On Wednesday night an Upton Park-bound District Line train dithered at a red light for the umpteenth time. A West Ham fan commented: “This driver must be a Millwall fan”. A Stoke fan responded: “No, it’s just Avram Grant taking you nowhere”.
In the context of an excitable group of football fans such quips always seems funnier than they actually are. I welcomed it as much-needed comic relief. Normally when I despair of our predicament people tell me that West Ham are too good to go down or that Avram Grant knows what he's doing. The Stoke fan’s sentiment chimed much more with my own misgivings.
I never thought I would describe a game of football as cringeworthy but that’s the best way I can describe the first hour of what turned out to be a very good cup win. Players, most notably Kovac and McCarthy, just didn’t seem to know how on earth to create an attack. I fear that if I ever meet Scott Parker I will fall to the floor, grab his ankles and beg him to never leave us. His impassioned goal celebration in which he ran straight to the fans suggests that, as ever, he is up for the fight.
Put simply, the turning point of the game was the substitutions:
Boa Morte (Behrami 72)
Kovac (Obinna 64)
McCarthy (Noble 72)
Jones (Gudjohnsen 58)
Mark Noble’s creation of the second and third goals was pure class, whilst Eidur Gudjohnsen gave us a timely reminder that his snub last January was no bad thing. Luis Boa Morte and Benni McCarthy were, as expected, truly awful.
A place in the Carling Cup quarter final is cause for celebration but even this cannot mask the underlying problems. A quarter of the way into the season and we are yet to leave the foot of the table. To avoid relegation our form over the remainder of the season will need to be similar to that of Birmingham City last season. As fans, we may have been here before but it doesn’t get any easier.
When I first decided to write a West Ham blog I had utopian intentions of keeping it consistently positive. Should we win at the Emirates I promise to post something more bubbly next week, but for the time being these are my five biggest gripes of the season so far:
1. Avram Grant describing us as being at the start of a long road
I don’t know if he has been watching too much X Factor but Avram has an unfortunate tendency to use his programme notes to describe the long journey that we are embarking on. In the Newcastle programme he wrote: “We are doing the right things and we want to continue this and we have a long way to go”. I have no problem with managing fans’ expectations but with every week that goes by it becomes increasingly evident that the reason for this arduous journey is that Avram hasn’t yet worked out what he is doing. Owen Coyle took over a pretty dire Bolton side last season. I don’t remember much talk of journeys, just a quick turnaround.
2. Scapegoats
Bolton, Sunderland and West Brom all find themselves in the top half of the table. Not because their players are infallible (Titus Bramble? Scott Carson?), but because they are well-organised, motivated teams. Carlton Cole is the first to admit he is not in the best form of his career. Robert Green has made a couple of silly errors. Labelling either of them as the source of all ills may be convenient but it doesn’t really scratch the surface.
3. Reduction in ticket prices
If those of us who have already shelled out the best part of a grand for a season ticket were not feeling disenfranchised enough, we now get regular bulletins telling us that non-season ticket holders can purchase match tickets for as little as £15. Aside from the obvious unfairness of penalising those who have committed up front to all 19 league games, the Davids may look back at this decision as rather short sighted. There are enough reasons not to renew without new ones being offered up.
4. The Apprentice (Karen Brady being the tenuous link here)
You go into the start of a new series of The Apprentice expecting to be impressed and entertained by a group of hyped-up individuals. Very quickly you realise your expectations were in vain as the realisation sets in that they are mostly woefully inadequate. If that is not a good analogy for supporting West Ham I don’t know what is.
5. Anti-Olympic Stadium sentiments
Stand in the rain outside Upton Park tube station for 30 minutes and tell me you don’t want to move to a ground next to a station on two underground and one overground lines, including direct links to Essex. Throw in the reduction in ticket prices which will be needed to fill a stadium of that size and you realise this really is a no-brainer.
You can now follow Love In The Time Of Collison at http://twitter.com/OnWestHam. As well as updates on new posts you can also follow my ramblings during the games starting with this weekend’s game at the Emirates.
I nearly forgot to mention the best response a West Ham fan could come up with to the taunts of the Stoke fan: “You’ve got some balls mate, I’ll give you that. Just a shame you won’t have them when you get off the train.” Oh, the camaraderie.
Thursday 28 October 2010
Thursday 21 October 2010
A Tale of Two Halves
It was the best of games. It was the worst of games. The highlights on Match of the Day said it all. The first half highlights consisted of Wolves attacking our goal. The second half highlights consisted of us attacking the Wolves goal. Those sat in the Stan Cullis Stand certainly got their money’s worth.
They also got a perfect view of the greatest travesty of the season so far. A brilliant and perfectly legitimate Frederic Piquionne goal, which would have won the game, was ruled out for handball. Mark Clattenburg’s only defence is that at full speed it looked as though Freddie could only have brought the ball under such pinpoint control with the use of an arm. Nevertheless, he obviously didn’t see it hit the arm because, well, it didn’t. The protesting Wolves defenders have no such excuse and are as bad as the player who throws himself on the floor without being touched.
Alan Shearer, always useful after a crisis, commented defiantly: “I don’t think this is handball at all.” No, Alan, the replay has just demonstrated that. Shearer at least deemed the incident as being worthy of mention. On Match of the Day 2, the increasingly irritating Colin Murray focused purely on those mean hacks who have the temerity to point out Wolves’ fondness for kicking the opposition.
The first half was pure torture. Green’s season so far was encapsulated in 45 minutes in which he cost us a completely avoidable goal, before making two saves that he had no right to make. He is still prone to too many errors but the continual media scrutiny, though inevitable, belies his brilliant shot stopping.
The second half is unlikely to be bettered for dominance this season. We completely overperformed. Tal-Ben Haim suddenly looked useful. Luis Boa Morte started completing passes. At one point I thought Mike Newell might make a return and hit a shot on target.
If that dominance can be replicated against the barcodes on Saturday I will surely have the pleasure of seeing my first league win of the season. Newcastle coming to Upton Park always takes me back to when I first started watching West Ham at the very end of the eighties, when both teams were in the second tier. I recall two equally dour goalless draws in 1989 and 1993, which make me wonder how I was not put off football for life.
The latter game was memorable to me for the strange chant of “Hit him on the head, hit him on the head with a baseball bat, Keegan, Keegan … Kill his kids, kills his kids with dustbin lids, Keegan, Keegan”. Memorable not because of the sentiment but because of the undeserving target of this bizarre chant. My brother still sings it to this day.
It was some time in between these games that Newcastle manager Christopher "Chris" William Gerard Hughton (Wikipedia’s “Chris”, not mine) played for West Ham. It’s funny the random players you forget that have once donned the claret and blue. The aforementioned Michael “Mike“ Newell, of course. Alex Bunbury, anyone? Franz Carr? Mitchell Thomas? Let’s hope Victor Obinna can get off the mark on Saturday so that he doesn’t end up becoming just a distant memory.
They also got a perfect view of the greatest travesty of the season so far. A brilliant and perfectly legitimate Frederic Piquionne goal, which would have won the game, was ruled out for handball. Mark Clattenburg’s only defence is that at full speed it looked as though Freddie could only have brought the ball under such pinpoint control with the use of an arm. Nevertheless, he obviously didn’t see it hit the arm because, well, it didn’t. The protesting Wolves defenders have no such excuse and are as bad as the player who throws himself on the floor without being touched.
Alan Shearer, always useful after a crisis, commented defiantly: “I don’t think this is handball at all.” No, Alan, the replay has just demonstrated that. Shearer at least deemed the incident as being worthy of mention. On Match of the Day 2, the increasingly irritating Colin Murray focused purely on those mean hacks who have the temerity to point out Wolves’ fondness for kicking the opposition.
The first half was pure torture. Green’s season so far was encapsulated in 45 minutes in which he cost us a completely avoidable goal, before making two saves that he had no right to make. He is still prone to too many errors but the continual media scrutiny, though inevitable, belies his brilliant shot stopping.
The second half is unlikely to be bettered for dominance this season. We completely overperformed. Tal-Ben Haim suddenly looked useful. Luis Boa Morte started completing passes. At one point I thought Mike Newell might make a return and hit a shot on target.
If that dominance can be replicated against the barcodes on Saturday I will surely have the pleasure of seeing my first league win of the season. Newcastle coming to Upton Park always takes me back to when I first started watching West Ham at the very end of the eighties, when both teams were in the second tier. I recall two equally dour goalless draws in 1989 and 1993, which make me wonder how I was not put off football for life.
The latter game was memorable to me for the strange chant of “Hit him on the head, hit him on the head with a baseball bat, Keegan, Keegan … Kill his kids, kills his kids with dustbin lids, Keegan, Keegan”. Memorable not because of the sentiment but because of the undeserving target of this bizarre chant. My brother still sings it to this day.
It was some time in between these games that Newcastle manager Christopher "Chris" William Gerard Hughton (Wikipedia’s “Chris”, not mine) played for West Ham. It’s funny the random players you forget that have once donned the claret and blue. The aforementioned Michael “Mike“ Newell, of course. Alex Bunbury, anyone? Franz Carr? Mitchell Thomas? Let’s hope Victor Obinna can get off the mark on Saturday so that he doesn’t end up becoming just a distant memory.
Friday 15 October 2010
A Luis Boa Morte by any other name would still play as badly
The BBC website’s reporting of Thomas Hitzlsperger’s four-month layoff made clear the stark reality of this latest setback: “Mark Noble, Luis Boa Morte and Radoslav Kovac have all featured in midfield alongside Scott Parker as the Hammers have arrested a poor start to their Premier League season.” Just to be clear, it’s the first part of that sentence that worries me. Arresting a poor start to the season is fine. Having to watch Boa Morte and Kovac continually fail to retain possession is not.
If Hitzlsperger were to never make an appearance for West Ham (which in a post-Dean Ashton world genuinely worries me) he would still finish higher in my estimation than Boa Morte. If there was one thing more annoying than watching him continually lose the ball against Fulham, it was having to listen to my dad keeping a tally.
The name Boa Morte translates as ‘beautiful death’. An oxymoronic name seems apt for someone whose poor performances are continually rewarded with a place in the starting line-up. Hitzlsperger, on the other hand, has the advantage of being nicknamed ‘Der Hammer’, a name that is unlikely to ever be bettered unless we sign someone called Bobby Moore or The Chicken Run.
Admittedly, Avram’s options in midfield have been limited by injuries to Behrami, Stanislas, Hines and Collison, but why is he even available for selection? Towards the end of last season he did his best to sever all links with the club by openly criticising Gold and Sullivan, suggesting they needed to act with “more composure”. The reaction of our supposedly ruthless owners? To offer him a new contract.
Boa Morte’s frank comments were a breath of fresh air at a time when it was dawning on all of us that the Davids were determined to be the centre of attention by making endless provocative statements to any newspaper or radio station that would listen. But how, as one of the beneficiaries of the Icelanders’ reckless spending, did Luis win a reprieve? Perhaps the more pertinent question is, exactly how much of his existing salary did he agree to forego?
The Apprentices
The tedium that is the international break is at least a chance to reflect on the first part of the season. It may be early days but it is becoming increasingly likely that 35 points will not be enough to save our bacon this year. Newcastle’s victories include a win at Goodison Park and a 6-0 thrashing of Aston Villa; Blackpool have the league’s best away record; West Brom are 6th.
Avram seems to be gradually settling on his favoured 11. Unlikely bench warmers now include Carlton Cole and Julien Faubert. But what of the new recruits?
Frederic Piquionne
Historically, Freddie has a notoriously low goals-to-games ratio but three goals in the last three games has got me dreaming that we may have a striker capable of upwards of ten league goals a season. I am happy to say that my pre-season prediction that he would be the least voted for player of the year candidate is starting to look a bit daft.
Victor Obinna
I can’t quite work out whether Vic is potentially someone whom we will be watching in the Champions League in a year or two, or just a big bloke with an erratic shot. While Carlton continues to suffer from a crisis of confidence Obinna is a much-needed addition to the squad. His cross for Piquionne’s Fulham goal was sublime. However, the pair are not yet McAvennie & Cottee, and it will be a relief when Vic nets his first league goal.
Winston Reid
The signing of a Kiwi smacked to me of post-World Cup hype, but Winston has had little chance to prove himself yet. At 22 he has his whole career ahead of him (well, accept for the bit he’s already had) but I cannot help but worry that he may just be remembered as that bloke that pulled a muscle in his arse.
Tal-Ben Haim
He’s ex-Chelsea, he’s fat, and his one significant contribution to his solitary league appearance was to kick the ball out of play when a Chelsea player fell on the floor. Thanks Tal.
Pablo Barrera
Early signs were very encouraging but after taking a whack from Bolton’s Paul Robinson he seemed to lose interest and has never shone since. He likes a few days to recover from international duty so his appearances have been sparse, but he was especially disappointing against Fulham. Clearly extremely talented but a question mark remains as to whether he is willing to adapt to the rough and tumble of the Premier League.
Lars Jacobsen
Or ‘Erikson’ as I have heard more than one person refer to him as. Well they’re all the same those Scandanavians, aren’t they. A solid right back and a welcome addition.
Interestingly, it’s been the cheaper signings who have so far made the biggest impact. I am already excited at the prospect of Collison’s return. And of course Hitzlspergers’s. Gute Besserung, lads.
If Hitzlsperger were to never make an appearance for West Ham (which in a post-Dean Ashton world genuinely worries me) he would still finish higher in my estimation than Boa Morte. If there was one thing more annoying than watching him continually lose the ball against Fulham, it was having to listen to my dad keeping a tally.
The name Boa Morte translates as ‘beautiful death’. An oxymoronic name seems apt for someone whose poor performances are continually rewarded with a place in the starting line-up. Hitzlsperger, on the other hand, has the advantage of being nicknamed ‘Der Hammer’, a name that is unlikely to ever be bettered unless we sign someone called Bobby Moore or The Chicken Run.
Admittedly, Avram’s options in midfield have been limited by injuries to Behrami, Stanislas, Hines and Collison, but why is he even available for selection? Towards the end of last season he did his best to sever all links with the club by openly criticising Gold and Sullivan, suggesting they needed to act with “more composure”. The reaction of our supposedly ruthless owners? To offer him a new contract.
Boa Morte’s frank comments were a breath of fresh air at a time when it was dawning on all of us that the Davids were determined to be the centre of attention by making endless provocative statements to any newspaper or radio station that would listen. But how, as one of the beneficiaries of the Icelanders’ reckless spending, did Luis win a reprieve? Perhaps the more pertinent question is, exactly how much of his existing salary did he agree to forego?
The Apprentices
The tedium that is the international break is at least a chance to reflect on the first part of the season. It may be early days but it is becoming increasingly likely that 35 points will not be enough to save our bacon this year. Newcastle’s victories include a win at Goodison Park and a 6-0 thrashing of Aston Villa; Blackpool have the league’s best away record; West Brom are 6th.
Avram seems to be gradually settling on his favoured 11. Unlikely bench warmers now include Carlton Cole and Julien Faubert. But what of the new recruits?
Frederic Piquionne
Historically, Freddie has a notoriously low goals-to-games ratio but three goals in the last three games has got me dreaming that we may have a striker capable of upwards of ten league goals a season. I am happy to say that my pre-season prediction that he would be the least voted for player of the year candidate is starting to look a bit daft.
Victor Obinna
I can’t quite work out whether Vic is potentially someone whom we will be watching in the Champions League in a year or two, or just a big bloke with an erratic shot. While Carlton continues to suffer from a crisis of confidence Obinna is a much-needed addition to the squad. His cross for Piquionne’s Fulham goal was sublime. However, the pair are not yet McAvennie & Cottee, and it will be a relief when Vic nets his first league goal.
Winston Reid
The signing of a Kiwi smacked to me of post-World Cup hype, but Winston has had little chance to prove himself yet. At 22 he has his whole career ahead of him (well, accept for the bit he’s already had) but I cannot help but worry that he may just be remembered as that bloke that pulled a muscle in his arse.
Tal-Ben Haim
He’s ex-Chelsea, he’s fat, and his one significant contribution to his solitary league appearance was to kick the ball out of play when a Chelsea player fell on the floor. Thanks Tal.
Pablo Barrera
Early signs were very encouraging but after taking a whack from Bolton’s Paul Robinson he seemed to lose interest and has never shone since. He likes a few days to recover from international duty so his appearances have been sparse, but he was especially disappointing against Fulham. Clearly extremely talented but a question mark remains as to whether he is willing to adapt to the rough and tumble of the Premier League.
Lars Jacobsen
Or ‘Erikson’ as I have heard more than one person refer to him as. Well they’re all the same those Scandanavians, aren’t they. A solid right back and a welcome addition.
Interestingly, it’s been the cheaper signings who have so far made the biggest impact. I am already excited at the prospect of Collison’s return. And of course Hitzlspergers’s. Gute Besserung, lads.
Friday 1 October 2010
I should come here less often
My experience of our first win over Tottenham since Lasagnegate consisted of three text messages: “1-0 Piqonuet 26” [sic]; “Still 1-0 57 mins do not know carling cup draw”; “1-0 full time”. I could get used to this.
I could not even bothered to feel sorry for myself, having just missed what is likely to be one of the best games at Upton Park this season. If there is a relationship between West Ham’s form and my absence from the Boleyn, I am willing to never go within a 3-mile radius of E13 so long as I live (admittedly this would present other advantages). Loyal supporter or not, there is little fun to be had from watching us get beaten by Bolton and Chelsea every week.
Clearly this is superstitious mumbo-jumbo and I will be back in my normal seat for the Fulham game, but when your only exposure to the day’s events has been a Sky News clip of that dodgy Liverpool goal (I love it when Steve Bruce gets angry) your mind starts to wander. Sunday brought some respite in the shape of a €5 copy of the Sunday Times. After reading about West Ham’s dominance (Paul Rowan’s words, not mine) I suddenly became very aware of the teams whose results I most wanted to know.
My local team as a boy, Gillingham? No. Our plucky, inoffensive neighbours, Charlton? No. Yeovil (long story)? Orient? Dagenham? No, the games I was most interested in were those featuring our rivals. Things were therefore about to get even better.
Leeds United 1 – 0 Sheffield United
A rivalry that did not exist until three years ago and which, like AFC Wimbledon and MK Dons, is yet to be played out in the form of an actual match, the West Ham-Sheffield United hatred may not exactly be Chelsea v Leeds, but there nevertheless exists a genuine source of animosity being kept at arm's length by the M1. Blades’ fans’ self-righteous certainty that they were denied a second season in the top flight by those cheating cockneys, is matched only by our irritation at being cast as the villain for breaking a law whose other perpetrators have gone strangely unnoticed. Read any of Martin Samuel’s columns on the subject circa 2007 for more detail.
In terms of the Chelsea-Leeds comparison, I wonder if Terry Brown and Glen Roeder would consider a Ken Bates/Dennis Wise-style partnership at Brammall Lane? Maybe not, but it’s a nice thought.
Cardiff City 2 -1 Millwall
And a last-minute winner no less. In many respects I am not too fussed about Millwall. None of my friends or anybody I know support them, so the closest I come to being riled by them is Rod Liddle’s Sunday Times column (one of many reasons not to read this paper).
The petty anti-Avram tirade a couple of weeks ago (Rod’s, not mine) was typical of his lack of objectivity, though barely registers on his barometer of offensiveness. This is after all the man who once defended chants of “You should have all died at Hillsborough”. His column this week was entitled The Lower Leagues Have It All. You keep telling yourself that, Rod.
Man City 1 – 0 Chelsea
Andy Hamilton, writer of Outnumbered and Drop the Dead Donkey, once said that to enjoy fully Chelsea’s triumphs he has to block from his mind thoughts of the turf as "stained red with the blood of Russian peasants". Perhaps I am giving the majority of Chelsea supporters too much credit in assuming they have as strong a moral compass as Hamilton but, nevertheless, his quote sums up my complete indifference to Chelsea. I’ll take Gold and Sullivan’s dildos over Roman’s oil any day of the week – so to speak.
Perhaps my charitable mood is merely a consequence of three great results in the space of eight days. Or maybe there is another team that I am forgetting whom I do truly loathe. Oh yes, the ever-deluded Tottenham. Interesting to see that they have today officially registered their interest in taking over the London 2012 Olympic Stadium, thereby acknowledging that east London is the place to be. Now how did they get on last weekend ... ?
I could not even bothered to feel sorry for myself, having just missed what is likely to be one of the best games at Upton Park this season. If there is a relationship between West Ham’s form and my absence from the Boleyn, I am willing to never go within a 3-mile radius of E13 so long as I live (admittedly this would present other advantages). Loyal supporter or not, there is little fun to be had from watching us get beaten by Bolton and Chelsea every week.
Clearly this is superstitious mumbo-jumbo and I will be back in my normal seat for the Fulham game, but when your only exposure to the day’s events has been a Sky News clip of that dodgy Liverpool goal (I love it when Steve Bruce gets angry) your mind starts to wander. Sunday brought some respite in the shape of a €5 copy of the Sunday Times. After reading about West Ham’s dominance (Paul Rowan’s words, not mine) I suddenly became very aware of the teams whose results I most wanted to know.
My local team as a boy, Gillingham? No. Our plucky, inoffensive neighbours, Charlton? No. Yeovil (long story)? Orient? Dagenham? No, the games I was most interested in were those featuring our rivals. Things were therefore about to get even better.
Leeds United 1 – 0 Sheffield United
A rivalry that did not exist until three years ago and which, like AFC Wimbledon and MK Dons, is yet to be played out in the form of an actual match, the West Ham-Sheffield United hatred may not exactly be Chelsea v Leeds, but there nevertheless exists a genuine source of animosity being kept at arm's length by the M1. Blades’ fans’ self-righteous certainty that they were denied a second season in the top flight by those cheating cockneys, is matched only by our irritation at being cast as the villain for breaking a law whose other perpetrators have gone strangely unnoticed. Read any of Martin Samuel’s columns on the subject circa 2007 for more detail.
In terms of the Chelsea-Leeds comparison, I wonder if Terry Brown and Glen Roeder would consider a Ken Bates/Dennis Wise-style partnership at Brammall Lane? Maybe not, but it’s a nice thought.
Cardiff City 2 -1 Millwall
And a last-minute winner no less. In many respects I am not too fussed about Millwall. None of my friends or anybody I know support them, so the closest I come to being riled by them is Rod Liddle’s Sunday Times column (one of many reasons not to read this paper).
The petty anti-Avram tirade a couple of weeks ago (Rod’s, not mine) was typical of his lack of objectivity, though barely registers on his barometer of offensiveness. This is after all the man who once defended chants of “You should have all died at Hillsborough”. His column this week was entitled The Lower Leagues Have It All. You keep telling yourself that, Rod.
Man City 1 – 0 Chelsea
Andy Hamilton, writer of Outnumbered and Drop the Dead Donkey, once said that to enjoy fully Chelsea’s triumphs he has to block from his mind thoughts of the turf as "stained red with the blood of Russian peasants". Perhaps I am giving the majority of Chelsea supporters too much credit in assuming they have as strong a moral compass as Hamilton but, nevertheless, his quote sums up my complete indifference to Chelsea. I’ll take Gold and Sullivan’s dildos over Roman’s oil any day of the week – so to speak.
Perhaps my charitable mood is merely a consequence of three great results in the space of eight days. Or maybe there is another team that I am forgetting whom I do truly loathe. Oh yes, the ever-deluded Tottenham. Interesting to see that they have today officially registered their interest in taking over the London 2012 Olympic Stadium, thereby acknowledging that east London is the place to be. Now how did they get on last weekend ... ?
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