Four games unbeaten and off the bottom of the league, out of the bottom three, Avram confident we've turned the corner and off we go to Newcastle to ... well ... capitulate.
Newcastle's first and second choice strikers were unavailable, so they played the third choice, bought cheaply from Coventry, recently recovered from injury, never scored a Premiership goal, and he scores a hat-trick.
Defending? Not the West Ham way. Not that I've watched it - I can do without train wrecks. I was noting the regular updates at the bottom of the screen as I watched Arsenal play Man City instead.
After half-time and losing 3-0 I flicked to Sky Sports news. The commentator passed the throwaway remark that Avram could take off the lucky scarf now.
There's something deeply atavistic about football people's ludicrous superstitions. The most apparently sane and rational of men - and even Alex Ferguson - seem, on occasions, to regress to the primitive state of actually believing that wearing a particular item of clothing or following a particular routine will somehow have a determining effect on the outcome of a football match involving at least 22 players as well as a referee and his two assistants.
As well as being pathetic, it's understandable in a Pascale's Wager kind of way (not being able to know whether or not God exists, it's best to believe in him because if he doesn't exist you've lost nothing compared to not believing, whereas if he does exist, you gain as opposed to not believing. OK as long as believing doesn't actually require you to do anything but believe). So if you're drowning and there's no life raft or convenient log, clutch at a straw. Or, if you're heading for relegation, wear a lucky scarf.
But it transpired, according to Avram after the game, he wasn't wearing the lucky scarf because he forgot to pack it. This could serve as a metaphor for his (mis)management. Believe, against all the evidence, that something will be beneficial, like wearing a scarf or selecting (even buying) crap players, and then forget to wear said item (or play said crap players you bought).
And to put the final high sheen on the club's professionalism, I read today that the loan transfer of Steve Sidwell has fallen though and he's gone to Wolves (fellow relegation candidates) instead. Apparently, this is because West Ham couldn't conclude the deal unless and until we've shifted some players out, so one of The Pornographers' 15 irons is no longer in the fire. And that was supposed to be a done deal last week. You couldn't make it up.
I couldn't understand why we would want to buy a second rate impersonation of Scott Parker anyway (unless we were going to sell Super Scott and prepare for life in the Championship) but if the club was set on it, the least we could expect would be they would do it.
But then they've cocked everything else up this season, so why not this?
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