OLAS 439 May 12th 2008
I’m glad we’re playing the other claret and blue team on the last day of the season. They are the perfect barometer for us. In the last 10 years several of our meetings have ended in yawn-yawn draws. We are both clubs with a big tradition whose glory days are a fading but persistent memory, though they don’t need to go back as long as us to remember holding some silverware, or anything to cheer about for that matter. We have both underperformed in the league in recent years though they have at least managed to hold on to premiership status.
Now, we are used to discussion about the gulf between the big four and the rest but if we are going to seriously address how West Ham can move onwards and upwards we probably need to make comparisons with clubs outside the elite – like Villa.
This time last year, when we were struggling for our premiership lives, Villa finished in the mid-table wilderness on 50 points (the kind of position that still gives our “manager” wet dreams). And if we think it has been dull here this season – they managed to draw nearly half their games in 2006-7, scored only 43 goals and ended up winning fewer games than we did last year.
But take a look now. Despite hitting some rocky patches, they are sitting with an outside chance of finishing 6th, they have won 16 games and have scored shed-loads more goals than most of the teams around them – a mouth-watering 69, so to speak, while we have barely managed 40. Our old friend Marlene, who has become a prolific substitute for them, has put six of their goals away. Only Man U and Arsenal have scored more than Villa this season. They play with power and positivity, with a captain who leads by example and a manager who is a bit of a nutter but whose determination to succeed is absolutely palpable.
OK, I think you can see where the comparison between us are starting to break down. But we also need to take into account the one that got away – Ashley Young. He’s not a prolific scorer – he’s scored 8 times this year – but he has made 14. He’s a goal-maker, a goal provider, who uses pace, power and accuracy, and he had the chance to come here. The club made quite an effort to get him in January 2007, and given the silly money that was being chucked about by the Eggman, he could have made himself very comfortable financially. Ash would have certainly been in the cash.
You might have thought that anyone who had the choice would want to stay in a vibrant place like London rather than have to live in the Midlands (though now we’ve got Boris…OK that’s another story). Ashley Young has years ahead of him so he could cope with being in a team that needed to rebuild. He probably had little confidence that we would survive in the premiership, but it is more likely that he saw the Villa set up as a more ambitious, more exciting place to be. Even with our atrocious injuries this year, which I cannot believe have nothing to do with the way we look after our players, a gifted goal-maker like Young on the wing would have made such an enormous difference.
Before writing today I looked back at my first OLAS piece this season where I made no guesses at where we would end up in the league but the one prediction for the season I confidently made was that we would score lots of goals. I could not have predicted that the one forward with a bit of pace and drive – Bellend – would be crocked for most of the season, (apart from when Wales wanted him to play) or that the second year of Ashton’s recuperation would consist of little more than dyeing his hair and eating lots of pies. Injuring himself scoring a spectacular goal at old Trafford last week just makes it tougher for us OLAS writers to invent biting new satire. Though you might ask who needs to work hard to write it when it happens right in front of our eyes? I’ll be surprised to see him turn up this afternoon.
The other talking point from the United game was Nani head-butting Lucas Neill – typical of the sheer arrogance of Manure players that he didn’t realise that there is an orderly queue of people waiting patiently to nut Lucas and most of them are Hammers fans.
I don’t think anyone really expected any surprises this year at Old Trafford, suffice to say that we would find it hard enough to recover if we gave two goals to a team like Bournemouth let alone the league champions in waiting. I won’t say “gave three goals” because Carlitos’s strike was a peach of a goal carved out of nothing but executed beautifully and I don’t blame the West Ham fans who applauded it. He also had the grace to celebrate his goal in a low-key way and not rub it in our faces. Respect to you Carlitos.
So last time round I was preparing for our “cup final” against Newcastle for the Mid Table Mediocrity championship. It has not been decided yet and I have a sneaking feeling that Spurs will take it. To be honest it is no more than we deserve. The first half of our season was dull but at least we picked up points, the second half of the season has been a total disgrace. Apart from the youngsters who are giving their all, the only players who have seemed to care throughout the season have been Greenie, McCartney, Noble and Carlton Cole, and when he’s not been crocked, Scott Parker. The rest have been a pile of Boa Morte.
I was out of the country for the game where we stuffed Man U, which leaves two home games this year that gave me the excitement the loyal fans, regularly rinsed by the club’s owners, are entitled to expect every week. One was the Liverpool game. Mark Noble’s injury time penalty was an unforgettable moment in a sea of completely forgettable fixtures. The other game was our last one here against Kev’s Geordies.
We didn’t win but for once we looked like we really wanted to. We scored two cracking goals, could have had more, and dominated the game by playing with fire, pace and skill for 90 minutes. We let in one well taken goal and one jammy one. It reminded me of the kind of game I used to see here almost every time in the 60s and 70s – end to end, all action, great attacking, crap defending, played in an excellent spirit. And much as I dislike Newcastle, they played their part in it too. They were outplayed but they were always looking to go forward and seemed determined to give value for money to their hard-travelled fans who turned up in huge numbers for a game the other end of the country.
Finally, thanks to Gary for a great job producing OLAS for another year – and to my companeros who also write for “Not the Shite and Overpriced West Ham Programme”. You may have noticed that I have not mentioned Curbishley this issue. I don’t want to. I’ve had enough of him, so I won’t – and you can’t make me. Have a great summer and forget this season – I already have. We need some big, big changes at West Ham – or as the American singer Steve Earle says: “In your own backyard, In your own hometown, So what you doin’ standin’ around? Just follow your heart, The revolution starts now”
See you in august – Come On You Irons!!!
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Monday, 28 April 2008
Three Furlongs to Go
OLAS 438 April 26th 2008
Get ready for our biggest game of the season. Our cup final. It’s a three horse race now (OK, two donkeys, one mule) and we’re out in front but there are still three games to go. Remember the “team” we quite rightly booed off the pitch last week? Today we’ve got to get behind them big time to help them win the MTM championship 2007-2008. Forget all the negativity. It’s now or never.
MTM? – Mid Table Mediocrity. And battling it out for the coveted 10th spot are the Spuds, Kevin’s calamitous Toon Army and our very own heroes - the Hamstrings.
We’re in pole position – five points ahead of our rivals with nine points at stake. Stuff Newcastle and we can’t be caught, whatever kind of a pasting we get at Old Crapford or against Mad Martin’s Villa who are pretty rampant right now. Though, if we play like we did last week, we’ll lose about 5-0 to Newcastle, which will be embarrassing to say the least.
Of course I can recall booing West Ham off the pitch various times over the years, usually when we’ve thrown away a lead near the end, or when we’ve been totally hammered, but never ever when we’ve won a game. So that was a real first. And Curbs, if you are scraping the barrel looking for achievements from this miserable season, you can honestly say you are the very first West Ham manager to take a winning team off the pitch to the boos of the Upton Park faithful. Marvellous.
I didn’t join in but I don’t condemn those who did. They have my unconditional support. Me - I just felt numb. When I got home from the game and sloped in, my family assumed from my mood and body language that West Ham had lost. And it felt like a defeat because you just couldn’t tell which team had 44 points before the game and which team had 11. If Derby had drawn level or won even, it would not have been an injustice. Derby were totally inadequate but they had spirit. We were just inadequate. And it gave me the willies because it is absolutely clear that unless there is a dramatic change at many levels in the club, then we are going to be the Derby County of next season.
However, I am also experienced enough to know that the only thing that is completely certain about coming to Upton Park is that nothing is certain – so it may be that we will really turn up today, fight for every ball and send them back to Geordieland with a brutal hammering courtesy of a Dean Ashton hat-trick. You heard it here first. Although the key to that happening might be to kidnap Curbishley before he gets the chance to announce that his shining star Boa Morte is in the starting line up.
I’ve got a serious admission to make here, and I hope the OLAS community will show tolerance and understanding. It all happened on a Tuesday night quite early in the season. Every Tuesday I play “Male Mid-Life Crisis Footie” with my companions mainly over 40, some over 50. A few of us go for a beer afterwards where conversation ranges from the maybes of the game we have just played to the music we enjoyed 25 years ago, to current work issues, to our kids, to what’s going on in the football world. It’s a pretty mixed crew – West Ham, Arsenal and Spurs fans, and one holding the torch for the people’s team, Ebbsfleet United (see www.ebbsfleetunited.co.uk - interesting!).
Anyway I got into a stupid discussion about what was going to happen this season. My mate Lu – a Gooner admittedly but a totally sound guy – was absolutely convinced that Newcastle were going to be the team from the middle of the table that would plummet in the second half of the season and get caught up in the relegation scramble with the newly promoted clubs. I disagreed. I fancied Newcastle, however inconsistent they were, to pull off enough results to stay in the middle of the table – winning one week and losing the next. No, Lu was completely convinced they were already heading for meltdown. I said – look West Ham have got points but they are playing the most unimaginative, rubbish football and half the team are crocked by injury. If anyone is sure to plummet, it’s us. And so it went on until, and I don’t quite know how these words exited my mouth, “I’m willing to put money on that West Ham will finish lower than Newcastle,” I said.
I still can’t believe it happened. But I just felt that with occasional exceptions, the points we were stacking up were on the back of almost completely unconvincing performances. We would get found out and Curbishley has nothing else in his drawer. No sooner had the bet been sealed than Newcastle went into crisis, slipped down the league, heading for oblivion, and West Ham continued to stack the points up and beat Man U into the bargain. And then KK returned on a magic carpet to Geordieland. Good for my bet I thought – but first few games Newcastle couldn’t beat anyone.
So that is the story of how, having supported West ham since 1966, I came to bet against my team. The only thing I can plead is that it was a moment of madness and I was suffering deeply under the leaden weight of Curbishleyism – I just couldn’t see a way forward. And to be honest it’s still pretty misty. Am I forgiven?
Today, of course, I want us to smash my bet to smithereens and grab that 10th spot. (And besides, I won three times as much as that silly bet will cost me on this year’s Grand National).
A top half finish might yet enable some gullible top class players from overseas, who want to play in the premiership, to think we are worth a punt. And if we get rid of our gormless leader – and install, preferably, someone alive from the neck upwards, unlike the present incumbent, then, who knows, we might be worth a punt. And the opportunity to finish above Spurs is much too enticing to ignore.
Well today won’t be my only trip east this weekend. Tomorrow I’m going to be in Victoria Park for bit of nostalgia and a bit of serious stuff. There’s a free carnival put on by Love Music Hate Racism to mark the 30th anniversary of the Rock Against Racism/Anti Nazi League carnival in April ’78.
I was there in ‘78 and remember what a turning point it was in the fight for unity among black and white youth and against the poisonous racism and nostalgia for the Third Reich of the National Front. Some of the musicians who turned out that day to nail their mast firmly to anti-racism, will be back alongside the bands that excite young people today. Of course some heroes can’t be there. Joe Strummer – may he rest in peace – has gone to the carnival in the sky, but his spirit lives on. And the serious stuff? Well if we’re not careful the truly dangerous and barking mad dogs of the BNP, or is it the mad BNP dogs of Barking, are going to be turning up as representatives on the London Assembly as regularly as Hayden Mullins does back passes and Lucas Neill is caught out of position. And you can’t get more regular than that.
There was a time in the early 80s when to get to the ground you had to get past the leafleters of the NF giving out their poisonous leaflets on Green Street. When I came to the Portsmouth game I was half-expecting to have to dodge past BNP leafleters preparing for the May election. But instead the people soliciting support around the ground were collecting for AMREF – the African medical and development charity that Nick Bull has been writing about. Quite a turnaround if you look at it in the long historical view. But we can never be complacent about racism and it’s all too easy for people’s grievances to find a racist outlet, especially when the tabloid press eggs them on.
So today I want the claret and blues to put one over the black and whites but tomorrow I want us to remember, as we said in 78, “we are black, we are white, together we are dynamite.”
Get ready for our biggest game of the season. Our cup final. It’s a three horse race now (OK, two donkeys, one mule) and we’re out in front but there are still three games to go. Remember the “team” we quite rightly booed off the pitch last week? Today we’ve got to get behind them big time to help them win the MTM championship 2007-2008. Forget all the negativity. It’s now or never.
MTM? – Mid Table Mediocrity. And battling it out for the coveted 10th spot are the Spuds, Kevin’s calamitous Toon Army and our very own heroes - the Hamstrings.
We’re in pole position – five points ahead of our rivals with nine points at stake. Stuff Newcastle and we can’t be caught, whatever kind of a pasting we get at Old Crapford or against Mad Martin’s Villa who are pretty rampant right now. Though, if we play like we did last week, we’ll lose about 5-0 to Newcastle, which will be embarrassing to say the least.
Of course I can recall booing West Ham off the pitch various times over the years, usually when we’ve thrown away a lead near the end, or when we’ve been totally hammered, but never ever when we’ve won a game. So that was a real first. And Curbs, if you are scraping the barrel looking for achievements from this miserable season, you can honestly say you are the very first West Ham manager to take a winning team off the pitch to the boos of the Upton Park faithful. Marvellous.
I didn’t join in but I don’t condemn those who did. They have my unconditional support. Me - I just felt numb. When I got home from the game and sloped in, my family assumed from my mood and body language that West Ham had lost. And it felt like a defeat because you just couldn’t tell which team had 44 points before the game and which team had 11. If Derby had drawn level or won even, it would not have been an injustice. Derby were totally inadequate but they had spirit. We were just inadequate. And it gave me the willies because it is absolutely clear that unless there is a dramatic change at many levels in the club, then we are going to be the Derby County of next season.
However, I am also experienced enough to know that the only thing that is completely certain about coming to Upton Park is that nothing is certain – so it may be that we will really turn up today, fight for every ball and send them back to Geordieland with a brutal hammering courtesy of a Dean Ashton hat-trick. You heard it here first. Although the key to that happening might be to kidnap Curbishley before he gets the chance to announce that his shining star Boa Morte is in the starting line up.
I’ve got a serious admission to make here, and I hope the OLAS community will show tolerance and understanding. It all happened on a Tuesday night quite early in the season. Every Tuesday I play “Male Mid-Life Crisis Footie” with my companions mainly over 40, some over 50. A few of us go for a beer afterwards where conversation ranges from the maybes of the game we have just played to the music we enjoyed 25 years ago, to current work issues, to our kids, to what’s going on in the football world. It’s a pretty mixed crew – West Ham, Arsenal and Spurs fans, and one holding the torch for the people’s team, Ebbsfleet United (see www.ebbsfleetunited.co.uk - interesting!).
Anyway I got into a stupid discussion about what was going to happen this season. My mate Lu – a Gooner admittedly but a totally sound guy – was absolutely convinced that Newcastle were going to be the team from the middle of the table that would plummet in the second half of the season and get caught up in the relegation scramble with the newly promoted clubs. I disagreed. I fancied Newcastle, however inconsistent they were, to pull off enough results to stay in the middle of the table – winning one week and losing the next. No, Lu was completely convinced they were already heading for meltdown. I said – look West Ham have got points but they are playing the most unimaginative, rubbish football and half the team are crocked by injury. If anyone is sure to plummet, it’s us. And so it went on until, and I don’t quite know how these words exited my mouth, “I’m willing to put money on that West Ham will finish lower than Newcastle,” I said.
I still can’t believe it happened. But I just felt that with occasional exceptions, the points we were stacking up were on the back of almost completely unconvincing performances. We would get found out and Curbishley has nothing else in his drawer. No sooner had the bet been sealed than Newcastle went into crisis, slipped down the league, heading for oblivion, and West Ham continued to stack the points up and beat Man U into the bargain. And then KK returned on a magic carpet to Geordieland. Good for my bet I thought – but first few games Newcastle couldn’t beat anyone.
So that is the story of how, having supported West ham since 1966, I came to bet against my team. The only thing I can plead is that it was a moment of madness and I was suffering deeply under the leaden weight of Curbishleyism – I just couldn’t see a way forward. And to be honest it’s still pretty misty. Am I forgiven?
Today, of course, I want us to smash my bet to smithereens and grab that 10th spot. (And besides, I won three times as much as that silly bet will cost me on this year’s Grand National).
A top half finish might yet enable some gullible top class players from overseas, who want to play in the premiership, to think we are worth a punt. And if we get rid of our gormless leader – and install, preferably, someone alive from the neck upwards, unlike the present incumbent, then, who knows, we might be worth a punt. And the opportunity to finish above Spurs is much too enticing to ignore.
Well today won’t be my only trip east this weekend. Tomorrow I’m going to be in Victoria Park for bit of nostalgia and a bit of serious stuff. There’s a free carnival put on by Love Music Hate Racism to mark the 30th anniversary of the Rock Against Racism/Anti Nazi League carnival in April ’78.
I was there in ‘78 and remember what a turning point it was in the fight for unity among black and white youth and against the poisonous racism and nostalgia for the Third Reich of the National Front. Some of the musicians who turned out that day to nail their mast firmly to anti-racism, will be back alongside the bands that excite young people today. Of course some heroes can’t be there. Joe Strummer – may he rest in peace – has gone to the carnival in the sky, but his spirit lives on. And the serious stuff? Well if we’re not careful the truly dangerous and barking mad dogs of the BNP, or is it the mad BNP dogs of Barking, are going to be turning up as representatives on the London Assembly as regularly as Hayden Mullins does back passes and Lucas Neill is caught out of position. And you can’t get more regular than that.
There was a time in the early 80s when to get to the ground you had to get past the leafleters of the NF giving out their poisonous leaflets on Green Street. When I came to the Portsmouth game I was half-expecting to have to dodge past BNP leafleters preparing for the May election. But instead the people soliciting support around the ground were collecting for AMREF – the African medical and development charity that Nick Bull has been writing about. Quite a turnaround if you look at it in the long historical view. But we can never be complacent about racism and it’s all too easy for people’s grievances to find a racist outlet, especially when the tabloid press eggs them on.
So today I want the claret and blues to put one over the black and whites but tomorrow I want us to remember, as we said in 78, “we are black, we are white, together we are dynamite.”
Monday, 21 April 2008
Writing on the wall
Olas 437 19 April 2008
I’ve always admired pieces of clever graffiti like the one I found gracing the ceiling of a public convenience that said, “I’m sorry did I break your concentration?” Or the cumulative one I saw scrawled on a wall at Liverpool Street station many years ago. Underneath the plaintive comment, “My mum made me a homosexual”, someone had added, “If I gave her the wool can she make me one too?”
Coming out of the “Academy of Football” after the Portsmouth game I had a distinct urge to plaster graffiti over the walls of Upton Park and across Curbishley’s face. The particular slogan I had in mind goes back to the heady days of 1968. I was 10 years old then and enjoying some of the most creative and sparkling football I’ve ever seen at Upton Park as players who had graduated through our academy were giving life and meaning to the unique and profound football philosophy of Ron Greenwood.
Meanwhile in London, Paris and in cities across America, people twice my age in their academies of the time – the universities – were attempting a radical upheaval of their institutions and society in general. In that melting pot of activism the ideas of “Situationism” were all the rage – and one of their ways of popularising their ideas was to write them as boldly as possible on any walls they could find.
One of their best-known slogans was “All Power to the Imagination” – and that was the one that was ringing in my ears after the Portsmouth debacle. I had been looking forward to the Portsmouth game. With just a few games left, here was a chance to pit ourselves against one of the clutch of teams stretching away above us but still within reach.
Portsmouth had played an F A Cup semi final just three days earlier, and had struggled to beat a good championship side. So we were in an excellent position to take advantage of their physical state of exhaustion. Our effort lasted about 20 minutes at most and having not made the breakthrough by then, despite Bobby Z deftly taking the ball round David James, we sat back, ran out of ideas and let Portsmouth who were tired but full of ideas - take control. We were fortunate to be level by the break.
Now I know what I would have said at half time but it seems that all Curbs advised was, “Well played lads. Find somewhere comfortable to sleep for the second half. We need to save ourselves for the big guns. I don’t want to scare you but we’ve got to go to, er, Bolton next Saturday and fuck me, we’ve got Derby after that. It doesn’t get much tougher, so we need to conserve our energy. Anyone need any extra pillows?”
So we stayed asleep, Portsmouth got the goal. They could have had more but I think even they couldn’t be arsed. It was all to easy – like taking candy from a baby or excuses from a Curbishley.
As we left the ground I turned to my mate, repeated my favourite situationist slogan and suggested that instead of the “Academy of Football” the statement epitomising West Ham today, was ‘No Power to the Imagination”. Apparently one of the situationists other lines was “Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking”. Without doubt that applied not only to Curbs and his sidekick Mervyn, but to pretty much every West Ham player that night, especially Mullins who was trying to snatch back the “crappiest player” award, which had been commandeered by Boa Morte for quite a while now.
The only exception was Robert Green who did everything that was required of him, had no chance with a well-placed goal and took the initiative of running up to the Portsmouth area when we had a corner in injury time.
The front-runners rarely saw the ball as it was usually squandered by the midfield. Scott Parker seemed to be guided by a dodgy satnav bought in Romford Market. He showed his ability to pick up any loose balls and turn round himself in a circle as the inimitable John Moncur used to do, but then he seemed to keep heading backwards rather than forwards.
Behind Parker the defence were playing that stupid “dare you to go forward” game of seeing how many times they can pass the ball across the pitch to each other, while putting it as near to the opposing forwards as possible. In this rather childish game, the one who eventually boots it upfield loses that round and, apparently, if you make a totally accurate upfield pass you’re out the game altogether.
Well, there was no danger of accurate upfield passes against Portsmouth. Following that miserable night, the result at Bolton was so predictable I should have put money on it. Especially with the kind of team we put out. I see that Anton is the latest player to stake a claim that our nickname should change from the Hammers to the Hamstrings. Although the positive side of the latest injury is that it ought to encourage Curbs to play Tomkins for the final games. Good to see Collisson getting a proper run out, though. And hopefully he will also feature in the final games.
I read the West Ham “fans verdict” of the Bolton game in the Observer – and the words that adorned it were “boring”, “negative” and “dross”. To be honest that is what we have put up with for most of the season especially since January. The situationists used to claim that “Our hope can come only from the hopeless” – Well I for one am hoping that is not the case.
Last time round I described the positive hope that we rightly have in the youth at the club and Gary is absolutely right to laud the work of Tony Carr. But we have also got to give those young players some hope or we know where they will be heading in a couple of years. That means having high quality, motivated players around them. The current squad don’t fit that bill by miles.
It seems like the club has taken a step in the right direction with the appointment of Nani – someone who ought to know his onions about the best players on the continent. Hopefully, over the summer, we will bring at least a couple of quality players in- maybe more. At the same time, as Johnny B wrote last issue, the financial squeeze is on our owners. So if we’re going to buy we are also going to need to sell. Without any hesitation these are the individuals I would put up for sale at the end of the season:
Lucas Neill, Freddie Ljungberg, Hayden Mullins, Jonathan Spector, Nigel Quashie, Lee Bowyer, Luis Boa Morte, and Alan Curbishley. In the case of Boa Morte we should even be willing to consider paying someone to take him.
With a little bit of hesitation I would be tempted to send Matthew Etherington, Carlton Cole, and Danny Gabbidon along to the departure lounge too.
I wouldn’t sell our pairs of crutches or sets of plaster casts though, as we may well need them.
And so to Derby. Let’s take a look at the objective facts. They have 11points from 34 games and have not won away from home all season. They have let in 74 goals including the six that Villa put past them last weekend and the five that we put past them in November. You can just imagine Curbishley’s game plan. “Let’s go 4-5-1 and don’t take any risks.”
Well, Alan, I’ll give you one more Situationist pearl of wisdom:
“The prospect of finding pleasure tomorrow will never compensate for today’s boredom.”
So sort it. The only acceptable result today is a convincing win. Anything less and I’m afraid it is time for you to accept that the writing is on the wall.
I’ve always admired pieces of clever graffiti like the one I found gracing the ceiling of a public convenience that said, “I’m sorry did I break your concentration?” Or the cumulative one I saw scrawled on a wall at Liverpool Street station many years ago. Underneath the plaintive comment, “My mum made me a homosexual”, someone had added, “If I gave her the wool can she make me one too?”
Coming out of the “Academy of Football” after the Portsmouth game I had a distinct urge to plaster graffiti over the walls of Upton Park and across Curbishley’s face. The particular slogan I had in mind goes back to the heady days of 1968. I was 10 years old then and enjoying some of the most creative and sparkling football I’ve ever seen at Upton Park as players who had graduated through our academy were giving life and meaning to the unique and profound football philosophy of Ron Greenwood.
Meanwhile in London, Paris and in cities across America, people twice my age in their academies of the time – the universities – were attempting a radical upheaval of their institutions and society in general. In that melting pot of activism the ideas of “Situationism” were all the rage – and one of their ways of popularising their ideas was to write them as boldly as possible on any walls they could find.
One of their best-known slogans was “All Power to the Imagination” – and that was the one that was ringing in my ears after the Portsmouth debacle. I had been looking forward to the Portsmouth game. With just a few games left, here was a chance to pit ourselves against one of the clutch of teams stretching away above us but still within reach.
Portsmouth had played an F A Cup semi final just three days earlier, and had struggled to beat a good championship side. So we were in an excellent position to take advantage of their physical state of exhaustion. Our effort lasted about 20 minutes at most and having not made the breakthrough by then, despite Bobby Z deftly taking the ball round David James, we sat back, ran out of ideas and let Portsmouth who were tired but full of ideas - take control. We were fortunate to be level by the break.
Now I know what I would have said at half time but it seems that all Curbs advised was, “Well played lads. Find somewhere comfortable to sleep for the second half. We need to save ourselves for the big guns. I don’t want to scare you but we’ve got to go to, er, Bolton next Saturday and fuck me, we’ve got Derby after that. It doesn’t get much tougher, so we need to conserve our energy. Anyone need any extra pillows?”
So we stayed asleep, Portsmouth got the goal. They could have had more but I think even they couldn’t be arsed. It was all to easy – like taking candy from a baby or excuses from a Curbishley.
As we left the ground I turned to my mate, repeated my favourite situationist slogan and suggested that instead of the “Academy of Football” the statement epitomising West Ham today, was ‘No Power to the Imagination”. Apparently one of the situationists other lines was “Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking”. Without doubt that applied not only to Curbs and his sidekick Mervyn, but to pretty much every West Ham player that night, especially Mullins who was trying to snatch back the “crappiest player” award, which had been commandeered by Boa Morte for quite a while now.
The only exception was Robert Green who did everything that was required of him, had no chance with a well-placed goal and took the initiative of running up to the Portsmouth area when we had a corner in injury time.
The front-runners rarely saw the ball as it was usually squandered by the midfield. Scott Parker seemed to be guided by a dodgy satnav bought in Romford Market. He showed his ability to pick up any loose balls and turn round himself in a circle as the inimitable John Moncur used to do, but then he seemed to keep heading backwards rather than forwards.
Behind Parker the defence were playing that stupid “dare you to go forward” game of seeing how many times they can pass the ball across the pitch to each other, while putting it as near to the opposing forwards as possible. In this rather childish game, the one who eventually boots it upfield loses that round and, apparently, if you make a totally accurate upfield pass you’re out the game altogether.
Well, there was no danger of accurate upfield passes against Portsmouth. Following that miserable night, the result at Bolton was so predictable I should have put money on it. Especially with the kind of team we put out. I see that Anton is the latest player to stake a claim that our nickname should change from the Hammers to the Hamstrings. Although the positive side of the latest injury is that it ought to encourage Curbs to play Tomkins for the final games. Good to see Collisson getting a proper run out, though. And hopefully he will also feature in the final games.
I read the West Ham “fans verdict” of the Bolton game in the Observer – and the words that adorned it were “boring”, “negative” and “dross”. To be honest that is what we have put up with for most of the season especially since January. The situationists used to claim that “Our hope can come only from the hopeless” – Well I for one am hoping that is not the case.
Last time round I described the positive hope that we rightly have in the youth at the club and Gary is absolutely right to laud the work of Tony Carr. But we have also got to give those young players some hope or we know where they will be heading in a couple of years. That means having high quality, motivated players around them. The current squad don’t fit that bill by miles.
It seems like the club has taken a step in the right direction with the appointment of Nani – someone who ought to know his onions about the best players on the continent. Hopefully, over the summer, we will bring at least a couple of quality players in- maybe more. At the same time, as Johnny B wrote last issue, the financial squeeze is on our owners. So if we’re going to buy we are also going to need to sell. Without any hesitation these are the individuals I would put up for sale at the end of the season:
Lucas Neill, Freddie Ljungberg, Hayden Mullins, Jonathan Spector, Nigel Quashie, Lee Bowyer, Luis Boa Morte, and Alan Curbishley. In the case of Boa Morte we should even be willing to consider paying someone to take him.
With a little bit of hesitation I would be tempted to send Matthew Etherington, Carlton Cole, and Danny Gabbidon along to the departure lounge too.
I wouldn’t sell our pairs of crutches or sets of plaster casts though, as we may well need them.
And so to Derby. Let’s take a look at the objective facts. They have 11points from 34 games and have not won away from home all season. They have let in 74 goals including the six that Villa put past them last weekend and the five that we put past them in November. You can just imagine Curbishley’s game plan. “Let’s go 4-5-1 and don’t take any risks.”
Well, Alan, I’ll give you one more Situationist pearl of wisdom:
“The prospect of finding pleasure tomorrow will never compensate for today’s boredom.”
So sort it. The only acceptable result today is a convincing win. Anything less and I’m afraid it is time for you to accept that the writing is on the wall.
Friday, 11 April 2008
Chinese Whispers
OLAS 436 April 8th 2008
I’ve heard a rumour that Alan Curbishley has discarded his copy of “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and started instead to flick through OLAS for his nighttime reading. For weeks and weeks I have been just one of many OLAS scribes telling Curbishley to start playing the youth team prospects. And he’s finally taken notice. Freddie Sears and James Tomkins have been given the nod and grasped the opportunity with both hands (and feet) and it seems that Jack Collison will find himself in the action before long – who knows, maybe tonight?
On the other had, given that China is all over the news these days, it might not be OLAS at all. Perhaps Curbs has been reading the works of Chairman Mao, and stumbled across the old leader’s words in a mass rally to the youth during the cultural revolution:
"The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigour and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you."
I should point out that’s ‘the sun’ not “The Sun” at 8 in the morning, by the way.
My friend Ian, who makes a living as a “Socialist Conjuror” among other things, used to include a line about Chairman Mao in his shows. He would proclaim to the audience “This is the very trick that I once performed for Chairman Mao. Well, he said he was Chairman Mao. Well, what he said was, if you’re a magician…”
Meanwhile, the young ones are doing us proud. I couldn’t get to the Blackburn game but I found myself on one of the West Ham websites an hour into the match and everyone was writing in saying it was 1-1, there’s half an our left, he’s going to bring on Freddie Sears and we’ll win 2-1. So many punters were absolutely sure of it. But I don’t think any of them would have reckoned on him taking his goal as spectacularly as he did, diving to follow up the goalie’s parry, with a brave header.
I had heard rave reports of Freddie over the last year and all the goals he’s been bagging for the youths and reserve teams, but had not had an opportunity to see what he can do. What I’ve seen in recent games has been really impressive. He’s been likened to Tony Cottee, which is no bad thing. To me he also has something of Jermaine Defoe about him – quick, powerful and alert with a real scent for goals (but hopefully without the urge to bite other players). And although they’ve only just begun to play together, he seems to work really well with Deano. A truly effective Little and (very) Large combination! Deano really seems to enjoy playing alongside him. And wasn’t it great to see Deano taking a real top-notch striker’s goal against Everton with real panache. He was unlucky not to make it three in three games, against Sunderland, with that clever placed shot that beat the goalie but bounced back of the post.
At Everton, James Tomkins at the back couldn’t have had a more eventful first 10 minutes against one of the country’s top teams, on their patch. Early on he ran up for a corner and smacked a header against the bar. Back down the other end, though, his lack of experience told against Yakubu whose clinical finish proved that in the premiership there are no second chances.
Yet, far from his error undermining him, he played the rest of the 90 minutes with determination and growing confidence. In true West Ham style he played the ball out of the area several times instead of just hoofing it. And just as Freddie Sears had Deano supporting and encouraging him, so Tomkins had Anton back to his best alongside him. I had written previously that bringing the youth players in would have a galvanizing effect on some of our more complacent stars weighed down by their wage packets – and so far that seems to be true. The performances against Blackburn and Everton were a massive improvement. Having said that, after you lose 4-0 three times in a row the only is up.
Still, it did the trick for Rob Green. He’s been banging at the England door with terrific performances between the posts this year and last year. He just hadn’t cottoned on that by letting in 12 goals in three games he would finally get noticed. So, thanks Chelsea, Liverpool and Spurs. Funny old game. And now that he’s been called up it proves that he’s not going to have to be playing for the Arse to get chosen. Of course the only flaw in this logic is that Ribonson has just let in four at Spurs against one of the crappiest teams in the league. That might keep him ahead of Greenie.
Now what about Portsmouth then? Well I like them, and I still love Harry, Harry, Harry, Harry, Redknapp on the wing, on the wing. Nearly 40 years ago – 68-69 season Harry was sensational down the wing. So many goals came from his darting runs and pinpoint crosses. Everyone said he couldn’t shoot but I remember two volleyed goals he got that year, one low from the edge of the box in a 4-0 drubbing of West Brom and one sensational net-burster – the winning goal in a 4-3 victory against QPR. As a manager here he had his ups and downs. He made many good decisions and some bad ones, but considering how dreary things are now I Iook back on his days in charge as golden days when we played exciting football and could upset the big guns. The icing on the cake was when he led us to that FA cup victory at Old Trafford.
Portsmouth back then were small fry. Today, though, are sitting where we should be. Without the wealth and institutional power of the big four, they are four places and nine points above us, pushing hard for a European place in both the league and the cup. They fear no one.
We’ve shown attacking flair on the road but Portsmouth can match this. They have won eight times away from home this season. They play fast attacking football and, on the whole, they have bought in exciting, talented players who have knees that work and can move without crutches. Even their older players are not quite ready for the donkey sanctuary like some of ours are. They are still motivated and still trying to prove something. Not surprisingly they have scored eleven more goals than we have.
Granted, Harry may not be a better looker than Curbs but he’s got ambition, personality and a sense of humour. I tend to judge people by the “airport lounge” test. I imagine being on a long-haul flight that has had to cut its journey short in some god-forsaken place. The connecting flight is 10 hours away and I’ve got to while away that time chatting in a spartan airport lounge to my neighbour on the flight. If it was Curbs, I know that within 10 minutes we’d be looking at each other with nothing to say. But Harry – well, even after 10 hours, we’d still be chatting and laughing.
In his autobiography I loved his line about one of his flutters a few years back. He put money on West Ham to win the cup and Dana International – the transsexual Israeli singer – to win the Eurovision song contest. He described it as the ultimate each-way bet! (But only one of them came off)
I will cheer him when he comes back home today, and David James and Glen Johnson. As for Jermaine – in the humanity stakes he’s definitely a bit of a **** but as a footballer he’s top class. And if Freddie Sears gets anywhere near his level of play in the coming years, and Tomkins and Collison meet their potential than we can look forward with hope.
Or as Chairman Mao said: “The future is bright and no one can change this general trend of history. Come on you Irons!” Well, he said he was Chairman Mao…well, actually, he said, “if that’s a genuine quote…”
I’ve heard a rumour that Alan Curbishley has discarded his copy of “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and started instead to flick through OLAS for his nighttime reading. For weeks and weeks I have been just one of many OLAS scribes telling Curbishley to start playing the youth team prospects. And he’s finally taken notice. Freddie Sears and James Tomkins have been given the nod and grasped the opportunity with both hands (and feet) and it seems that Jack Collison will find himself in the action before long – who knows, maybe tonight?
On the other had, given that China is all over the news these days, it might not be OLAS at all. Perhaps Curbs has been reading the works of Chairman Mao, and stumbled across the old leader’s words in a mass rally to the youth during the cultural revolution:
"The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigour and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you."
I should point out that’s ‘the sun’ not “The Sun” at 8 in the morning, by the way.
My friend Ian, who makes a living as a “Socialist Conjuror” among other things, used to include a line about Chairman Mao in his shows. He would proclaim to the audience “This is the very trick that I once performed for Chairman Mao. Well, he said he was Chairman Mao. Well, what he said was, if you’re a magician…”
Meanwhile, the young ones are doing us proud. I couldn’t get to the Blackburn game but I found myself on one of the West Ham websites an hour into the match and everyone was writing in saying it was 1-1, there’s half an our left, he’s going to bring on Freddie Sears and we’ll win 2-1. So many punters were absolutely sure of it. But I don’t think any of them would have reckoned on him taking his goal as spectacularly as he did, diving to follow up the goalie’s parry, with a brave header.
I had heard rave reports of Freddie over the last year and all the goals he’s been bagging for the youths and reserve teams, but had not had an opportunity to see what he can do. What I’ve seen in recent games has been really impressive. He’s been likened to Tony Cottee, which is no bad thing. To me he also has something of Jermaine Defoe about him – quick, powerful and alert with a real scent for goals (but hopefully without the urge to bite other players). And although they’ve only just begun to play together, he seems to work really well with Deano. A truly effective Little and (very) Large combination! Deano really seems to enjoy playing alongside him. And wasn’t it great to see Deano taking a real top-notch striker’s goal against Everton with real panache. He was unlucky not to make it three in three games, against Sunderland, with that clever placed shot that beat the goalie but bounced back of the post.
At Everton, James Tomkins at the back couldn’t have had a more eventful first 10 minutes against one of the country’s top teams, on their patch. Early on he ran up for a corner and smacked a header against the bar. Back down the other end, though, his lack of experience told against Yakubu whose clinical finish proved that in the premiership there are no second chances.
Yet, far from his error undermining him, he played the rest of the 90 minutes with determination and growing confidence. In true West Ham style he played the ball out of the area several times instead of just hoofing it. And just as Freddie Sears had Deano supporting and encouraging him, so Tomkins had Anton back to his best alongside him. I had written previously that bringing the youth players in would have a galvanizing effect on some of our more complacent stars weighed down by their wage packets – and so far that seems to be true. The performances against Blackburn and Everton were a massive improvement. Having said that, after you lose 4-0 three times in a row the only is up.
Still, it did the trick for Rob Green. He’s been banging at the England door with terrific performances between the posts this year and last year. He just hadn’t cottoned on that by letting in 12 goals in three games he would finally get noticed. So, thanks Chelsea, Liverpool and Spurs. Funny old game. And now that he’s been called up it proves that he’s not going to have to be playing for the Arse to get chosen. Of course the only flaw in this logic is that Ribonson has just let in four at Spurs against one of the crappiest teams in the league. That might keep him ahead of Greenie.
Now what about Portsmouth then? Well I like them, and I still love Harry, Harry, Harry, Harry, Redknapp on the wing, on the wing. Nearly 40 years ago – 68-69 season Harry was sensational down the wing. So many goals came from his darting runs and pinpoint crosses. Everyone said he couldn’t shoot but I remember two volleyed goals he got that year, one low from the edge of the box in a 4-0 drubbing of West Brom and one sensational net-burster – the winning goal in a 4-3 victory against QPR. As a manager here he had his ups and downs. He made many good decisions and some bad ones, but considering how dreary things are now I Iook back on his days in charge as golden days when we played exciting football and could upset the big guns. The icing on the cake was when he led us to that FA cup victory at Old Trafford.
Portsmouth back then were small fry. Today, though, are sitting where we should be. Without the wealth and institutional power of the big four, they are four places and nine points above us, pushing hard for a European place in both the league and the cup. They fear no one.
We’ve shown attacking flair on the road but Portsmouth can match this. They have won eight times away from home this season. They play fast attacking football and, on the whole, they have bought in exciting, talented players who have knees that work and can move without crutches. Even their older players are not quite ready for the donkey sanctuary like some of ours are. They are still motivated and still trying to prove something. Not surprisingly they have scored eleven more goals than we have.
Granted, Harry may not be a better looker than Curbs but he’s got ambition, personality and a sense of humour. I tend to judge people by the “airport lounge” test. I imagine being on a long-haul flight that has had to cut its journey short in some god-forsaken place. The connecting flight is 10 hours away and I’ve got to while away that time chatting in a spartan airport lounge to my neighbour on the flight. If it was Curbs, I know that within 10 minutes we’d be looking at each other with nothing to say. But Harry – well, even after 10 hours, we’d still be chatting and laughing.
In his autobiography I loved his line about one of his flutters a few years back. He put money on West Ham to win the cup and Dana International – the transsexual Israeli singer – to win the Eurovision song contest. He described it as the ultimate each-way bet! (But only one of them came off)
I will cheer him when he comes back home today, and David James and Glen Johnson. As for Jermaine – in the humanity stakes he’s definitely a bit of a **** but as a footballer he’s top class. And if Freddie Sears gets anywhere near his level of play in the coming years, and Tomkins and Collison meet their potential than we can look forward with hope.
Or as Chairman Mao said: “The future is bright and no one can change this general trend of history. Come on you Irons!” Well, he said he was Chairman Mao…well, actually, he said, “if that’s a genuine quote…”
Wilde Thing
OLAS 435 MARCH 15TH 2008
OK, I’m paraphrasing, but I suspect that Oscar Wilde, if he was alive today, would have commented: “To lose one game by four goals may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness; and to lose three games by four goals can only mean that you are playing like total tossrags.”
His quotes are undoubtedly very clever. I found one where he seems to be talking to Alan Curbishley at first about his approach to football but then switches to a comment on Luis Boa Morte’s inimitable style:
“It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.”
His one actual known quote about the beautiful game is: “Football is a game for rough girls not suitable for delicate boys”. And it’s certainly the case that our delicate boys have been struggling lately.
If we are brutally honest, we’ve been struggling since the new year. In 12 games in 2008 the players can only be proud of their performance in two of them – away to Man City in the league, where we were very unlucky to come away with only one point, after playing them off the park but finding their goalie in terrific form; and at home to Liverpool where a steely performance of total commitment, and a determination to out-do Liverpool at their own passing game on the ground, was handsomely rewarded in the final seconds of injury time.
The other performances in 2008 have been variously lacklustre, flaky, indifferent or mediocre. It is 10 games since we have scored two goals in one game – a less than impressive 2-1 victory over Fulham. And in that time we have scraped the odd point in games we really deserved to lose.
Some of the most obvious reasons have been rehearsed several times by OLAS contributors. You all know where I stand on Curbishley and his (lack of) ability to manage and motivate. Many of us have also had to commit the heresy of acknowledging that Deano either has deep psychological problems or he is just may not be the player we thought he was or would become. I’m not prepared to give up on him yet and still think he has massive potential but as we approach the tail end of the season we are getting close to the tipping point with him. Isn’t is ironic that at this moment in time Marlon Harewood seems like the one that’s got away?
I suspect though that the real issues go much deeper and have a lot to do with the craziness that surrounded and infected the club last season. Our success in 2005-2006 under Pardew gave us great hope but seemed to alert the football vultures. A young team with a forward looking manager had achieved remarkably well in their first season back among the big boys and come within a whisker of winning the Cup Final. Instead of collective decisions and careful investment to build on this very promising situation, a few people running the club were dazzled by what might be in it for them personally.
The transparently dodgy deal for the two Argentineans clearly undermined the whole team and the manager. I have great admiration for Mascherano and Tevez as immensely talented footballers – they were just pawns in this whole exercise – but the domino effect was devastating.
We alienated several players of real potential, lost an intelligent manager who was struggling against forces bigger than he could handle, and got lumbered with a completely uninspiring “yes man” to the new regime.
In football these days, when things go terribly wrong you don’t have a lot of time to repair them. Someone (and it might have been me) once said, “Every problem has a solution but every solution has a problem”. We are now suffering the full effects of the “solution” that was hurriedly found in the January 2007 transfer window. Silly money was paid to gain the services of average players at the kind of wages that inevitably caused resentment among the existing team. And a failure to show any imagination or determination in subsequent transfer windows means that many average players don’t have to work to earn their place in the team – they have little or no competition for their positions.
The final quarter of last season was a mirage, ultimately a pleasant mirage – but a mirage nevertheless. For some players it was West Ham pride that did it, for others it was fear of championship league obscurity but we all know that the team finally pulled out the stops to stage a miracle recovery. That was of course also due to the remarkable talents and form of Carlos Tevez, but the underlying problems have been allowed to fester and now they are only too apparent.
So where do we go from here? Fortunately our league status is not at risk, because I don’t see us picking up too many more points this year. There are enough poor teams below us to ensure that, at worst, we are likely to finish 12th or 13th. We need to find out well before the beginning for next season who is here because they want to be, and who is here for the ride. And we need to make a judgement who is here on merit and who is here because they face no competition.
• We need to make a commitment now to reassessing the wage structure of the club at the end of the season to make it more transparent and fair. That’s one way to find out who wants to be here.
• We need to be planning now to replace Curbishley with an intelligent and progressive manager with wide horizons and a long-term vision. If that causes too much of a problem of losing face then move him upstairs and give him a fancy title but as little responsibility as possible. And certainly don’t put him in front of a TV camera.
• Make sure that a new manager/management team is in place early enough to make a difference in the summer transfer window.
• Start to play our most promising youngsters now. Bring them on as substitutes and give them the occasional 90 minutes this season. Don’t wait until next season to give them experience. Why do you think Arsenals’ youngsters progress so quickly?
• Show Dean Ashton the video of Kayode Odejayi leaping to score the winner for Barnsley against Chelski. It was an object lesson in when to jump, how to jump and what to do with the ball when you make contact.
• Show the rest of the team a video of Martin Devaney putting over the type of cross that strikers need. We’ve hardly done that all season.
• Make an appointment for Luis Boa Morte to see a careers advisor. My recommendation is that his next move should not be within football.
And so to the game with Blackburn today. Our win up there in December was one of our better performances and our match winner was Dean Ashton. It would be nice to repeat that today. If our heroes can see or feel anything beyond their wage packets they might sense that they owe us something.
Keep smiling – as Oscar Wilde noted, “Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”
OK, I’m paraphrasing, but I suspect that Oscar Wilde, if he was alive today, would have commented: “To lose one game by four goals may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness; and to lose three games by four goals can only mean that you are playing like total tossrags.”
His quotes are undoubtedly very clever. I found one where he seems to be talking to Alan Curbishley at first about his approach to football but then switches to a comment on Luis Boa Morte’s inimitable style:
“It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.”
His one actual known quote about the beautiful game is: “Football is a game for rough girls not suitable for delicate boys”. And it’s certainly the case that our delicate boys have been struggling lately.
If we are brutally honest, we’ve been struggling since the new year. In 12 games in 2008 the players can only be proud of their performance in two of them – away to Man City in the league, where we were very unlucky to come away with only one point, after playing them off the park but finding their goalie in terrific form; and at home to Liverpool where a steely performance of total commitment, and a determination to out-do Liverpool at their own passing game on the ground, was handsomely rewarded in the final seconds of injury time.
The other performances in 2008 have been variously lacklustre, flaky, indifferent or mediocre. It is 10 games since we have scored two goals in one game – a less than impressive 2-1 victory over Fulham. And in that time we have scraped the odd point in games we really deserved to lose.
Some of the most obvious reasons have been rehearsed several times by OLAS contributors. You all know where I stand on Curbishley and his (lack of) ability to manage and motivate. Many of us have also had to commit the heresy of acknowledging that Deano either has deep psychological problems or he is just may not be the player we thought he was or would become. I’m not prepared to give up on him yet and still think he has massive potential but as we approach the tail end of the season we are getting close to the tipping point with him. Isn’t is ironic that at this moment in time Marlon Harewood seems like the one that’s got away?
I suspect though that the real issues go much deeper and have a lot to do with the craziness that surrounded and infected the club last season. Our success in 2005-2006 under Pardew gave us great hope but seemed to alert the football vultures. A young team with a forward looking manager had achieved remarkably well in their first season back among the big boys and come within a whisker of winning the Cup Final. Instead of collective decisions and careful investment to build on this very promising situation, a few people running the club were dazzled by what might be in it for them personally.
The transparently dodgy deal for the two Argentineans clearly undermined the whole team and the manager. I have great admiration for Mascherano and Tevez as immensely talented footballers – they were just pawns in this whole exercise – but the domino effect was devastating.
We alienated several players of real potential, lost an intelligent manager who was struggling against forces bigger than he could handle, and got lumbered with a completely uninspiring “yes man” to the new regime.
In football these days, when things go terribly wrong you don’t have a lot of time to repair them. Someone (and it might have been me) once said, “Every problem has a solution but every solution has a problem”. We are now suffering the full effects of the “solution” that was hurriedly found in the January 2007 transfer window. Silly money was paid to gain the services of average players at the kind of wages that inevitably caused resentment among the existing team. And a failure to show any imagination or determination in subsequent transfer windows means that many average players don’t have to work to earn their place in the team – they have little or no competition for their positions.
The final quarter of last season was a mirage, ultimately a pleasant mirage – but a mirage nevertheless. For some players it was West Ham pride that did it, for others it was fear of championship league obscurity but we all know that the team finally pulled out the stops to stage a miracle recovery. That was of course also due to the remarkable talents and form of Carlos Tevez, but the underlying problems have been allowed to fester and now they are only too apparent.
So where do we go from here? Fortunately our league status is not at risk, because I don’t see us picking up too many more points this year. There are enough poor teams below us to ensure that, at worst, we are likely to finish 12th or 13th. We need to find out well before the beginning for next season who is here because they want to be, and who is here for the ride. And we need to make a judgement who is here on merit and who is here because they face no competition.
• We need to make a commitment now to reassessing the wage structure of the club at the end of the season to make it more transparent and fair. That’s one way to find out who wants to be here.
• We need to be planning now to replace Curbishley with an intelligent and progressive manager with wide horizons and a long-term vision. If that causes too much of a problem of losing face then move him upstairs and give him a fancy title but as little responsibility as possible. And certainly don’t put him in front of a TV camera.
• Make sure that a new manager/management team is in place early enough to make a difference in the summer transfer window.
• Start to play our most promising youngsters now. Bring them on as substitutes and give them the occasional 90 minutes this season. Don’t wait until next season to give them experience. Why do you think Arsenals’ youngsters progress so quickly?
• Show Dean Ashton the video of Kayode Odejayi leaping to score the winner for Barnsley against Chelski. It was an object lesson in when to jump, how to jump and what to do with the ball when you make contact.
• Show the rest of the team a video of Martin Devaney putting over the type of cross that strikers need. We’ve hardly done that all season.
• Make an appointment for Luis Boa Morte to see a careers advisor. My recommendation is that his next move should not be within football.
And so to the game with Blackburn today. Our win up there in December was one of our better performances and our match winner was Dean Ashton. It would be nice to repeat that today. If our heroes can see or feel anything beyond their wage packets they might sense that they owe us something.
Keep smiling – as Oscar Wilde noted, “Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”
Whatever Happened to Our Working Class Ballet?
OLAS 434 MARCH 1st 2008
Don’t even think about it. It’s not big and it’s not clever. So if any of you were planning to dress as a big tub of lard in a blue shirt with “Frank” on the back today, just put it away and forget it because...
“It is illegal to impersonate a Chelsea Pensioner”
Apparently, in the 19th century it was a capital offence.
Seeing as we’re welcoming the Chelsea pensioners to Upton Park today and knowing what the law says about them I thought I ought to check up some other bizarre laws. You’ll be surprised how many of them relate to coppers. For instance: a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants – even, if she so requests, in a policeman’s helmet, while in France, it is forbidden to call a pig Napoleon. In Kingsville, Texas, USA, it is against the law for pigs to have sex on airport property. And pigs may fly before anyone gets round to sorting out that strange bit of legislation.
But my favourite bizarre law comes from Zion, Illinois, USA, where it is still illegal to offer cigars to your pets. (My cats prefer a pint and a packet of nuts, as it happens). I don’t know whether out in Illinois they have any of those institutions like we have here, where beagles are mistreated, but you could imagine the conversation, couldn’t you?
American: “Now, howdy there doggy, can I git you anything to put in you mouth?”
Beagle: “No thanks, buddy, I’ve got another 50 fags to smoke this morning. Woof.”
American: “Have you ever tried smoking a nice big cigaaaah?”
Beagle: “Hey buddy, have you ever tried hangin’ out in a state penitentiary?”
So the Chelsea Flower Show is here today. Who’s going to come up smelling of roses and who’s going to end up in the Eartha Kitt? The Universal Laws of West Ham Attitude point to a close contest. We play absolute shite against teams who are absolute shite (of which Wigan and Birmingham are only the end of a long string of examples) but raise our game against top class opponents, as Manure and the Arse discovered at home and away last year, and as Manure and Liverpool have both found to their cost at what can hardly be called “Fortress Upton Park” this year. You cannot mess with the Universal Laws of West Ham Attitude.
We don’t seem to beat Chelsea that often so I hope you won’t mind if I indulge in a bit of nostalgia from the season we all want to forget. And in case you’ve forgotten, that was 2002-3, when we managed to take a set of outstanding players into the fizzy pop league and sell them off one by one until we had almost no one left.
There weren’t too many highlights that year but the games against Chelsea stood out. I rarely get to away games, but that year I had two kids in the class that I was teaching at school whose dads were regulars at Chelsea. Which makes a sort of pleasant change from all the Gooners in Islington where I work. Anyway they kindly took me along as their guest to the first encounter at the end of September. They were laughing over drinks before the game and must have thought they were on to a winner. Chelsea were riding high and West Ham were propping up the table having gained just two points from their first 6 games.
You would never have guessed that we were the underdogs though. West Ham took the game to Chelsea from the kick-off, hardly even distracted by having to replace the injured Freddie Kanoute, very early on, with that eager beaver/mercenary bastard, Jermaine Defoe. Chelsea had their goalie to thank for keeping them in the game before they went ahead against the run of play with a penalty, given against one of our crappiest defenders ever, Scott Minto. Despite that setback, West Ham continued to dominate and Defoe had made it 1-1 before the break.
Three minutes after half time came a completely unforgettable moment. All the Chelsea faithful, the Queen and David Mellor among them no doubt, were still picking at their prawn sandwiches when West Ham won a throw-in about thirty yards out on the right touchline. It was directly in line with where I was sitting with my Chelsea hosts just a few rows back. Paulo di Canio received the ball from the throw, juggled it from one foot to the other and back again, and then unleashed an unstoppable dipping volley past Cudicini. Pandemonium along the West Ham side of the ground. Gasps of horror and “f*** me!” from the Chelsea fans. Deep-inner pandemonium for me sitting amongst a swathe of the blue tossers.
Being West Ham, we let Chelsea have another crack when Zola got a neat goal, but di Canio, the hero of the day, grabbed the points with a careful shot from an acute angle with 6 minutes to go. A well-deserved win at what is not usually one of our happy hunting grounds.
By the time Chelsea came for the return fixture, we had climbed all the way to 18th in the table, or like Groucho Marx once said: “I’ve worked my way up from nothing to absolute poverty.” Our manager Glenn Rodent was recovering in hospital from a brain operation/personality transplant or something like that, and our secret weapon was standing on the touch line in a dark suit – or should I say standin’? Because it was Trevor Brookin’ (who never knowin’ly lets his lips pronounce that final “g”, and why should he? I’m only askin’).
The odds against us catching the teams above and staying up were pretty steep. But, in his short spell as caretaker (or very smartly dressed caretaker) Trevor had instilled a bit of pride and belief into a battered team that had been failing miserably and turning against each other. Di Canio, the hero in the game at Chelsea, hadn’t played for two and half months. He had an almighty falling out with the Rodent (telling him that he didn’t know what he was doing – though one of the defences against slander is “telling the truth”). He had also had a niggling injury that had taken him out of the reckoning for a few games, but Trevor gave him some TLC and put him on the bench for the return fixture.
The normally careful, cautious and conservative Trevor had opted to play three up front – Kanoute, Defoe and, blimey, Les f****** Ferdinand! Chelsea needed the points as much as we did as they were chasing a champions League place. But it was one of those dramas where we all knew the script.
West Ham played out of their skins, with Trevor Sinclair in particular, playing an absolute blinder, but they just couldn’t apply that finishing touch. Chelsea were rattled, always second to the ball, but looked dangerous every time they did manage to come forward. Our defence which had been leaking goals like diarrhoea all season, dealt with them magnificently. Brookin’ knew he needed some new legs for the final third of the game. So he brings on Di Canio who scores the winner with twenty minutes to go. Di Canio rips off his shirt and throws it to the sky, heads for the corner flag and shakes his fists. Upton Park erupts in a way as only it can, and in a way that I’m sure that some boring, modern, generic 60,000 seater stadium, on an old Parcel Force site, never ever will.
You can all probably think of so many times when West Ham make you want to scream or cry in frustration, but that day there were real tears of emotion in the final moments, with the crowd singing “One Trveor Brookin’, there’s only one Trevor Brookin’…” – which is true as well as being appropriate. There may be at least two and a half Frankie Lampards, but knock me down with a feather, there is only one Clever Trevor. We were the only team to do the double over Chelsea that year – a great achievement though it wasn’t enough to keep us up with the Big Boys.
That day, our supersub included, we had 12 heroes out there. They battled and battled but also had the vision and creativity to carve out the chances – with stars like di Canio, Defoe, Sinclair running the show and with our outstanding captain with the dopey expression – Joe Cole – threading killer balls through the defence.
But creativity, the watchword at West Ham for decades, has been consigned to the dustbin of history by Alan Curbishley – who is perhaps the only man in the universe who can make Glenn Rodent seem to possess a happy-go-lucky, sparkling, personality in comparison.
No doubt, some people will turn round and say I don’t know my arse form my elbow, but am I not correct in thinking that we beat Fulham with a goal that bounced in off Nobby’s arse? Is that now the “West Ham way”?
Pure football – or “working class ballet”, as the legendary Alf Garnett described it - is dying at Upton Park. We’ve been thoroughly Charltonised and how much more of it can we stand? We should be over the moon that we’ve reached the safety mark of 40 points with 12 games to go, while half of our team have been starring in “Carry on Doctor” all year. We ought to be proud and excited that we have an outside chance of snatching a European place. The trouble is, that in order to make this “progress”, we’ve all but completely abandoned our football traditions. And to be honest I’d rather see us struggling for our premiership lives but playing football that excites my soul. Remember we used to sing, “Always believe in your soul, Joey Cole…” and we sung it for a reason.
The anarchist Emma Goldman didn’t play football as far as I know but she knew the importance of living a life to the full. She said quite rightly, “If I can’t dance it’s not my revolution.” Well, I’m not dancing to the Curbishley Revolution. I’m fast asleep. Wake me up when we stop playing the ball back and forth across the park or pumping a long hopeless ball to our one striker.
Curbishley is like the ultimate footballing contraceptive – 100% safe, not a drop of anything creative oozes out, and anything interesting that happens only seems to last a couple of minutes.
So, can our team of Charltonised sluggers who are boring us witless but have drearily crept up to 9th place, pull it off today? (no, I’m not still talking about contraceptives). We’ll see, but if we do or even if we don’t, let’s show a bit of sparkle, a bit of zest, a bit of flair and let it flow. Come on you Irons!!!
Don’t even think about it. It’s not big and it’s not clever. So if any of you were planning to dress as a big tub of lard in a blue shirt with “Frank” on the back today, just put it away and forget it because...
“It is illegal to impersonate a Chelsea Pensioner”
Apparently, in the 19th century it was a capital offence.
Seeing as we’re welcoming the Chelsea pensioners to Upton Park today and knowing what the law says about them I thought I ought to check up some other bizarre laws. You’ll be surprised how many of them relate to coppers. For instance: a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants – even, if she so requests, in a policeman’s helmet, while in France, it is forbidden to call a pig Napoleon. In Kingsville, Texas, USA, it is against the law for pigs to have sex on airport property. And pigs may fly before anyone gets round to sorting out that strange bit of legislation.
But my favourite bizarre law comes from Zion, Illinois, USA, where it is still illegal to offer cigars to your pets. (My cats prefer a pint and a packet of nuts, as it happens). I don’t know whether out in Illinois they have any of those institutions like we have here, where beagles are mistreated, but you could imagine the conversation, couldn’t you?
American: “Now, howdy there doggy, can I git you anything to put in you mouth?”
Beagle: “No thanks, buddy, I’ve got another 50 fags to smoke this morning. Woof.”
American: “Have you ever tried smoking a nice big cigaaaah?”
Beagle: “Hey buddy, have you ever tried hangin’ out in a state penitentiary?”
So the Chelsea Flower Show is here today. Who’s going to come up smelling of roses and who’s going to end up in the Eartha Kitt? The Universal Laws of West Ham Attitude point to a close contest. We play absolute shite against teams who are absolute shite (of which Wigan and Birmingham are only the end of a long string of examples) but raise our game against top class opponents, as Manure and the Arse discovered at home and away last year, and as Manure and Liverpool have both found to their cost at what can hardly be called “Fortress Upton Park” this year. You cannot mess with the Universal Laws of West Ham Attitude.
We don’t seem to beat Chelsea that often so I hope you won’t mind if I indulge in a bit of nostalgia from the season we all want to forget. And in case you’ve forgotten, that was 2002-3, when we managed to take a set of outstanding players into the fizzy pop league and sell them off one by one until we had almost no one left.
There weren’t too many highlights that year but the games against Chelsea stood out. I rarely get to away games, but that year I had two kids in the class that I was teaching at school whose dads were regulars at Chelsea. Which makes a sort of pleasant change from all the Gooners in Islington where I work. Anyway they kindly took me along as their guest to the first encounter at the end of September. They were laughing over drinks before the game and must have thought they were on to a winner. Chelsea were riding high and West Ham were propping up the table having gained just two points from their first 6 games.
You would never have guessed that we were the underdogs though. West Ham took the game to Chelsea from the kick-off, hardly even distracted by having to replace the injured Freddie Kanoute, very early on, with that eager beaver/mercenary bastard, Jermaine Defoe. Chelsea had their goalie to thank for keeping them in the game before they went ahead against the run of play with a penalty, given against one of our crappiest defenders ever, Scott Minto. Despite that setback, West Ham continued to dominate and Defoe had made it 1-1 before the break.
Three minutes after half time came a completely unforgettable moment. All the Chelsea faithful, the Queen and David Mellor among them no doubt, were still picking at their prawn sandwiches when West Ham won a throw-in about thirty yards out on the right touchline. It was directly in line with where I was sitting with my Chelsea hosts just a few rows back. Paulo di Canio received the ball from the throw, juggled it from one foot to the other and back again, and then unleashed an unstoppable dipping volley past Cudicini. Pandemonium along the West Ham side of the ground. Gasps of horror and “f*** me!” from the Chelsea fans. Deep-inner pandemonium for me sitting amongst a swathe of the blue tossers.
Being West Ham, we let Chelsea have another crack when Zola got a neat goal, but di Canio, the hero of the day, grabbed the points with a careful shot from an acute angle with 6 minutes to go. A well-deserved win at what is not usually one of our happy hunting grounds.
By the time Chelsea came for the return fixture, we had climbed all the way to 18th in the table, or like Groucho Marx once said: “I’ve worked my way up from nothing to absolute poverty.” Our manager Glenn Rodent was recovering in hospital from a brain operation/personality transplant or something like that, and our secret weapon was standing on the touch line in a dark suit – or should I say standin’? Because it was Trevor Brookin’ (who never knowin’ly lets his lips pronounce that final “g”, and why should he? I’m only askin’).
The odds against us catching the teams above and staying up were pretty steep. But, in his short spell as caretaker (or very smartly dressed caretaker) Trevor had instilled a bit of pride and belief into a battered team that had been failing miserably and turning against each other. Di Canio, the hero in the game at Chelsea, hadn’t played for two and half months. He had an almighty falling out with the Rodent (telling him that he didn’t know what he was doing – though one of the defences against slander is “telling the truth”). He had also had a niggling injury that had taken him out of the reckoning for a few games, but Trevor gave him some TLC and put him on the bench for the return fixture.
The normally careful, cautious and conservative Trevor had opted to play three up front – Kanoute, Defoe and, blimey, Les f****** Ferdinand! Chelsea needed the points as much as we did as they were chasing a champions League place. But it was one of those dramas where we all knew the script.
West Ham played out of their skins, with Trevor Sinclair in particular, playing an absolute blinder, but they just couldn’t apply that finishing touch. Chelsea were rattled, always second to the ball, but looked dangerous every time they did manage to come forward. Our defence which had been leaking goals like diarrhoea all season, dealt with them magnificently. Brookin’ knew he needed some new legs for the final third of the game. So he brings on Di Canio who scores the winner with twenty minutes to go. Di Canio rips off his shirt and throws it to the sky, heads for the corner flag and shakes his fists. Upton Park erupts in a way as only it can, and in a way that I’m sure that some boring, modern, generic 60,000 seater stadium, on an old Parcel Force site, never ever will.
You can all probably think of so many times when West Ham make you want to scream or cry in frustration, but that day there were real tears of emotion in the final moments, with the crowd singing “One Trveor Brookin’, there’s only one Trevor Brookin’…” – which is true as well as being appropriate. There may be at least two and a half Frankie Lampards, but knock me down with a feather, there is only one Clever Trevor. We were the only team to do the double over Chelsea that year – a great achievement though it wasn’t enough to keep us up with the Big Boys.
That day, our supersub included, we had 12 heroes out there. They battled and battled but also had the vision and creativity to carve out the chances – with stars like di Canio, Defoe, Sinclair running the show and with our outstanding captain with the dopey expression – Joe Cole – threading killer balls through the defence.
But creativity, the watchword at West Ham for decades, has been consigned to the dustbin of history by Alan Curbishley – who is perhaps the only man in the universe who can make Glenn Rodent seem to possess a happy-go-lucky, sparkling, personality in comparison.
No doubt, some people will turn round and say I don’t know my arse form my elbow, but am I not correct in thinking that we beat Fulham with a goal that bounced in off Nobby’s arse? Is that now the “West Ham way”?
Pure football – or “working class ballet”, as the legendary Alf Garnett described it - is dying at Upton Park. We’ve been thoroughly Charltonised and how much more of it can we stand? We should be over the moon that we’ve reached the safety mark of 40 points with 12 games to go, while half of our team have been starring in “Carry on Doctor” all year. We ought to be proud and excited that we have an outside chance of snatching a European place. The trouble is, that in order to make this “progress”, we’ve all but completely abandoned our football traditions. And to be honest I’d rather see us struggling for our premiership lives but playing football that excites my soul. Remember we used to sing, “Always believe in your soul, Joey Cole…” and we sung it for a reason.
The anarchist Emma Goldman didn’t play football as far as I know but she knew the importance of living a life to the full. She said quite rightly, “If I can’t dance it’s not my revolution.” Well, I’m not dancing to the Curbishley Revolution. I’m fast asleep. Wake me up when we stop playing the ball back and forth across the park or pumping a long hopeless ball to our one striker.
Curbishley is like the ultimate footballing contraceptive – 100% safe, not a drop of anything creative oozes out, and anything interesting that happens only seems to last a couple of minutes.
So, can our team of Charltonised sluggers who are boring us witless but have drearily crept up to 9th place, pull it off today? (no, I’m not still talking about contraceptives). We’ll see, but if we do or even if we don’t, let’s show a bit of sparkle, a bit of zest, a bit of flair and let it flow. Come on you Irons!!!
West Ham United Walk on Water
OLAS 433 FEBRUARY 9TH 2008
The novelist Charles Dickens couldn’t stand them: “They are so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a water-closet doormat.” Now you might be forgiven for thinking I’m talking about:
a) Man U supporters
b) Referees
c) Estate agents
or even
d) Politicians
Actually he was talking about newspapers. He’s not the only one enraged by them. Mayor Ken Livingstone, who knows a thing or two about the wicked ways of the press, said “Nothing prepares you for how bad Fleet Street really is until it craps on you from a great height.” and James G Watt certainly had at least a moral point when he moaned that “They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers”.
Everyone has a view on newspapers. In the last OLAS Dave Zieux mourned the death of the extraordinary chess champion Bobby Fischer. Now I am happy to come out here as a bit of a chess enthusiast (Essex juniors early1970s and an unlikely victory in 1975 over 4 times British Champion to be, Julian Hodgson). I admired Fischer’s talent on the chessboard as much as I detested his antisemitic conspiracy theories, but I noticed that he once asked the pertinent question: “Is it illegal to kill a reporter?”
I had an inkling of how Fischer felt the day after our injury-ridden squad had out thought, out-fought and deservedly dispatched Liverpool on a stupendous and wild Upton Park night.
Ex-president Lyndon B Johnson, once said: “If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‘President Can't Swim.’”
Well the other week West Ham were walking on the water, as surely as Trevor Brooking once did (well at least in the song he did), and Liverpool were sinking fast. At the end the Scousers were drowning but all the newspaper stories were about… Liverpool… how they were struggling…. how Benitez’s days were numbered… how even top players like Gerrard and Carragher were below their best…and hardly a word about who beat them, who made them look so ordinary, who snuffed out every threat and who capped a performance of total commitment and ultimately got the winner they deserved in the last seconds of injury time.
As a West Ham supporter you put up with a lot of disappointments, a lot of heartbreak on the field, and amateurish boardroom behaviour off it. You part with buckets of hard-earned dosh every year to see so many “almosts” and “maybes”. But every so often there are moments that tell you why you keep doing it. The moments when you know you are not just a masochist. You are a rational human being who is prepared to sink to the depths knowing that every so often there will be such brilliant highs.
Mark Noble stepped up to take that penalty in a cauldron of pressure. Reina guessed right and almost got it but the penalty was perfectly placed and he just couldn’t reach it. As it hit the net, Upton Park erupted. This wasn’t just another win against a big club, this was payback time for that cup final at Cardiff where we were mugged at the death. And we loved it!
The Liverpool bench probably cost nearly as much as our whole team but their team were beaten in the end by a penalty dispatched by a player who cost West Ham nothing – one of our own local boys who walks home after the game.
I have to admit feeling an extra joy in a Mystic Meg moment. The day before the game I sent an email to my mate Chris who was going to meet me there. It read: “Hi Chris, I'll be there probably nearer 7.30 than 7.20. See you tomorrow before we beat Liverpool 1-0. Dave”
But at West Ham you don’t get one emotion without a twinge of its opposite. I was gutted that I hadn’t got round to placing a correct score bet. William Hill, who I believe was a Liverpool lad himself, got off pretty lightly that night.
Everything that I had picked out as positive about our league performance at Citeh, in the last OLAS, was repeated against Liverpool. After a shaky start we got on top by playing excellent football on the ground with flair and without fear, winning every crucial challenge, and most importantly, with every player taking responsibility. Everyone wanted the ball and pushed forward once they got it. The running for each other, on and off the ball, was tremendous. In that first 45 minutes Mullins and Noble were outstanding. And Carlton Cole, deservedly benefiting from an extended run in the team at the expense of an increasingly surly Dean Ashton, was too hot for Liverpool to handle.
In the second half we began to tire and Liverpool had a good spell but having weathered the storm and with Greeny pulling off an amazing save with his plates, we made one last lunge forward, got the penalty and the rest is history.
Now I saw that, I found loads to write about, and there is much more I could have said, so why couldn’t the sports reporters have said something?
I like what Erwin Knoll , an Austrian refugee to America, said about newspapers. He was the longtime editor of an American magazine called The Progressive and used that platform to expose government lies, especially in relation to foreign policy.
“Everything you read in newspapers,” he said, “is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.” No doubt he would have agreed with the advice of the old-time comedian and radio broadcaster Goodman Ace who told people “keep reading between the lies.”
When West ham beat Liverpool there were 35,000 people with first-hand knowledge of what had happened and how it happened. Those people deserve better from the papers, and even more so, those who weren’t there. When we play crap , as we did quite predictably against Wigwam, write about it, scream it from the headlines if you like. But when we upset the applecart, when the underdog pulls off an unlikely victory, when all the odds are turned upside down, don’t ignore us, don’t patronize us, don’t treat us as second class citizens, but tell it like it is.
My friend Leon, who has been writing and performing songs for donkeys years, has a verse in one of his songs:
Whoever invented the Daily Mail/Ought to be cut down to size/Pulped and reduced to a nauseous juice/And dried out and flattened till ready for use/And covered with newsprint and lies/Because who’d do that to a tree…?
Well, when I came down to Earth again, I carried on in Mystic Meg mode, assuring all my friends that however brilliantly we played against Liverpool we were bound to slip up against a team of tiddlers, either Wigwam at the weekend or the Crossroads Motel lot the following one. So West Ham, and so utterly predictable. Mind you, there aren’t many times that Curbishley makes me laugh, but he came out with a gem after the Wigwam game which set me off just when I was crying into my beer. He was droning on about how he knew it would be decided by a goal from a set piece. (Is he Mystic Meg too?)
"It was so frustrating,” he said, “because when we see it again we have probably got our smallest player on one of their biggest players."
Now how would that have happened then? Did God make it happen? Who could have possibly made that tactical decision?
But whatever the result in Pieland, and whatever is lurking behind Deano’s bad attitude, I’m not going to let it stop me still grinning from ear to ear about what we did to Liverpool. I make that three home wins in a row in the league. Let’s make it four today, not that anyone will write about it though…
The novelist Charles Dickens couldn’t stand them: “They are so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a water-closet doormat.” Now you might be forgiven for thinking I’m talking about:
a) Man U supporters
b) Referees
c) Estate agents
or even
d) Politicians
Actually he was talking about newspapers. He’s not the only one enraged by them. Mayor Ken Livingstone, who knows a thing or two about the wicked ways of the press, said “Nothing prepares you for how bad Fleet Street really is until it craps on you from a great height.” and James G Watt certainly had at least a moral point when he moaned that “They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers”.
Everyone has a view on newspapers. In the last OLAS Dave Zieux mourned the death of the extraordinary chess champion Bobby Fischer. Now I am happy to come out here as a bit of a chess enthusiast (Essex juniors early1970s and an unlikely victory in 1975 over 4 times British Champion to be, Julian Hodgson). I admired Fischer’s talent on the chessboard as much as I detested his antisemitic conspiracy theories, but I noticed that he once asked the pertinent question: “Is it illegal to kill a reporter?”
I had an inkling of how Fischer felt the day after our injury-ridden squad had out thought, out-fought and deservedly dispatched Liverpool on a stupendous and wild Upton Park night.
Ex-president Lyndon B Johnson, once said: “If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‘President Can't Swim.’”
Well the other week West Ham were walking on the water, as surely as Trevor Brooking once did (well at least in the song he did), and Liverpool were sinking fast. At the end the Scousers were drowning but all the newspaper stories were about… Liverpool… how they were struggling…. how Benitez’s days were numbered… how even top players like Gerrard and Carragher were below their best…and hardly a word about who beat them, who made them look so ordinary, who snuffed out every threat and who capped a performance of total commitment and ultimately got the winner they deserved in the last seconds of injury time.
As a West Ham supporter you put up with a lot of disappointments, a lot of heartbreak on the field, and amateurish boardroom behaviour off it. You part with buckets of hard-earned dosh every year to see so many “almosts” and “maybes”. But every so often there are moments that tell you why you keep doing it. The moments when you know you are not just a masochist. You are a rational human being who is prepared to sink to the depths knowing that every so often there will be such brilliant highs.
Mark Noble stepped up to take that penalty in a cauldron of pressure. Reina guessed right and almost got it but the penalty was perfectly placed and he just couldn’t reach it. As it hit the net, Upton Park erupted. This wasn’t just another win against a big club, this was payback time for that cup final at Cardiff where we were mugged at the death. And we loved it!
The Liverpool bench probably cost nearly as much as our whole team but their team were beaten in the end by a penalty dispatched by a player who cost West Ham nothing – one of our own local boys who walks home after the game.
I have to admit feeling an extra joy in a Mystic Meg moment. The day before the game I sent an email to my mate Chris who was going to meet me there. It read: “Hi Chris, I'll be there probably nearer 7.30 than 7.20. See you tomorrow before we beat Liverpool 1-0. Dave”
But at West Ham you don’t get one emotion without a twinge of its opposite. I was gutted that I hadn’t got round to placing a correct score bet. William Hill, who I believe was a Liverpool lad himself, got off pretty lightly that night.
Everything that I had picked out as positive about our league performance at Citeh, in the last OLAS, was repeated against Liverpool. After a shaky start we got on top by playing excellent football on the ground with flair and without fear, winning every crucial challenge, and most importantly, with every player taking responsibility. Everyone wanted the ball and pushed forward once they got it. The running for each other, on and off the ball, was tremendous. In that first 45 minutes Mullins and Noble were outstanding. And Carlton Cole, deservedly benefiting from an extended run in the team at the expense of an increasingly surly Dean Ashton, was too hot for Liverpool to handle.
In the second half we began to tire and Liverpool had a good spell but having weathered the storm and with Greeny pulling off an amazing save with his plates, we made one last lunge forward, got the penalty and the rest is history.
Now I saw that, I found loads to write about, and there is much more I could have said, so why couldn’t the sports reporters have said something?
I like what Erwin Knoll , an Austrian refugee to America, said about newspapers. He was the longtime editor of an American magazine called The Progressive and used that platform to expose government lies, especially in relation to foreign policy.
“Everything you read in newspapers,” he said, “is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.” No doubt he would have agreed with the advice of the old-time comedian and radio broadcaster Goodman Ace who told people “keep reading between the lies.”
When West ham beat Liverpool there were 35,000 people with first-hand knowledge of what had happened and how it happened. Those people deserve better from the papers, and even more so, those who weren’t there. When we play crap , as we did quite predictably against Wigwam, write about it, scream it from the headlines if you like. But when we upset the applecart, when the underdog pulls off an unlikely victory, when all the odds are turned upside down, don’t ignore us, don’t patronize us, don’t treat us as second class citizens, but tell it like it is.
My friend Leon, who has been writing and performing songs for donkeys years, has a verse in one of his songs:
Whoever invented the Daily Mail/Ought to be cut down to size/Pulped and reduced to a nauseous juice/And dried out and flattened till ready for use/And covered with newsprint and lies/Because who’d do that to a tree…?
Well, when I came down to Earth again, I carried on in Mystic Meg mode, assuring all my friends that however brilliantly we played against Liverpool we were bound to slip up against a team of tiddlers, either Wigwam at the weekend or the Crossroads Motel lot the following one. So West Ham, and so utterly predictable. Mind you, there aren’t many times that Curbishley makes me laugh, but he came out with a gem after the Wigwam game which set me off just when I was crying into my beer. He was droning on about how he knew it would be decided by a goal from a set piece. (Is he Mystic Meg too?)
"It was so frustrating,” he said, “because when we see it again we have probably got our smallest player on one of their biggest players."
Now how would that have happened then? Did God make it happen? Who could have possibly made that tactical decision?
But whatever the result in Pieland, and whatever is lurking behind Deano’s bad attitude, I’m not going to let it stop me still grinning from ear to ear about what we did to Liverpool. I make that three home wins in a row in the league. Let’s make it four today, not that anyone will write about it though…
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