t do that in a defence that is shipping at least two goals every week. So we need to be thinking now of who will be the next captain. To many supporters, Scotty Parker might seem the obvious choice but I don’t think his temperament is right. He may be a tidy and skilful player but he gets booked very frequently and has tantrums. What he’ll be like when he turns three years old I don’t know. A year or two back I could imagine Mark Noble being groomed for the role of captain but his progress seems to have halted, and though I have not heard that he is injured he was left out of the Everton game and didn’t make the squad against Villa. has he had a big falling out with management?
There are two players that currently show the potential for leadership on the pitch although both will no doubt be targets for the poachers and vultures in January and we will need to work hard to persuade them not to jump ship. They are Jack Collisson and Valon Behrami. Keep both of them and make one the captain and we may have a chance of staying up and even climbing the table.
In the meantime enjoy the game today. Accept that whichever team gets the second goal might not win. Look out for jugglers and tightrope walkers and Faubert the Clown. COYI!!!!
The plans for building a new stadium have gone rather quiet. But when they are revived no doubt we will be promised one of those soulless, state of the art, bowl-shaped structures, with standardised seating all tastefully coloured in claret and blue, and every naff corporate touch you could imagine. And toilets fit or human beings? Naturally.
I have a simpler suggestion – it’s called “The Big Top” first developed apparently by an American called J Purdy Brown. Because that is what we seem to be fit for at Upton Park. Clowns are supposed to make you laugh with their clumsy lolloping feet and their exaggerated klutz-like behaviour; superannuated professional footballers are not. But can anyone honestly say that recent performances, especially away from home, where we have thrown away 2-0 leads twice in succession and then failed on both occasion to win these games against 10 men, are anything other than the stuff of clowns whose natural home is not a football stadium but a circus tent?
I’ve been a loyal supporter of the Zola Revolution and am still a believer, but I am starting now to get just a little tired of hearing vacuous garbage such as: “it was a strange game”, or “it was a crazy game’. I think we need to face the grim truth and have a solid and thought-out strategy for dealing with it that goes beyond what he and Steve Clarke have already attempted and, so far this season, failed miserably with.
The fight-back against Arsenal and the crucial win over Aston Villa seemed to indicate we might be approaching a turning point, but the pathetic collapse to a very ordinary Everton reserve side, and the farce of handing a lifeline to Hull City, one of the poorest teams in the league – to the extent that we needed to conjure the equaliser to rescue a draw – suggest that we have not reached that turning point yet.
Everyone likes to look for positives. We scored three goals away from home; Carlton Cole is back (even if he has forgotten which end he needs to head the ball into); Da Costa scored a neat goal; the weather wasn’t too bad… (help me, please, I’m running out of positives). But I do think we have to face up to how bad it is sooner rather than later.
I’m quite expecting our circus-like goings on to continue at least up to Christmas. We may win or draw a game or two along the way but if we continue to “defend” in the manner we have done so far this season, we are also likely to suffer some very heavy defeats (especially to Man U and Chelsea) which will seriously affect our goal difference – and in the scramble at the bottom goal difference may be a decisive factor (Wigan take note).
So what is to be done? Well, here’s a little mantra for our back four to start chanting: “Giving away free kicks just outside our penalty area is not big and not clever. Don’t do it.”
Perhaps our defenders should remove the SBOBET logo from their shirts and replace with “FRAGILE: Do not shake. Handle with care. Keep upright” because they are showing serious signs that they just can’t cope. Faubert was unlucky with the penalty decision but he plainly does not know how to defend. Slow-motion Gabbidon looks a shadow of the player he once was. Upson looks about as interested and motivated as my cat when it’s shagged out and sleeping on the washing pile. He also shouldn’t be captaining the team (that’s Upson not my cat) as he shows no leadership or inspirational qualities. And if he’s not sure what “inspirational” means he should think about what ex-hammer Jimmy Bullard meant to Hull last week. Upson was very lucky not to have been responsible for handing Hull a fourth goal because his challenge on a Hull forward near the end of the game was a far more obvious penalty than the one the ref had already given.
This time last year I was mightily relieved that the irrepressibly boring Curbishley had been dumped. And quite rightly too. Despite the lack of many points on the board by the end of October I had faith and optimism that what Zola and Clarke were doing would pay off in the longer run.
Of course I don’t want Curbs or anyone like him back here but I have to admit that I’ve run out of optimism and faith – and patience. I have no expectations at all of us progressing, just a faint hope that a few teams will struggle even more than us and by some miracle we survive. I have no idea what Zola and Clarke are expected to achieve with the piss-poor squad we have. Selling our better players and either not replacing them or bringing in injury prone dodos or second rate Italians from Serie B, cannot do anything but weaken us. We are seriously missing James Collins, and don’t tell anyone you heard me say this, but we are missing Lucas Neill too.
For the first time in more than four decades of following West Ham I am craving a really boring 1-0 win, followed by another excruciatingly boring 1-0 win. Six points and two clean sheets would do wonders wouldn’t it? How to do it I don’t know because, in order for that to happen, we need to playing teams of our level – like Grimsby or Darlington. I’m not sure that Burnley fit the bill and as for Man U…
We have literally taken our eye off the ball. While we were focussed on how lightweight we were up front, with Deano permanently crocked (like we just noticed) Keiron Dyer almost permanently crocked, and Bellamy long gone, we hadn’t noticed the huge hole that had been dug in our defence especially around the right back position. I think we have all been surprised that given our lack of any natural goalscorers, we have actually managed to score 19 goals in our 13 league games to date and that 9 different players have found the net for us. While a proven goalscorer would be a welcome arrival in January, the key areas that have to be strengthened if we are to give ourselves the best chance of survival must be the full back positions. There is no adequate cover for Ilunga, who hopefully will come back soon from injury, and we have no right back. Any club with speedy or tricky wingers will want to play us every week.
Of course any speculation about what might happen in January must rest on some mugs investing in the “going concern” that West Ham masquerades as. The likely scenario if we are not taken over is not nice. It is total meltdown…which kind of means that the players have to somehow lift themselves to get results in the next few weeks so that not only will someone out there want to buy us but that players may want to come here to build an exciting and successful future for themselves. I’m trying hard here to remain positive but to be honest I can’t even convince myself.
Back on the pitch, I don’t think we will be able to hold on to Upson in January (even though he is playing poorly). He wants to maintain his England place to go to South Africa next summer and he won’t do that in a defence that is shipping at least two goals every week. So we need to be thinking now of who will be the next captain. To many supporters, Scotty Parker might seem the obvious choice but I don’t think his temperament is right. He may be a tidy and skilful player but he gets booked very frequently and has tantrums. What he’ll be like when he turns three years old I don’t know. A year or two back I could imagine Mark Noble being groomed for the role of captain but his progress seems to have halted, and though I have not heard that he is injured he was left out of the Everton game and didn’t make the squad against Villa. has he had a big falling out with management?
There are two players that currently show the potential for leadership on the pitch although both will no doubt be targets for the poachers and vultures in January and we will need to work hard to persuade them not to jump ship. They are Jack Collisson and Valon Behrami. Keep both of them and make one the captain and we may have a chance of staying up and even climbing the table.
In the meantime enjoy the game today. Accept that whichever team gets the second goal might not win. Look out for jugglers and tightrope walkers and Faubert the Clown. COYI!!!!
Walking on air
OLAS 470 November 8th 2009
So fortune doesn’t always hide. Sometimes it favours the brave – and we will see few performances this year as brave as the one on Wednesday night when we should have got mullered by a superior Villa team. A coolly taken penalty just before half time by Mark Noble gave us an unlikely lead in a game in which we were being outthought, outmuscled and thoroughly outplayed. Not surprising since we had lost two key players to injury early in the match. When Villa were generously handed a penalty three minutes after the break the omens did not look good but Greeny made a miraculous save. He may show more fear of crosses than your average vampire at the moment, but he also made two stupendous saves to keep us in the game n the first 45 and added a couple more in the last 45.
His penalty stop was only respite though – a few minutes later he was clutching air as Ashley young’s wonder strike hit the roof of the net. But we refused to lie down and die and the second period was much more even. West Ham never lost hope and when Villa were reduced to 10 men we sniffed an inconceivable victory. No one deserved the winner more than Zavon who had played magnificently substituting for Carlton. He chased every lost cause, gave defenders a torrid time and won the penalty as well as conjuring the winner.
There were a few other heroes out there as well. Behrami and Collisson were magnificent using power and skill to drive us forward. Da Costa had a shaky first half but was a tower of strength in the second. And little Scotty Parker did not want to be on the losing team and didn’t stop running. We kept our shape and our spirit and, against the odds, got our reward.
I hope Zola had a peaceful, sweet sleep before he had to wake up to the stark reality of our rapidly thinning squad shedding more bodies. At this rate he’s going to have to raise Ashton from his slumber, give him a couple of crutches and tell him to get out there.
More hammer blows arrived with the news that Alan Curbishley won his case for constructive dismissal. I hope we pleaded guilty as fuck. Yes he was stitched up and encouraged to go – because he was boring and shite, and Alan, even if you pick up a couple of million we can ill afford, you still can’t buy a personality. According to the papers Hull are interested in him. They deserve each other.
Still Wednesday night belonged to West Ham and its ever loyal fans – an unforgettable night, to set us up nicely for the visit of Everton.
It was at a West Ham versus Everton match rather than through some strange druggie experience or an experiment with levitation that I first discovered what the term “walking on air” meant. We’re going back a few years now to 1980 and the cup semi final replay at Elland Road - at that time home ground of a cheating, boring but successful top league side called “Leeds”. Remember them? Now they top the same league that contains Leyton Orient, Milton Keynes Dons, Yeovil (need I go on? Ha ha ha! – the harder they come the harder they fall, one and all).
Anyway, back to the Everton game. We had been fortunate to secure a replay as Everton had the better of the first game at Villa Park and deservedly took the lead through Brian Kidd but we came back pressing hard for an equaliser and Clever Trevor laid one on for Stuart Pearson. If I remember rightly there was a couple of sending offs but my only other real memory of the first game, played at Villa Park, was of a little toerag of a Villa supporter running off with my West Ham scarf which was hanging out of our car window as we stopped at lights near the ground. He’s probably about 40 years old now and I hope he feels thoroughly ashamed of himself and that his act of wanton theft brought some suitably bad karma (eg Wednesday night’s result!)
While we were struggling to get back into the game, the other semi-final was taking place – Arsenal v Man U – so even if we won we had a mountain to climb at Wembley. Arsenal got the better of Man U that day and we went on to the replay at Elland Road with the prospect of a London derby cup final. A whole division below – few gave us a chance.
Leeds - the town - was a place I was very familiar with at the time. I had spent three happy baked beans, curry and beer-consuming years at university there between 1976 and ’79, watched West Ham there a couple of times (we won once!) and spent many a Saturday outside rather than inside their ground leafleting against the National Front/BNP who had a big and ugly presence there at the time. As well as attempting to twist the minds of impressionable youngsters living hard lives, against some of their fellow citizens purely on the colour of their skin, they also engaged in violent unprovoked attacks on those they saw as opponents. One night they turned up on the university campus and randomly attacked a student with a fire extinguisher leaving him with a fractured skull. On another occasion a maths lecturer, known to them for his anti-fascist activities was attacked with a broken glass while drinking in a pub, and nearly lost an eye. Young Asians in the town were frequently abused and attacked. Eventually the police came down on them and several of their street fighters ended up doing time.
Their gang was led by particularly scary and rather gaunt guy, strangely called Steve Gaunt. I was always curious what happened to him, and found out many years later that he had hired himself out as a mercenary to Croatia during the wars of the former Yugoslavia and managed to get his foot blown off. Doing a bit of googling it appears that nearly 30 years on he is still posting on the websites of far right loons who believe that some members of the human race are less than human, which suggests that my inkling that his brains were located mainly in his feet, might have been spot on.
I met up with some of my mates from the Leeds days recently and we got talking about Steve Gaunt. After I told them about the fate of his foot, my mate Dave, quite deadpan, says, “Well, I guess he needs only one jackboot these days!”
Anyway, back the Everton game. The atmosphere in Elland Road that night was electric and the game was completely end-to-end. But After 90 minutes the teams could not be separated. As we reached the end of the second period of extra time there had been a goal apiece – Bob Latchford headed in for Everton and Alan Devonshire scored a gem for the hammers. The last player anyone would have imagined would win the game with a header was our left back – the original Frankie Lampard - but that’s what happened in the 118th minute and he ran straight for the corner flag to engage in a bizarre celebration ritual. We counted down the seconds, the whistle blew, and we were at Wembley! (Well, actually we were still in Leeds, but you know what I mean).
It was coming back to Leeds Station that I experienced walking on air. I just couldn’t feel my feet touching the ground; it felt like we floated all the way. There were terrible problems on the line on the way back and we were held in no-man’s-land for ages, pulling into Kings Cross around five in the morning – but hey, who cares, we were going to Wembley, where we famously beat Arsenal 1-0 to win the cup.
What’s the odds on one of our defenders heading in the winning goal this afternoon (in the right end)? Me, I’d settle for any Hammer putting in the winner, even Ashton with his crutch. COYI!!!!!
So fortune doesn’t always hide. Sometimes it favours the brave – and we will see few performances this year as brave as the one on Wednesday night when we should have got mullered by a superior Villa team. A coolly taken penalty just before half time by Mark Noble gave us an unlikely lead in a game in which we were being outthought, outmuscled and thoroughly outplayed. Not surprising since we had lost two key players to injury early in the match. When Villa were generously handed a penalty three minutes after the break the omens did not look good but Greeny made a miraculous save. He may show more fear of crosses than your average vampire at the moment, but he also made two stupendous saves to keep us in the game n the first 45 and added a couple more in the last 45.
His penalty stop was only respite though – a few minutes later he was clutching air as Ashley young’s wonder strike hit the roof of the net. But we refused to lie down and die and the second period was much more even. West Ham never lost hope and when Villa were reduced to 10 men we sniffed an inconceivable victory. No one deserved the winner more than Zavon who had played magnificently substituting for Carlton. He chased every lost cause, gave defenders a torrid time and won the penalty as well as conjuring the winner.
There were a few other heroes out there as well. Behrami and Collisson were magnificent using power and skill to drive us forward. Da Costa had a shaky first half but was a tower of strength in the second. And little Scotty Parker did not want to be on the losing team and didn’t stop running. We kept our shape and our spirit and, against the odds, got our reward.
I hope Zola had a peaceful, sweet sleep before he had to wake up to the stark reality of our rapidly thinning squad shedding more bodies. At this rate he’s going to have to raise Ashton from his slumber, give him a couple of crutches and tell him to get out there.
More hammer blows arrived with the news that Alan Curbishley won his case for constructive dismissal. I hope we pleaded guilty as fuck. Yes he was stitched up and encouraged to go – because he was boring and shite, and Alan, even if you pick up a couple of million we can ill afford, you still can’t buy a personality. According to the papers Hull are interested in him. They deserve each other.
Still Wednesday night belonged to West Ham and its ever loyal fans – an unforgettable night, to set us up nicely for the visit of Everton.
It was at a West Ham versus Everton match rather than through some strange druggie experience or an experiment with levitation that I first discovered what the term “walking on air” meant. We’re going back a few years now to 1980 and the cup semi final replay at Elland Road - at that time home ground of a cheating, boring but successful top league side called “Leeds”. Remember them? Now they top the same league that contains Leyton Orient, Milton Keynes Dons, Yeovil (need I go on? Ha ha ha! – the harder they come the harder they fall, one and all).
Anyway, back to the Everton game. We had been fortunate to secure a replay as Everton had the better of the first game at Villa Park and deservedly took the lead through Brian Kidd but we came back pressing hard for an equaliser and Clever Trevor laid one on for Stuart Pearson. If I remember rightly there was a couple of sending offs but my only other real memory of the first game, played at Villa Park, was of a little toerag of a Villa supporter running off with my West Ham scarf which was hanging out of our car window as we stopped at lights near the ground. He’s probably about 40 years old now and I hope he feels thoroughly ashamed of himself and that his act of wanton theft brought some suitably bad karma (eg Wednesday night’s result!)
While we were struggling to get back into the game, the other semi-final was taking place – Arsenal v Man U – so even if we won we had a mountain to climb at Wembley. Arsenal got the better of Man U that day and we went on to the replay at Elland Road with the prospect of a London derby cup final. A whole division below – few gave us a chance.
Leeds - the town - was a place I was very familiar with at the time. I had spent three happy baked beans, curry and beer-consuming years at university there between 1976 and ’79, watched West Ham there a couple of times (we won once!) and spent many a Saturday outside rather than inside their ground leafleting against the National Front/BNP who had a big and ugly presence there at the time. As well as attempting to twist the minds of impressionable youngsters living hard lives, against some of their fellow citizens purely on the colour of their skin, they also engaged in violent unprovoked attacks on those they saw as opponents. One night they turned up on the university campus and randomly attacked a student with a fire extinguisher leaving him with a fractured skull. On another occasion a maths lecturer, known to them for his anti-fascist activities was attacked with a broken glass while drinking in a pub, and nearly lost an eye. Young Asians in the town were frequently abused and attacked. Eventually the police came down on them and several of their street fighters ended up doing time.
Their gang was led by particularly scary and rather gaunt guy, strangely called Steve Gaunt. I was always curious what happened to him, and found out many years later that he had hired himself out as a mercenary to Croatia during the wars of the former Yugoslavia and managed to get his foot blown off. Doing a bit of googling it appears that nearly 30 years on he is still posting on the websites of far right loons who believe that some members of the human race are less than human, which suggests that my inkling that his brains were located mainly in his feet, might have been spot on.
I met up with some of my mates from the Leeds days recently and we got talking about Steve Gaunt. After I told them about the fate of his foot, my mate Dave, quite deadpan, says, “Well, I guess he needs only one jackboot these days!”
Anyway, back the Everton game. The atmosphere in Elland Road that night was electric and the game was completely end-to-end. But After 90 minutes the teams could not be separated. As we reached the end of the second period of extra time there had been a goal apiece – Bob Latchford headed in for Everton and Alan Devonshire scored a gem for the hammers. The last player anyone would have imagined would win the game with a header was our left back – the original Frankie Lampard - but that’s what happened in the 118th minute and he ran straight for the corner flag to engage in a bizarre celebration ritual. We counted down the seconds, the whistle blew, and we were at Wembley! (Well, actually we were still in Leeds, but you know what I mean).
It was coming back to Leeds Station that I experienced walking on air. I just couldn’t feel my feet touching the ground; it felt like we floated all the way. There were terrible problems on the line on the way back and we were held in no-man’s-land for ages, pulling into Kings Cross around five in the morning – but hey, who cares, we were going to Wembley, where we famously beat Arsenal 1-0 to win the cup.
What’s the odds on one of our defenders heading in the winning goal this afternoon (in the right end)? Me, I’d settle for any Hammer putting in the winner, even Ashton with his crutch. COYI!!!!!
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