July is the cruelest month. As I write, we are in the very centre of the no man’s land that separates the end of the world cup from the start of the new premier league season. The fact that our media-obsessed owners give us a daily presence in the news is little consolation. On the contrary, it is rather embarrassing.
Not for nothing is this time of year referred to as “silly season”. Whether Ronaldinho joining us or Carlton Cole joining Real Madrid is the more fanciful, both pale in comparison to the idea that David Beckham could return as an ambassador in our bid to get the olympic stadium. The justification for this? He’s from Leytonstone.
So, for the record, is June Sarpong who I think would make a much better ambassador. She is already an ambassador for the Prince’s Trust, whilst Beckham is an ambassador for England’s world cup bid - and look how that’s going. Sarpong, once of T4 fame but nowadays seldom seen on TV, would surely have much more time to commit to the cause and so could help out in other ways, such as designing posters, coming up with catchy slogans or smearing Tottenham’s counter-bid. And with her infectious laugh, paralleled only by Kris Akabusi, she definitely … Actually, Hammers fan that ex-Olympian Akabusi is, he would be an even better ambassador. Sorry, June.
The world cup was a welcome distraction from such nonsense. It may not have been the greatest world cup ever but from West Ham’s point of view it was a success. Not as good as ’66 admittedly, but good nevertheless. My fear was that Green, Upson and Behrami would put themselves in the shop window and prompt a flood of bids. How wrong I was. I like to believe that this was a deliberate club-before-country ploy on their part. All three of them are still great players but football is a fickle business where you are only as good as your last game, and it is no surprise that no bids have been forthcoming.
I cannot have been the only West Ham fan to have irrationally leapt to Green’s defence after his howler against the US. Had his predecessors James, Carson, Robinson and Seaman not all made equally great gaffes at equally crucial moments? Maybe, but you cannot defend the indefensible.
What makes it worse, cried the pundits, was that you could see it coming all season. The flapped punch against Fulham. The spill against Bolton. For me that was the one consolation. Having seen the likes of Terry and Lampard hopelessly incapable of reproducing their club form for their country, could there be anything worse than seeing one of our own struggle through the domestic season only to turn it on on the world stage?
My long-held suspicion that I watch football games that don’t involve West Ham in a kind of daze was confirmed on the day that we paid £4m for Pablo Barrera. I am assured that he impressed at the world cup but in all honesty I don’t recall. The fact that he featured predominantly as a substitute in a side that featured Guillermo Franco (a man who also seems to watch games in a kind of daze) concerns me a bit, but I am comforted by his reassurance that “I will play better than I have ever played before”. That’s the spirit.
One of the best players to not have featured in the world cup has to be Scott Parker. The £7m Tottenham offered for him this week can only be described as derisory, a word that to my knowledge is only ever used to describe rubbish transfer bids. It makes we wonder what the motivation is for such a futile offer. Is this the start of a long bargaining process or was Harry just bored that day?
I have been told by more than one person that has worked with Peter Kay that there is no one else whose down-to-earth public persona is so far removed from the actual person. I do not know anyone who has worked with Harry (even the fact that I am referring to him by his first name shows that I am a victim of this media spin) but I assume this to also be the case with him. At Dartford’s Orchard Theatre a couple of years ago I listened to Billy Bonds refer to him as a “spiv”. That’s good enough for me.
You know that the light at the end of the pre-season tunnel is almost in sight when British clubs start embarrassing themselves in the qualifying stages of the Champions League. How Neil Lennon’s tenure at the end of last season merited a permanent appointment at Celtic is beyond me. Similarly, I would argue that a man who has never managed a team for a full season outside of Israel is not qualified to manage a Premier League side, but more of that next week.
As much as I bemoan our owners’ thirst for publicity and their desperation for a big name who will put bums on seats (since when was that a problem at Upton Park?) I am of course a hypocrite. If I did not want to read this speculation I would not head for the BBC’s gossip column every morning; a great way of reading the tabloids without actually reading them. Unless of course you follow the link to the relevant newspaper website, thereby racking up their page impressions. If you do that for today’s update on Beckham you will find amongst the responses to the article: “after the abuse he got from their fans after France 98 he should tell them to shove it”. I remember well Beckham’s first game at Upton Park after the 1998 world cup and could not agree more. Beckham, of course, has too much integrity for that. A trait sadly lacking in our new owners.
