Many years ago West Ham had a Chilean defender named Javier Margas. He endeared himself to supporters for a variety of reasons. He seemed more than slightly mad. He died his hair claret and blue. He disappeared back to Chile. But he had been a Chilean international and championship winner in his own country. He later established a hotel in Chile and famously (barkingly?) invited West Ham supporters to stay, claiming he was still a West Ham supporter.
He popped into my head because there has been much in the news of Chilean miners found trapped underground and who, it is reported, will not be freed until nearly Christmas. Not surprisingly, experts on the surface are monitoring their physical and emotional health since the miners were given the news of how long it will take to rescue them. They have detected signs of depresssion and are using the limited communication bore hole they have established to find methods of keeping their spirits up.
One of the things they are proposing to do is record football matches and give the miners access to watching them.
I hope none of them has followed Margas's example and become a West Ham supporter.
No recording is likely to lift their spirits if they have. Instead, they might prefer to stay down a bit longer than Christmas in the hope that West Ham might have won a game by the time they surface.
But not if they play as they did against United. The plan seemed to be to keep ten men behind the ball at all times, passing across the pitch to each other when they had the ball, desperately hoofing it up, up and away if they could intercept when they didn't, and try to keep the goals against column as low as possible. Avram Grant probably thinks only conceding 3 to Man Utd away is progress after conceding 3 at home to Bolton and 3 away to Villa already this season and taking until the 93rd minute to score against Oxford with the West Ham goalkeeper the man of the match.
None of his oh-so-many signings started the game and he picked a third player as right back in as many matches. And he was just as bad as the previous two, giving away the needless penalty that started the goalscoring.
Jonathon Spector - a Chilean mine has a place for you. Please take your manager with you.
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