Superman flies off: Scott Parker transferred to Spurs

So being voted Hammer of the Year for three years on the bounce, returning to the England squad because of performances in claret and blue, and being named Footballer of the Year by Sports Writers despite being in a team propping up the Premiership were not enough to convince Scott Parker to give West Ham continued service in the Championship so he's waved us goodbye.

That's a bit of a change from the end of the season when Scott sent me a personal email urging me to renew my season ticket because, if we all stuck together, we could come straight back up.  He said that's what all the players wanted and were determined to achieve.

So I'm really pleased that Demba Ba, Zavon Hines, Matthew Upson, Thomas Hitszlsperger, Pablo Barrera, and now Super Scott have demonstrated that togetherness.  After all, it's not their fault we were relegated, they were only on the pitch - it's the twelfth man in the stands that didn't pull his weight obviously.  And The Pornographers made it plain that it was unfair to expect England internationals to play in the Championship.  Whereas it's perfectly fair for the fans to be expected to pay almost the same amount to watch the Championship.

But good luck to Scott at Spurs.  I devoutly hope his experience of an unsuccessful fight against relegation comes in useful for them and is repeated this season.

On The Road Again: Nottingham Forest 1 - 4 West Ham; 28 August.

For a final summer break, The Controller and I have been to our house in Norfolk.  This required and early morning start on Sunday so that I could be assured of being in front of the TV screen by 1 pm.  For someone so apparently jaundiced about West Ham, it's nigh impossible for me to miss the opportunity to see a game unless there are overwhelming forces ranged against the possibility by The Controller (such as friends for lunch).

I was duly indulged and allowed my fix as The Controller sought solace in the Collectables Fayre in Blakeney (for which read over-priced old tut  that was displayed at the all of the last twenty-five Collectable Fayres) and while she returned empty-handed from said Fayre, West Ham collected three points from the very old tut that was Nottingham Forest.  

The scoreline makes it seem a very comprehensive victory.  Actually, the scoreline makes it a very comprehensive victory (like Hamlet, the league tables 'know not seems').  But we would do well not to count promotion achieved just yet.  It was more than somewhat worrying that, without Super Scott, Nottingham Forest seemed to be able to get at our back four through midfield rather too easily, even if Rob Green was the equal to whatever was thrown at him - especially the more-than-a-year-old tedious abuse for  the mistake against USA! USA! USA! at the World Cup.  But as, apparently Super Scott has his heart set on a move to the Spuds (no, really) we may have seen the last of him.  And just at a time when BFS can't spend any more money, so unless his old Codgers friendship with Sir Alex conjures up some loanees, what we see is what we've got.  And Julian doesn't inspire great confidence, even with his French international cap and loan spell at Real Madrid where he is mostly famous for falling asleep while warming the bench.

Anyhoo, BFS told me in his personal email to me that it was an outstanding result which will do wonders for our confidence and we can all forget about Aldershot, Leeds and Cardiff.  

He signs his email to me (and everybody else, I assume) "Big Sam".

What's that about?  Did Mrs and Mrs Allardyce senior really register him as Big?  Or is this just an adjective he's arrogated to himself?  And to what does the adjective refer?  His achievements in football - surely not, 'cos I can think of many much more substantial, like people who've won things.  The number of 'bung' allegations made against him by Panorama?  But he surelt can't compete with the likes of 'Appy 'Arry for dodgy signings possibly guided by the agents' willingness to contribute to the pension pot.  His size, perhaps - but then he's left out the second adjective "Fat" which is universally applied to him.  Perhaps it's just his own opinion of himself.  He has, after all, claimed he is more suited to manage Real Madrid or Inter and should have been appointed England Manager both when Capello and, before him, McLaren got the job.  Now there's McLaren and Allardyce managing two Championship teams, but at least Allardyce won this competition.

Get us promoted and he can Big himself up as much as he likes - I'll even join in.

It's the same old song: West Ham 1-2 Aldershot; Carling Cup 1st round: 24 Sugust

One of the numerous things that can reduce my son Jack to frothing rage in a nano-second is the sight of fans leaving matches early.  This usually initiates a rant about the folly of beating the traffic instead of watching a potentially deciding match-winning (or, at West Ham more likely match-losing goal) allied to questioning why bother coming in the first place.  This was fully exemplified some years ago in a Premiership (sob!) match against Liverpool when Mark Noble scored a penalty on 90 minutes to win us the game.  My Liverpool season-ticket holder friend, John Sinnott, noted with commendable grace after the match, that was the reason why you should never leave a match early because you denied yourself the chance of the sweetest of flavours, the winning goal at the death.

Mind you, Jack's rantometer is set to start on a very low threshold.  He once harangued the screen of children's TV programme Tobermorey over its inclusion of a character in a wheelchair and others from different ethnic backgrounds in a small Scottish fishing village.  The burden of his critique was that this was unrealistic (in a children's TV programme - go figure) occasioned by a specious desire for 'political correctness' (why is correctness so wrong anyway?)  Meanwhile, my grandson and his nephew, Connor, switched his wide-eyed gaze between the programme and the ranter in awed amazement.

Anyhow, West Ham has clearly been inspired by such rants to take action to remedy this unacceptable state of affairs (the fans leaving early, rather than the diverse range of characters in Tobermorey - although, who knows, that could be next).  To demonstrate the folly of their ways -

 walking out when there's still minutes to be played, West Ham has hit on a new ploy.  It has been decided that a goal will be scored at the end of every home match.

Now, there is much to commend this.  It means that we'll get our full money's worth in these hard times, by having action right to the end of the game.  It keeps the officials focused to the end.  It means that blood pressure of my son Jack is not unduly raised.

But there is a flaw in the process.  West Ham has been unable to engage the opposition in support of this admirable campaign.  Not one of Cardiff, Leeds or Aldershot has been willing to concede a goal at the end of the game.  So, in these circumstances, it has fallen to West Ham to take brave and decisive action.  Boldly, West Ham has gifted a goal to the opposition in each home match so far - to the evident delight of these fans:

 Now it's very clear, the only people who leave West Ham matches early are those actually supposed to be playing.

Keep going to the end? West Ham 2-2 Leeds 21 August

This week The Controller exerted her control.  Some time ago she had invited friends for Sunday lunch - having first checked the all-important home fixture list.  And so it came to pass that the Murdoch Corporation, in the guise of Sky Sports, turned aside from hacking phones into hacking marital harmony by rearranging the game from Saturday to Sunday at the very same lunchtime.

So there was no way I was going to be able to go.  I offered my season ticket to my son, Jack, but having given up his following relegation, it was not tempting.  My other son, Joe, brought his significant other, Hannah, to the last home game and she obviously saw enough not to want to repeat the experience.  So it was difficult to give the ticket away.  Not a problem West Ham have as far as goals are concerned.

I did, of course, record the game, and between courses of lunch (intercourse?) found an excsue or seven to check on the score.

But I haven't watched it in its entirety and won't now, since, for the second home game in succession, the team managed to concede in the 91st minute.

What a shame that that nice Mr Bates (who gave it as his opinion that the riots last week were caused by not enough emphasis on human responsibilities as opposed to rights.  Like the responsibility to pay your taxes, maybe, Mr Bates of Monaco?) will have enjoyed the result.

Big Fat Sam needs to tell the team that the game lasts until it's over and that keeping the ball at the other end is a good way of stopping the opposition scoring.  So is stopping crosses and marking people in the box, but let's not carried away.

Good game to miss. 

Elton John, Graham Taylor, John Barnes, Ross Jenkins, Kenny Jackett, - your boys took a hell of a beating:Watford 0 - 4 West Ham; 16 August

It's a little bit funny this West Ham side
Plenty of players who can easily hide

Paid too much money but if they played

We'd be a big team making the grade

If I was a Pornographer, but then again, no
Or a woman who sucks up on a TV show
I know it's not much but it's the best I can do
My gift is my song and this one's for you

And you can tell everybody this is West Ham
It may be quite simple but that's West Ham 

I don't care if you mind
I don't care if you mind the words I put down 

How wonderful life is while you're 4-0 down

I pretend every season I don't give a toss
Well a few of the players well they get me quite cross
But the game's been quite kind while I changed this song
It's for the Irons to keep it turned on

So excuse me forgetting but these things I do
You see I've forgotten when we last won two
Anyway the thing is what I really mean to say
How great it is to win away

And you can tell everybody this is West Ham
It may be quite simple but that's West Ham 

Reality Bites: Doncaster 0-1 West Ham; 13 August

This weekend the papers and the TV sports programmes were full of the first weekend of the Premiership season.  I thought I was inured to all of that.  After all, when West Ham were in the Premiership, the previews were all about how they would struggle, their indebtedness, how their best players would move on because the bigger clubs would snaffle them at will.  Meanwhile, the transfer window only seemed to operate as an escape hatch and an opportunity for owner-bollocks about trying to sign any over-the-hill marquee name in need of a pension top-up you could name.  Including Carlos Kick-a-ball, naturally.  Followed by a free transfer of someone only the most obsessive anorak trawl of released ex-South American internationals or serial loanees could identify.

So the start of the Premiership for us wasn't exactly a time for giddy anticipation of glory.  More, an opportunity for anxiety and bile about the failures of the owners to live up to my unrealistic expectations (as well as their own season-ticket selling hyperbollocks).

And this season we are, after the inevitable relegation that followed the lamentable Avram's appalling demonstration of incompetence (as well as the Pornographers' and Lord Sugar's Suck-up's comprehensive failure of stewardship - to their own massive expense), to compete at a level more in keeping with our capability (if not our sense of our own importance).  A season, I've been looking forward to after the appointment of a Manager with a record beyond what we have any right to expect.  Although, by-the-by, noting that he signs his programme column 'Big Sam' is worrying.  I'm sure his mum and dad didn't register him as an adjective and proper noun, so he's adopted the soubriquet, but left out the other adjective - Fat - obviously for reasons of vanity.

We even had a close season transfer coup (in the context of a relegated severely indebted team) with the signing of Kevin Nolan.  And only one of our England players has left.  Those whom it would be unfair to expect to play in the Championship (according to a Pornographer), even though their performances were in large part responsible for us now being in said Championship - Super Scott honourably excepted.  And the departed Matthew Upson most West Ham fans would have, if asked, contributed to a whip-round for his fare out after his non-performances last-year. As well as that, a healthy amount of dead-wood has gone (goodbye Keiron Dyer, Luis Boa Morte).

So I thought the big-build up would pass me by.

Wrong again.

I felt like the dispossessed outside the opulent restaurant, inside the windows of which the sleek, rich, beautiful people dined on all manners of delights and enjoyed a cornucopia of pleasures.  Meanwhile, in the cold of inattention, the poverty of our fare was driven home by the Championship fixture list.  Doncaster Rovers for the first time in 53 years.  And on the back of the let-down that was last Saturday's failure (ten losses on the trot carrying on from last season), away from home so even the weary trudge was not leavened by the bonhomie (or acid commentaries) of fellow-sufferers.

I tell you, the emotions make it clear why the dispossessed want to smash the windows and pillage what lies within - metaphorically speaking, of course.

But optimism will surface.  We won, after all.  And to add the pleasure that only the suffering of others can, Neil Warnock's promoted QPR got stuffed, Dyer limped off after 7 minutes with yet another injury while Gabbidon scored an own-goal.  As my daughter, Jessica, suggested the covert revenge for Warnock's part in the Tevez Affair seems to be going well.

And as my son, Joel, pointed out, it's the first time for ages we've been out of the bottom three, and it's Watford away on Tuesday.

Now that has really set the pulse racing....

Here we go again: West Ham 0-1 Cardiff; 7 August 2011

So today is the first day of the new season.  A game against Cardiff to rub home the point that we're in the Championship now following last season's relegation.  The Pornographers acted decisively and got rid of the dreaded Avram at least five months too late and appointed Big Fat Sam.  This was followed by the genuine coup of signing Kevin Nolan from the Barcodes and it looked possible that we might make a fist of going for promotion.  Certainly BFS played it up.  He recruited former Bolton players in Faye, Taylor and O'Brien, tried to recruit Gardner who refused and tried Jlloyd Samuel before deciding no, so we're definitely onto recreate Bolton.  And no problem for me, as he got them promoted and a regular top ten side with players like Djorkaeff and Okocha giving the lie to the long ball mythology.


And both BFS and Kaptain Kevin have given it large in pre-season about immediate promotion and making Upton Park a Fortress [(c) Lazy Journalism Co].  Then all of the pundits made us favourites to go up because we've recruited well and retained our big players (those who got us relegated last year).

So it was almost inevitable it would go tits up.

As it duly did when we dominated the game, couldn't score and gave away a soft goal with no time to see if there was any improved fighting spirit in the team when in adversity.

So that's the first of eight game that BFS says we can afford to lose if we are to be promoted gone on Day 1.

The Controller thinks nothing has changed because I came home grumpy again.  Maybe she's right.