Slip, slidin' away: Chelsea 3 - 0 West Ham; 23 April

Me and Elvis never, ever, ever want to go to Chelsea.  It's west London, it's got Fat Frank and John Terry and wins for us there are as rare as hen's teeth or JT's outbursts of modesty and self-awareness.

I remember under Ron Greenwood when we were (as ever) flirting wth relegation, we were losing 3-0 at half-time.  Apparently he told the team to go out and enjoy the second half and we ended up either drawing or winning.  I wanted to say winning, but it may be false memory syndrome comforting me.  I don't know what Avram says at half-time , but it doesn't work on this season's evidence (unless it's go out and give up, which clearly does work on many occasions).

But today was not a game anybody at all expected West Ham to get anything from, and anybody at all was right.  We ended the game bottom of the league and with the worst goal difference with the exception of Wigan (and that only because Sunderland found their scoring touch today, just before they have to play us).

Of course that's not the whole story, but it is the bit that matters.  With Super Scott knackered from a season of carrying the team so successfully he's a shoe-in for Hammer of the Year for the third successive year, back in the England team and the Sports Writers' Player of the Year, and Matthew Upson literally, instead of figuratively, missing from the, ahem, 'heart' of the West Ham defence, two of the spine were missing.  That left Rob Green as captain and brilliant goalie again, and Carlton Cole as ex-Chelsea player and perennial under-achiever as lone striker. 

For all that, it was another nearly performance.  We nearly scored three times in the first half, we nearly kept Chelsea scoreless until half-time, we nearly equalised when it was only 1-0 and Robbie Keane showed why 'Appy 'Arry is happy to get rid of him by missing an open goal.  I see fly-boy 'Arry is up to his old tricks of tapping up players by talking about super Scott leaving when we're relegated.  And not for £15 million he was apparently quoted earlier this season. 

And we nearly got the date right for a committed performance - because if we'd played like this last week when it mattered more, we would surely have won.  But it appears we can only turn up when no-one expects it and it won't matter.  So expect another great (but ultimately losing ) performance at Man City next week, before we subside against Blackburn, Wigan and or Sunderland (one, two or all three).  Because those are the games that will really matter.

Inevitably Fat Frank scored, and Torres as well finally.  But both of those were only to be expected against us.  Malouda salted the wound in the 92nd minute and all we can do is be thankful that we won't be playing Chelsea next year and that when we're relegated, we won't be topping up Keane's pension plan.  So that's the silver lining this week, as I prepare to savour Super Scott's last few performances for us.

The Final Countdown? West Ham 1 -2 Aston Villa; 16 April

It's still not over, but the large diva has gargled and his practising her scales to warm up her vocal chords for the performance.

This was a game I didn't want to be at, as my son Joel remarked on, right at the beginning (and he was the only member of my family to be there, Jess and Connor visiting my new granddaughter, Merryn, and Jack 'doing couple things' with Jessie Rose - all three were better off).

In the morning The Controller and I had returned from four days in Norfolk.  That was meant to be a break from the high-level stress surrounding a certain/probable/possible/unlikely/failed move which has spent weeks oscillating up and down that nerve-shredding continuum.  It was also a distraction from the continuing decline of my mum's Alzheimer's condition and the running engagement with Social Services over the "care" package, which is due to be reviewed this week (a process akin to mud-wrestling crossed with blackmail and a soupcon of Hippocratic hypocrisy).  And it was four days away from a job that is about trying to control wanton destruction of public services wrapped in pieties about 'fairness' and 'necessity'. 

Up to a point it worked, although there was regular contact with the estate agents to chart the rise and fall of optimism, the social worker left a message on my phone to suggest a later meeting when Joel and I have both arranged time off work specifically around the time social services scheduled only the week before, and work will still be there.

And I celebrated my Beatles Birthday.

Football is supposed to be the great distractor from all of that,  The objective correlative that all my gloom can be focused on, if the team is doing badly (the default position), or the shining light of inspiration and joy, if the team does well (the Halley's Comet frequency option).

But it's not working.  I expect failure and my expectations are met.  I don't expect a high level of organisation, because that's been absent all season.  I don't expect awe-inspiring displays of skill, because that's been absent since, well, the last time we were relegated.  I hoped for, but didn't expect, fight and effort, and my hopes were disappointed.

Villa were better by far.  But so are almost every other team in the division and the players seem to have a fatalistic acceptance that they're going to be relegated.  Without Super Scott, knackered by his season-long efforts to carry the team, there was no spirit, so losing to an injury time goal was no surprise at all. Although Rob Green would have been within his rights for punching Mark Noble for Villa's first goal.

There are two more home games to go.  Joel has predicted we'll stay up by winning our last three games, even though he expected us to lose to Villa (and to Chelsea and Man City), but that's the optimism of youth (aka pissing in the wind).

Right now, I think I've had it, like the 'team'.  Most of them won't be there next year, anyway, and nor, I should think, will Avram.  But The Pornographers (purchasers of and dispensers of Big Benni - now that's how to waste money.  And where are stunning new buys Winston Reid and Pablo Barrera?  Will they shine in The Championship?) may stick around.  And the move to the Olympic Stadium so beloved of Lord Sugar's suck-up will still be 'progressing'.

Me?  Probably not - if we move, money will be tight and why spend it on something that so patently makes me unhappy?  The only thing to do is wait and see at the end of the season, and then do as The Controller says.

Leadership: Before the Villa game; 14 April

The Controller has a writer friend who is a Portsmouth supporter.  Knowing my team, he was asking her to pass on his commiserations earlier in the season.  She told him (with considerable understatement) that I was underwhelmed by the manager.  He commented "Poor old Avram, from hero to zero in less than a season".

There was clearly a time around Christmas when we'd had the first of our 'save our season' games and the Pornographers and Lord Sugar's suck-up had apparently decided Avram had to go and Martin O'Neill was the answer to avoiding relegation.  But it was handled in such a crassly amateur way that he, wisely, decided not to become the new Messiah.  I argued at the time that I'd rather Sam Allardyce and a properly prepared defence and remaining in the Premiership to staying with Avram, even with his bolstered defensive coaching capacity in Wally Downes.  What has happened to Blackburn since they dispensed with Big Sam in search of more fantasy football shows their loss.

But that never happened and Avram, faute de mieux, is what we have to lead us to the Championship.

While he'll remain a hero for Pompey supporters, the reverse reputational switch seems to have happened for Roy Hodgson.  Reviled by 'the best supporters in the land' ((c) every sentimental scouser), he presided over a Liverpool shambles a million miles away from the bright Fulham team he took so much further than the sum of the parts would suggest was possible.   And he did it, by all accounts, by organisation, shape, defending, and achieving these by drilling players.

So when West Brom showed more resolve than The Pornographers and from a worse position, they went for Woy.  After all, he had saved Fulham from relegation before building his successful team (and around the focal point of West Ham's own Bobby Zamora).  And now he's (almost) done it again for West Brom.  Class will out, perhaps.

The Liverpool supporters did, at one time, love Gerard Hou -hou -hou lier.  But now he's fetched up at Villa to succeed Mr O'Neill following his petulant walk-out on the eve of the season, he's not popular with them at all.

So on Saturday, two unpopular and underachieving managers in charge of two underachieving teams.

But since today is my birthday, I'm hoping for a present of three points despite Avram - and I hope he's not around this time next year.  Maybe he could reinvent his reputation at Villa?

At least Mark Noble and Rob Green showed some fight last weekend - shame it was with each other rather than hurting the opposition. 

Six Feet Under? Bolton 3-0 West Ham; 9 April

Shall we begin the Last Rites now or wait until next week's capitulation against Villa?

Losing to Bolton is no surprise, we always do - but this time Kevin Davies didn't score against us.  Never mind, Sturridge twice and Lee (the smallest man on the pitch) with a header completed a routine win for a team clearly not worrying about an FA Cup semi-final next week.  A team that hardly needed to break sweat against West Ham - who had players themselves who hardly broke sweat, although it was very clear they needed to.

So in the second half last week and the first quarter of an hour this week we conceded six goals.  Perhaps it's a small mercy that we only conceded one more today, but our defending was rank.  More than that was the passivity of the team.  When we needed to start at pace, we did - snail's pace.  When we needed bite, we'd lost our dentures.  There 's more organisation in a herd of cats than our defence.  And you'd like to stroke the cats as opposed to slap our 'defenders'.  But our midfield was as sloppy as an unset jelly, Hitzlsperger, Noble and Super Scott giving the ball away with metronomic regularity.  Bolton surely found the Kryptonite today, because even Parker was ordinary for West Ham (which is pretty crap for most other teams).

And watching a streamed game keeps me hunched over the monitor and unable to kick anything - just like Piquionne.

So our good form of the previous few games (up until the capitulation against Man U) looks like a dead cat bounce to me.

So next week, Joel is to be accompanied to the game with two friends who are Villa supporters, Jessica and Connor wisely deciding that they have something (anything?) better to do.  Jack is deejaying in Brighton the night before and has made his excuses for not being fit to get to the game (like many of the team who play).  I'm already so looking forward to it and to Chelsea and Man City away.  How many goals will we concede in those games?

Time to move, I think, embrace Feng Shui and meditate to attain a state of calm.  At least Jack will not have to travel far when we play Brighton away next season.

Another Game of Two Halves: West Ham 2 - 4 Man Utd; 2 April

It was , as my son Jack said, depressingly predictable.  None of us expected to get anything out of the match and we were euphoric at half-time to be winning 2-0. But even so, we didn't expect to win.  Lee Mason was obviously wary of the Wrath of Ferg so decided not to send Vidic off for pulling down Ba when he was the last man, and then didn't give a second yellow when he took him out in the second half.  Since he didn't even book Evra for handling to give away the first penalty, or Vidic for fouling Cole for the second he was obviously 'letting the game flow' as those old pros euphemistically put it.

Ten men and 2-0 up and we might have held on for a draw, but after Avram's usual inspirational half-time team talk and the Man U substitutions we were stuffed.

I can't work out if we decided to sit back or couldn't do anything else, cos the bit of the Man U team that wasn't working was the defence and we didn't go near it.

So we're back in the bottom three and the games that count aren't this one (or Chelsea or Man City) but Blackburn, Villa, Wigan and Sunderland.  I've already written off Bolton cos Kevin Davies always, always, always scores against us (why wouldn't he, they cross the ball, he's good in the air so usually unmarked - we must work on it in training).  I think we need at least ten more points, and I think that's about four too many for us.

But since I saw a poster in a special school this week that expounded their philosophy and began "Choose Your Attitude" and urged 'don't be grumpy and bad-tempered', I'll try to put tis into practice and be Pollyanna.  The poster concluded "Have Fun", and I'll try to bear that in mind when we next give away a two goal lead. 

 As The Controller likes to remind me, it's only a game!