Clocks go Back, Irons Go Back: Arsenal 1 - 0 West Ham; 31 October

While West Ham were succumbing to the usual valiant defeat at Arsenal, I was at the pictures.  Time was, I used to go to away games like this.  Time was, I went to enough away games to have priority points to go to away games like this.  Time was, I wanted to go.  Even when the Arse could chant 'We've got Dennis Bergkamp' we could reply with 'We've got Iain Dowie'.  And we were the last away team to win at Highbury when Bobby Z finished Sol Campbell's Arsenal career, as well as the first team to win at the Emirates with the usual outstanding performance from Rob Green.  But, well, usually they beat us.  Home and away.  When they're not accompanied in that by the likes of Wolves or Newcastle, it's easy to think it's one the ulamented Curbs's bonus games - the ones we don't ever expect to get anything from.  That was certainly Zola's thinking last year, saving the main striker for the following week, while we couldn't even compete against ten men and missed a penalty.  The following week we were even worse at home against Wolves and that's when I was (wrongly) convinced we were going down, but I can't believe there were three worse teams than us.

And now we're 3 points and a worse goal difference behind everybody else at the bottom of the league after ten games at the beginning of November. 

So I won't comment on the game, because I can't.  After the pictures I avoided any TV 'highlights' of the game, and the fact that we didn't concede until three minutes from time doesn't make it feel any better.  But the film was really good.  'The Kids are All Right' (even if West Ham aren't).

Still, there was always the joy of the fizzy-pop cup draw against Man Utd to look forward to.

The Bright Side of the Road: West Ham 3 - 1 Stoke (aet) Carling Cup; 27 October

So the hope doesn't kill you after all.

Last night reminded what a joy winning a football match can be.  It's amplified by (ahem) coming from behind, especially when there is very little time left to play and scoring the killer goal two minutes from the end of extra time. 

I know we were massively aided by the Stoke Manager taking off both of his forwards, Kenwyne Jones and Tuncay, as well as Jermaine Pennant (supposedly 'under the weather') so that when we scored, they didn't really have any way back, but I still wasn't completely confident we could stop them scoring again after we equalised or when we went a goal in front.  And of course, they had chances, but last night the luck went our way.

And not only the luck.  Super Scotty Parker dragged the team single-handedly into the game.  Kovac was anonymous beside him in midfield, Rigor Morte dusted off his clown act, Big Benni has lost weight and speed and talent, Barrera was lightweight and Carlton couldn't outfight two giant centre-halves, and didn't give much of an impression of trying.  Meanwhile, Ben Haim showed he is as bad a left back as Faubert is a right back, James Tomkins has completely lost confidence and Da Costa's distribution was useless.  But Super Scott was everywhere shoring everything up, creating everything that was created, making tackles in the box.  No wonder he looked completely knackered at the end, he'd done it all.  When the substitution cavalry arrived in the shape of Obinna, Noble and Behrami, the match changed.  Barrera on the left was suddenly a threat, Obinna did his best Shopping Channel (Diamante) impersonation (always shoot, normally wildly, typically miss) but gave the Stoke defence something to think about, Barrera switched to the left and became an incisive runner, and Noble and Behrami flew into tackles, won the ball and sprung forward.

But it was still close to the end before the tiny Scott got a header among the giants.  Bruno, the judge on Strictly is besotted with Scott Maslen's dancing and begins his comments with a lascivious 'SSSScottttttt'.  He'd have died and gone to heaven to have witnessed this performance from our SSSScottttttt.

And when Mark Noble did his best Maradona impression for Da Costa to slam the ball home for a lead (what was he doing in their area?), it was the cue for ecstatic taunting of the Stoke supporters.  And finally Obinna got a shot on target (law of averages?) and we'd won.

Now, Avram says this will kick-start our season.  Just like the draw at Stoke in the league (that didn't), the win at Sunderland (in the fizzy-pop cup that didn't), the win over the Spuds (that didn't).  How many kick-starts can a supporter stand?

Still, my son Jack couldn't bear to come and texted that he was at home, in the warm, listening to Afro-beat, having just discovered Fela Kuti.  The East End beat of 'Bubbles' was louder and better last night.

And when I reached the car, the iPod played me a Van Morrison track:  'From the dark end of the street to the bright side of the road, Let's enjoy it while we can, we'll be singing once again, on the bright side of the road'.


Couldn't have put it better myself.

Hope Springs Eternal (or the Objective Correlative)

There's an old short story by Alan Sillitoe called, I think, Saturday Afternoon.  It's about a factory worker who takes all his frustrations to the match on a Saturday afternoon and, if his team loses, goes home and beats his wife.  Sillitoe tried to link the alienation of the factory with the promise of escape offered by football for the fan, to the appalling brutality that gets visited on the wife to vent the frustration. 

Obviously a lot has changed since Sillitoe wrote the story in the early sixties. You'd be hard-pressed to find a factory in Nottingham, but call-centres are just as alienating.  Domestic vioence is still depressingly common, though.  And football, obviously, is infrequently on a Saturday afternoon.

Bruce Springsteen expressed a similar narrative in the track on 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' caled 'Factory Life' - 'you just better believe somebody's gonna get it tonight, the work, the work, the working life'.

I've always maintained I'm a West Ham supporter first, then a football supporter (and only ever an England supporter if there's a West Ham player in the team).  West Ham is my passion, my release, my starter (and finisher!) in conversation with anybody with a passing interest in the game and a barometer of how positive I'm feeling about the world.  Things going well generally?  Any poor West Ham performance is a temporary blip - there'll be an upturn and a victory (or at least a glorious defeat) along soon.  You have to be realistic about your expectations for a small Premier League club.  Things generally not so good?  Every defeat is a harbinger of doom - next season we'll be away at Doncaster and losing to Rotherham at home (or, worse, Millwall - sometimes nightmares come true).

So my brooding on the current failures may have more than a little to do with my work and the demands to implement cuts in really good public services and no realistic expectation of that being short term.  And while I am sufficiently senior to (I think) be safe from losing my job, and anyway protected by a fairly sizeable pension, that's not true of others I have to make decisions about.  And all of my children are not far into their careers and how will they be affected by this?

The owners of West Ham have always been to fans an evil we're not even sure is necessary.  The Cearns family had a corner shop mentality that chafed but now  seems a model of probity.  Terrence Brown was rightly vilified for his Bond and parasitic salary.  The Icelanders talked big and delivered bigger if what was required was debt.  And now we have the Pornographers who make much of their lifelong love of the 'Appy 'Ammers - why David Gold was even on the books as a young player before finding his fortune in the delights of Dildo manufacture.  More importantly, they did make money and have experience of running a football club without it going ruinously into debt (although Birmingham City have never really set anybody's pulses racing as much as the Dildos).

The business model of the Olympic Stadium makes sense (pile 'em high relatively cheap, sell the major property asset and pay the ground rent from regular takings.  Even The Sheikhs of Man City rent their ground) even if nobody thinks it will make watching games an enhanced experience.

So, the pain of collapsing to Newcastle subsiding and the glimmer of a worm of belief that we could possibly beat Stoke City tomorrow, perversely because no-one (not even me until this point) believes we will after Saturday and, yes, there it is, the dawning of hope.

And, as we all know, it's not the depair, it's the hope that kills you ....

Who needs realism?

Being sent this quote by a mischievous brummie has caused me to bite the bullet and vent:

"Whatever happened to West Ham? The name's the same but everything else is different. It's not so much that the club seems resigned to its fate, for even the booing that greeted the final whistle on Saturday sounded half-hearted, but the impression they've lost their identity that really causes disquiet.

West Ham used to be a club that stood for something. They used to play good football (although that particular reputation was exaggerated). They used to produce homegrown talent. They used to boast managerial stability. They used to be an asset to the Premier League. They used to be likeable.

Now they are owned by those two blokes from Birmingham, have no apparent style on or off the pitch, will probably soon open a search for a seventh manager in less than ten years, churn out journeymen continentals as regularly as lame performances, and seem locked in a deep malaise. Only the rank inadequacies of others can save them."

I was going to say it looks like their bitter bargain buy Reojoker (8.5 mill - chortle chortle) has found his voice. 

But unfortunately it is becoming a fairly accurate representation of what the biscuit barons, boring curbs, the velvet porn merchants and now an apparently nailed on move to a soulless corporate athletics stadium  is causing amongst real fans, (fyi Chris, that'd be the ones that attend games).

I know it must be bad when my dad is saying he wants to jack it in this early in a season,  normally that doesn't happen until at least december,  9 games must be a new record.  Probably not the only one that will be set this season, as the highest number of undefended crosses has also got to be there for the taking.

Yet what used to be a crushing realisation that we've played badly and are struggling is no longer crushing, because apart from the top 7 finishes and cup finals, hasn't it always been thus?

"West Ham don't compete, lose." Could probably rival this as a headline:

But I still get a masochistic enjoyment, still have faith we're about to turn the corner,  still stay to the death in every game because there's always, always a chance (albeit what currently looks like an infinitesimally small one) that a breathtaking combination of finesse, technique and power reminiscent of the best of tevez, di canio and frankie mac will enable us to score 3 goals in three minutes and wipe the smug grins off armchair fans, strangle the chants in the opposition throats and allow me to bounce my way through the rest of the week.

It might not be the best team i've ever seen, but it's far from the worst, and I'm already looking forward to taking my seat in the chicken run, feeling the cold and rain, hearing my dad hurl abuse at all and sundry while watching the mighty hammers take to the sacred boleyn turf once again.

Optimistic? You bet, in fact I think this might be our year for the cup double.

Roll on Wednesday... 父

Post-match ennui: West Ham 1 - 2 Newcastle; 23 October

In eighteen months time I shall be 65 and have started to contemplate retirement and the changes that it will bring.  That's a very few months shy of the London Olympics in June which, if the Pornographers and Lord Sugar's new suck-up have their way (and as they own the club, they will) will shortly be followed by West Ham moving from the Boleyn Ground to the Olympic Stadium.  Kevin (who sits next to me in the Chicken Run) and I were discussing whether it would be possible to be further from the pitch than we now are.  It's clear that an eight-lane running track could easily be fitted between us and the pitch as it stands, as well as a long-jump pit probably.  Which makes me not only physically further away, but emotionally and psychologically as well.  Far enough to feel more than a little disconnected.

Watching Strictly I have found out that the ever gorgeous Felicity Kendal is 64, and so a little older than me.  One of the judges referred to her as Flexible Felicity because she is still able to do the splits (and even in time to the music), so I have more evidence that age doesn't mean that every capacity shuts down.  But it does bring some considerations about how to change one's lifestyle.

I thought about that again at about 6.45 pm yesterday.  It was the time that I turned to my daughter, Jessica, and confided that I wasn't really enjoying the football and moreover, I'd be hard pressed to remember a time when I had recently.  Of course, beating the Spuds for the first time for ages was a brief interlude of pleasure.  But it certainly wasn't for the quality of the football, more the joy in the Big Club failing and 'Arry's face getting even longer.  Still, cheer up - you can always buy more players.  Think of the 'commissions' that could bring.

Jessica and I agreed that Newcastle scoring again was inevitable.  We had started the game brightly with a flurry of attacks and scored early and had more chances the like of which most strikers routinely score.  But we'd already scored our single goal for the game, so that was never going to happen.  Shots instead were more likely to go for throw-ins or hit the corner flag, as they did.  And then we forgot that Newcastle play with not one, but two (count 'em) big lumps up front, and hit crosses to the back post for one or the other.  So nobody closed down Joey Barton several times and he hit crosses and eventually one was headed down for Nolan to equalise.  And that was it for us as we sat back and awaited the inevitable.  By 'we' I mean the crowd and, more importantly, the team.  Half time came and went without any check in Newcastle's momentum and Jessica and I agreed it was the usual matter of time.

And reflecting on matters of time, I thought again about how retirement brings a rethink to how you live your life.  And how Karren (yes Lord Sugar, no Lord Sugar) Brady's Pravda article was about how much enthusiasm there was for a move to the Olympic Stadium (except for the few she patronised as worried - only every West Ham supporter who goes, of course), which is a change I don't want.  And how I'm fed up watching crap and having the Manager tell me in his nice friendly email how we're improving and being bottom of the table after 9 games is a false position (it ain't).  Two years ago the Spuds were bottom of the league and their Manager went.  Not that there's much available if it's bye-bye Avram, but that's another change that might be possible.

Because, really, I'm thinking of emulating Felicity with the splits - from Upton Park and West Ham.

Pre-match ennui

Football is never right at 5.30.  Now at just gone 3 I should be watching the first inquest by West Ham's defenders as to how they never noticed the great lumbering centre-forward in their midst.  We should be informing Joey Barton not only that he should be in jail, butb which one is most appropriate for a violent scouse thug who's developed a sideline in psychobabble. 

Instead, I shall wander downstairs to watch Sky Sports News and see how the various permutations of our possible result against the Barcodes will affect our place in the relegation positions. 

All this and Strictly Come Dancing blocking the SkyPlus facility so there'll be no reviews.  Mind you, I never watch games we lose that I record.  Why cut yourself twice?

W is for ?: Wolves 1: 1 West Ham; 16 October

On Saturday afternoon I was walking in Sheringham Country Park with The Controller and our two dogs.  It was a fine day - probably the last of the year in North Norfolk - and very enjoyable, except for the endemic Norfolk lack of mobile phone signal.  Walking in a country park you don't need a mobile phone, unless it's your way of following the progress of West Ham's latest attempt to win away from home.  And this was at the ground where the last away win was achieved on the first day of last season.  What an omen that proved to be.

Since I gave up on both Orange and West Ham's text updates on scores as they arrived after the match was more than two hours finished, I rely on the Sky Sports app.  This adds the drama of not being able to connect to the internet, the fascination of the spinning symbol as the phone updates if it's connected, and the regular closing down of the phone to save the iPhone's pathetic battery life so you have to start all over again.  All the while carrying on a conversation about the scenery and other matters.  It's almost as tense as watching the game.

Cresting a hill I was greeted with the news that we were losing 1-0 and had been since the 10th minute.  This was news although it was almost half-time.  It's the modern equivalent of expats in the colonies reading nine month old newspapers after the ships from home reached them.  By the next time I could connect it was well over 80 minutes of the game and I learned we had equalised and found a new spring in my walking steps.  We completed the walk in time to get back to the car for Jack to phone with a report on the game that he'd been watching via an internet stream, and then there was 5Live's Sports Report.  In the evening I recorded the game on Football First and Match of the Day (last again, quelle surprise) and watched it on Sunday morning, having read the newspaper reports and the websites online.  Who needs to be there?

Well, it would be good if the team were there, for a start - and from the start.  As son, papers, internet and TV agreed, we should have been finished by half-time and were woeful.  But we bossed the second half and could/should have won.  Son, papers,TV and internet couldn't agree whether Piquionne handled the ball in the 92nd minute before putting the ball in the net, but all agreed Cole should have scored (consistency, there), so there you go.  And we're unbeaten for 4 games for the first time in forever and still bottom of the league.

What a way to mark what would have been my dad's 90th birthday.  I have him to blame for the obsession.  He took me when I was seven years old and I passed on the virus to my children at about the same age.  His ashes were scattered at Upton Park after his death in1997.  They don't seen to have brought much luck in the meantime.

So Walking, Wolves, West Ham and When Will We Win aWay again?

The Olympic Ideal

Like every other West Ham supporter who attends matches, I have absolutely no desire to take up tenancy in the Olympic Stadium.  It's an illuminating aside that the new owners make much of their desire to listen to the fans but ignore this overwhelming feeling.  But 'twas ever thus with owners.  That's what owning means.

And I've no doubt that their business model envisages selling the site of the Boleyn ground, usefully given planning permission for housing by Newham Council, their partners in the Olymnpic Bid, for a shed load of money and then occupying  a bigger ground that they rent.  First part Arsenal with Highbury, second part Man City with the Commonwealth Games stadium.  And the larger ground assumes that there is a large West Ham hinterland of would be supporters in south Essex that could be attracted at cheaper prices and a full match-day shopping experience, incuding spending in the ground itself.  Of course, it would help to have a team that was competitive in the Premiership or the Cups to watch, but perhaps the money to invest from turnover would be there in the new FIFA fair financial play strictures that will make it more difficult to spend beyond turnover.

But then there's the ground itself and the Olympic Legacy.  In every other country that has held the Olympics the legacy has been fewer people active in sport, but presumably this isn't the legacy they're aiming for.  Although removing Hackney Marshes football pitches that hosted hundreds of Saturday and Sunday teams to make car parking seems to be making a good start on sustaining the tradition.  The legacy seems to revolve around keeping a running track inside a 60,000 stadium for two or three events a year that will never attract numbers anything like that.  And, of course spectators at other events will be a full running track further away from the activities - be they concerts, cricket or football.  And maybe cricket crowds and gig goers won't mind, but sure as hell football fans will. 

Some of us trace West Ham's less than intimidating home form of recent years to the moving of the pitch away from the Chicken Run in the recent developments of the other three stands.  Time was when the touchline was a mere two or three yards from the front row in the Chicken Run.  Every opposition (and home) player could hear every pithy remark directed at them, and every nuance of a weekly informed critique of their performance.  When Judas Ince  returned he kept well away, confining himself to the centre circle.  If Sir Trevor needed encouragement to get in the game, he wold have it forcefully provided.  Even that close, I couldn't see how Alan Devonshire could consistently beat two players lined up to block him, but he did time after time.

But these days it's rarely possible to build such an intimidating atmosphere, and not only because we're sitting watching less than inspired performances most times.

So the prospect of being even further away in the Olympic Stadium is not welcome and fans' forums have made that very clear to the owners and Vice Chairman if she could remove herself from Lord Sugar's arse long enough to listen.

But last week an unlikely salvation appeared when Tottenham Hotspur made a bid themselves for the stadium.  Of course, it made occupying the stadium by West Ham immediately more attractive.  If they want it, fuck 'em, they can't have it, it's ours.  We are East London, they can stay in the scabby North London borough where they belong.  And they don't even want the running track!  Which will completely rule them out of the legacy maintenance  the Tory Lord Coe ( a Chelsea supporter, too) requires.  The Pornographers' incensed comments about them coming into our Manor and dire warnings of civil unrest reinforced the general sense of outrage.

And at the same time Spurs were getting planning permission for a not altogether locally welcomed redevelopment of White Hart Lane.  And the club leaving the borough would have dire consequences for the local economy.  So the threat of leaving would concentrate the minds of local politicians and of London Trsnsport who might expect to charge the club for redevelopments to the tube line.

Just the suggestion makes West Ham fans want to go more and Haringey want to keep Spurs more. Only a cynic would think that intentional. 

And that's this week's most surprising result.

The Theory of Relativity: West Ham 1 - 1 Fulham; 2 October

Proust got there way before Einstein.  It's over 3000 pages in the Penguin Classics translation of "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" but he does make the point that the experience of time is subjective.

I've been at football matches where I've spent much of the match watching the stadium clock or my watch convinced that time has stood still.  At Wembley in 1980, after that Brooking header, my Dad and I were convinced that time had been stopped.  There was absolutely no enjoyment in the match until we'd won.  At Cardiff with my kids in 1996, time added on just wouldn't pass quickly enough and Lionel Scaloni couldn't hoof the ball up the pitch, he had to kick it into touch with a Liverpool player injured (who'd have thought it, West Ham borrowing a sporting Argentine international?) and the scousers had stolen our cup.  To go with the car radios and tyres, no doubt (cheap stereotype obligatory to salve the continuing hurt).

I've also been at matches so unbelievably bad, that after ten minutes you are convinced that it should be half time.  That would be most of our games under Manager Curbishley, then.

And then there are the great games that seem to flash past at warp speed.  When we were the last away team to win at Highbury when threatened with relegation (again), and followed that up next season as the first away team to win at the Emirates with the inspired Rob Green, for example.

Yossarian in "Catch-22" seeks boredom.  When he is bored, time passes so much more slowly and he will therefore, he hopes, live longer in the killing zone of an aircraftman in the Second World War.

He should get a season ticket to Upton Park.  It's nowhere near as life threatening (now that Millwall and Leeds are safely in lower divisions), but the boredom quotient can be pretty high, as the game against Fulham showed.

The referee, Andre Marriner, seemed to have lost his recollection of the laws of the game along with the final 'w' of his first name.  While we howled at the injustice of it all to West Ham, he was poor for both sides, and at least he didn't deny us an obvious penalty as he did Fulham.  But outside the area he bought every theatrical collapse as a foul.

But we were poor from the off.  Lacking energy and drive, giving the ball away needlessly and struggling to string passes together other than backwards or sideways.  Clearly, little Fulham couldn't motivate the team or the crowd like Big Club Tottenham (they're in the Champions League, you know).  It was inevitable that Fulham would score and that we would contribute to it by switching off.  Equally inevitable, given the tiresome abuse Rob Green receives from opposition supporters about that England mistake, it had to be Dempsey of the USA.  At least Green was faultless and able to respond to the abuse with a pantomime yawn.  And, yet again, he made some very good saves.

Amazingly we were able to equalise but never looked like winning - or even, to be truthful, holding on for the draw.

At the end, my son, Jack, sitting two seats away from me was of the opinion we had been the better side.  And today, Avram Grant has praised the team.  So maybe it's all relative and weren't shit, relatively speaking.  But we are still bottom of the league.

Home Again

I've spent the last week on holiday at our house in Norfolk.  It hasn't conformed to the usual idea of a holiday.  First, there's the odd timescale.  As a traditionalist, holidays are two weeks from Saturday to Saturday.  Admittedly, I haven't had such a holiday for years, but the idea remains.  We came on Sunday afternoon.  Second, holidays are relaxation.  When we're in Norfolk relaxation often takes the form of route marches planned in absolute detail by the Controller with fixed and not-to-be-missed start times, but it's definitely relaxation.  Well it is compared  to this week.  When I arrived on Sunday late afternoon, I had to take up an old carpet from the downstairs room as well as underlay and edge grip.  Rather than the parquet floor of dreams underneath, there's warming concrete.  Later in the week, there was a room to decorate - celings to paint, walls to paint, old curtains to remove and numerous visits to the dump to get rid of the rubbish.  There were also blinds to order and the oak for the hardwood floor downstairs to unload so that it can acclimatise before being laid next week.  So not much relaxation and I'm feeling knackered, but tomorrow it's home again for Fulham.  Let's hope I can keep awake.