We all follow the West Ham over land and TV

Armchair supporters have never had it so good. September has not yet arrived and already the third televised game of the season is upon us. Non-televised games can often be streamed through the internet, the Football League Show provides a mini Match of the Day and Sky Sports News never stops.

As little as 15 years ago, the most you could hope for from the media coverage of West Ham was a Ken Dyer-penned article in the Evening Standard or a mention on Ceefax’s ‘news in brief’ (page 312). Even then you would have to wait another five minutes as the page came back round and you found the hold button on your remote control.

Now there is Twitter and an infinite number of people lining up to interact with you: David Gold, John Carew, Pablo Barrera (both real and fake), Jordan Spence, Blair Turgott, Matthew Fry, David Sullivan’s son, Jack Collison’s brother, West Ham-supporting journalists, West Ham-supporting supporters. Sam Allardyce’s emails. Karren Brady’s Sun column. Podcasts. Blogs. Endless poorly-written, sanctimonious blogs. Even fanzine Over Land and Sea appears to be soldiering on after announcing its cessation last season.

You could quite easily quit your job, dedicate yourself to all things West Ham and still feel out of the loop. As for being an armchair fan, there will never be a substitute for going to the games, especially when the Football League Show is the main medium for following Championship football.

Manish Bhasin is a strange one. Jeremy Paxman, he is not. His interview technique consists of stating the bleeding obvious in question form. Take this Wednesday’s show for example. Following Swindon Town’s win over Bristol City, Manish asks, or rather states: “Having lost their last three games, victory tonight was exactly what Paolo Di Canio would have wanted”.

Not necessarily, Manish. Maybe on this particular night Paolo was feeling a little masochistic and was hoping his team would get annihilated. That would have been my response. Leroy Rosenior instead replied dutifully: “Absolutely, Manish. Blah blah blah ... ”.

On most shows Manish has the company of Steve “so to speak” Claridge. I actually have time for Steve “shall we say” Claridge. Having played for all 92 league clubs, he is unquestionably speaking from experience. Judging by the fly-on-the-wall documentary that followed him round as manager of Weymouth in the early noughties, Steve “as you say” Claridge is not the brightest but has clearly worked hard to get where he is. His enthusiasm is also quite infectious.

Amongst the personalities in the Championship, I already have a few that I look out for. Burnley manager Eddie Howe always looks like he is about to burst into laughter at any moment, which is ironic given how dire his team is. Nigel Adkins must be doing something right at Southampton, but every time he opens his mouth I cannot help but feel he should be doing something else. I cannot put my finger on what but it definitely has nothing to do with football.

In its role as public service provider, the BBC has outbid its commercial rivals for football league highlights, and sees fit to schedule its coverage after midnight. By this time of night I have either fallen asleep on the sofa or drunk so much beer that I need to watch the show again in the morning to remind myself what happened.

Having attended this season’s live games, I have only seen bits of the coverage from BBC and Sky Sports. It is difficult to find too much fault, although the pundits do seem overly keen on reminding viewers that the Championship is a tough and unpredictable league where “there are no easy games”, as if they were the first person to stumble upon this observation.

Then, er, there’s the, um, West Ham, erm, podcast, as two West Ham fans stutter their, erm, way through 40 minutes of West Ham chat every week. Maybe one day I will understand what is funny about pretending to not know how to pronounce Watford. Until that day, I will continue to tune in sporadically, in the hope that the show will improve.

Twitter is a strange dichotomy. Aside from the fact that I lose a couple of hours a day to it, it is a brilliantly simple way to keep up to speed with football news and to follow the sublime ramblings of @TheBig_Sam. Unfortunately, it also brings out the worst in our football club.

David Sullivan’s pre-pubescent son, Jack, recently started tweeting. I have no problem with Jack tweeting about his 11-plus or the onset of hairy armpits, but instead his account is used to discuss the club’s transfer intentions. Gold and Sullivan have always enjoyed hanging their dirty washing in public but this has to be a new low. This week Jack found himself tricked into interacting with the fake Pablo Barrera twitter account. This will all end in tears; it is just a wonder that no-one at the club can see that.

Finally, there are the blogs. In the modern world any idiot can set up a blog in five minutes. Trust me on this one. There must be around 30 West Ham blogs that are updated regularly, many of which have links to each other’s websites. Love In The Time Of Collison sits outside of this fraternity, which is just fine with this blogger (he says, crying into his copy of ‘Blogs for Morons’). Of the more subjective, as opposed to news-based, blogs, Just Like My Dreams is an intelligent and worthwhile blog. That aside, I am struggling.

Possibly the most popular blog is The Game’s Gone Crazy which, judging by its performance on Google search, is a big hit amongst Hammers fans. During the summer it posted an interesting article entitled ’Is it racist to be happy that Nolan is English and white?’ I forced myself to read the deliberately provocative article, and concluded by answering a question with a question: would the blogger have written an article entitled: ‘Is it racist to be disappointed that Carew is black and foreign?’

I could always ask @JCarew10 directly on Twitter. And on it goes ...

Moving on, just not marching on

It occurred to me watching West Ham today that Sam Allardyce no longer spends the first half of games watching from the stand. I have a few theories for this change in routine.

• He needs to talk Ilunga through the game

• Now that he is experimenting with playing football on the deck, he needs to stay at eye level

• He knows that once we are at the Olympic Stadium he will need binoculars to see the game from the stand, so he might as well start getting used to staying on the touchline

• He doesn’t want to get stuck with David Sullivan

• He doesn’t want to get stuck with David Gold

• He doesn’t trust himself not to touch Karren Brady’s knee

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Leeds. My own justification is my memory of our last game at Elland Road in spring 2005. Following a 2-1 defeat, West Ham supporters were kept back for an hour after the game. Making the best of a bad situation, the fans decided to sing a few songs. Crazy, I know. We were then drowned out by deliberately loud music over the tannoy. The stewards refused to advise us of when we could expect to leave. If you want to make 2,000 cockneys angry, this is as effective a method as any.

The Leeds fans today were as charming as ever. After Carlton Cole had the temerity to appeal for what should have been a stonewall penalty, they decided he would be the object of their abuse. ‘You’re just a crap Emile Heskey’, they sang. Then DJ Campbell. Then any black player they could think of. Stick to ‘Marching On Together’, boys. It may be deluded and sentimental but so far as I know it does not imply that all black people look the same.

A section of our fans should hold their heads in shame but for different reasons. Copying an awful, humourless Aston Villa-penned song about John Carew? Surely we’re better than that. Lacking of originality aside, the fans were in great voice and this was one of the best atmospheres at Upton Park for a long time. There was plenty to shout about.

Carlton Cole’s goal after just six minutes was created by an awesome Matt Taylor corner. I don’t tend to get too excited about corners in the same way I don’t tend to get too excited about curtains, but the whip (or ‘swaz’ as Ray Wilkins might say) that Taylor gets on a ball is remarkable. We came close to scoring from set pieces on numerous occasions thanks to his pinpoint delivery.

We were then denied two good penalty shouts (though I haven’t seen them on the TV yet) before Leeds actually did get a penalty. Max Gradel, carrying out an X-Factor style audition for a lucrative contract at West Ham, got a bad case of stage fright. Gary Barlow would not have been impressed.

For those of us in the West Stand, it was a surreal moment. From our viewpoint the ball appeared for all the world to have nestled in Greeno’s bottom right-hand corner. We all sat still waiting for the Leeds players to celebrate. It was only when the Bobby Moore Lower erupted that we cheered in confusion.

In the second half, Leeds grabbed an equaliser, and 26,000 Hammers fans muttered ‘it was coming’. Then within minutes something that definitely wasn’t coming, came. Patrick Kisnorbo smashed the ball into his own net following a wonderful Julien Fauxpas cross.

That appeared to kill the game. There were several chances for us to make the game safe, especially a close-range chance for the increasingly impressive Winston Reid. And then we got the Upton Park heebie jeebies and, well, bottled it.

The fans filed out to the sound of the Magic Numbers’ ‘Forever Lost’. Things are not nearly as bad as that, but every fan will have their own idea of one or two things that need tweaking. For me, George McCartney (or McCarthy as he was referred to in the programme) needs to get fit and in the team asap. Rita is good for 90% of the game but a huge liability for the rest.

There was no kettling of Leeds fans after the game. Both sets of supporters mixed happily in the queue for Upton Park tube station (or at least as happily as you can whilst watching the police stand idle as idiots jump the queue). Maybe it’s the shared stigma of wearing Macron sportswear that brings us together. For a moment it was almost as if the majority of football fans were normal, civilized human beings who don’t actually need to be treated like they’re about to loot Foot Locker.

Having attended our two winless Upton Park games and missed the two victorious awaydays, I travel to Nottingham next weekend, waiting to discover whether the problem is me or Upton Park.

Stop me if you think you've heard this one before

Enoch Powell once said that all political lives end in failure. If he had not been so obsessed with stirring up racial hatred, he may have taken the analysis further and noted that all West Ham managerial lives begin with failure.

West Ham managers come and go. Some are less catastrophic than others. What they all share though is a complete absence of beginner’s luck. This is why we should not despair at Saturday’s one-nil reverse against Cardiff, but instead accept that Big Sam is destined to be a late developer.

Here is a recent history of false starts.

Avram Grant (2010-2011)

Admittedly Grant was consistently hopeless but no other spell during his annus horribilis was ever quite as bad as the start. It is easy to forget that Avram’s tenure did have the odd bright spot: four wins from six at the turn of the year, a 4-0 win over Man Utd, a cup semi-final. However, Grant won just one of his first 14 league games. A final points haul of 33 was embarrassing enough, but the points ratio up to late November extrapolated across the season works out at just 24. There would have been no Portsmouth-style points deduction to explain this one away.

Gianfranco Zola (2008-2010)

Zola was not exactly walking into a club in crisis. Far from it. The previous season West Ham had edged out Tottenham to claim a top-half finish. In September 2008, the Italian inherited a team that had got off to a flyer, having won three of its first four games, including two 4-1 victories. By contrast, only two of Zola’s first 11 games ended in victory. He eventually got it right (that season at least) with the team even bettering the previous year’s finish. But had the form of those first 11 games continued throughout the season, West Ham would have finished bottom, seven points adrift of safety.

Alan Curbishley (2006-2008)

In his first game in charge, Curbs lulled us all into a false sense of security with a stunning win against that season’s champions Manchester United. Sadly, the next 11 games were all winless, and included a 4-0 humiliation at Charlton and a 6-0 massacre at Reading. Once Curbs got it right, he really got it right. Seven wins from the last nine games kept us afloat by three points. The turning point? A 2-1 win at Blackburn inspired by a Bobby Zamora goal that never crossed the line – because Carlos Tevez kept it out.

Alan Pardew (2003-2006)

Having eventually finished his gardening leave at Reading, draw-specialist Pards needed eight games before notching his first West Ham win. On the day he got it right two Marlon Harewood goals saw us smash Wigan 4-0. It went some way to exorcising the demons of the West Brom game three weeks earlier when Wayne Quinn and co managed to turn a 3-0 lead into a 4-3 defeat. Although the team managed to gain some momentum, they were never able to make up the ground lost from this slow start, finishing 12 points adrift of automatic promotion. Big Sam may not want to be too patient in waiting for this year’s squad to adapt to his style.

Glen Roeder (2001-2003)

Like Grant, Rodent was an awful manager. So it is easy to forget that in his first season we finished 7th. Only once since 1986 have the Hammers finished so high. Seven games into the season such an outcome seemed unthinkable, as the team managed just one victory and suffered heavy defeats at Everton (0-5) and Blackburn (1-7). In this particular instance a continuation of the bad early form and a swift sacking would have saved us all a lot of bother.

Harry Redknapp (1994-2001)

Described by his predecessor as a “spiv”, Harry did little in those early days to justify the board’s decision to hand him the knife with which to stab his best mate. The season before, Bonzo had guided us to a respectable 13th finish, ten points clear of relegation and ahead of both Chelsea and Tottenham. Harry won just one of his first eight games and oversaw an embarrassing defeat to Walsall. Back in the days of 22 Premier League teams, West Ham finished a relatively comfortable 14th and the spiv went on to manage us for another six seasons.

Historic trends aside, there were many positives to take from Sunday’s game. The defence looked strong. Winston Reid and James Tomkins seemed to be a decent defensive pairing, with the latter winning everything in the air (granted, Rob Earnshaw and Kenny Miller are not the tallest). Kevin Nolan may not have set the world on fire but his class was obvious. Ditto Matt Taylor. Joey O’Brien rightly took a lot of plaudits. Big Sam’s decision to send Jordan Spence out on loan now appears to make some sense.

Less encouraging were the performances of Scott Parker and the two Freddies. Parker looked like someone working their notice period while carrying out a handover with their replacement. It would be a sad end to an impressive four years at Upton Park, if he were to play out his final games going through the motions. Piquionne was unusually poor in the air. Until Avram mysteriously decided to turn him into a winger, his aerial threat was a major asset last year. As for Sears, I used to question whether he was a Premier League footballer. I am now starting to question whether he is a Championship footballer.

Most rational fans will have come away from Upton Park disappointed by the outcome, but conscious that the result was an unfair one. Anti-climatic it certainly was, but isn't the theory of the new manager bounce factor just a myth anyway? Well, not if you’re Malky Mackay.

Come, Armageddon! Come! - 2011/12 Preview

On more than one occasion last season David Sullivan described the prospect of life outside the Premier League as “Armageddon”. Well if this is the end of the world as we know it, I for one feel fine.

It would take a heart of stone to listen to Sam “I turn dreams into reality” Allardyce over the last few days and not feel some sense of optimism about the new season. The rule of “under promise, over deliver” is not one Big Sam is familiar with, declaring instead that he will be sacked unless he gains promotion at the first attempt. Given the unpredictability of the Championship, that is quite a statement.

West Ham fans are not stupid (well, some of them are) and are unlikely to get on his back just because we are not top of the league after ten games. The positive feeling emanating from the big man should carry us through the early stages of the season, even when the inevitable defeat to Doncaster does happen.

However, expectations have now been set and failure to gain promotion with the likes of Nolan, Parker and Green on board, could lead to Allardyce’s preseason hyperbole eventually coming back to haunt him. A second season outside the Premier League is unlikely to commence with the same excited anticipation.

So on the subject of making proud preseason assumptions that do not materialise, here are Love In The Time Of Collison’s top ten predictions for the 2011/12 season.

1. One-nil to the cockney boys

Indications from the preseason friendlies are that Hammers’ fans will not be suffering from the neck ache that Allardyce’s critics would have you believe. That said, even if the football is entertaining enough, it’s likely that performances will be efficient and clinical. Why waste energy sticking four goals past Peterborough when three days later you have to do it all over again against Ipswich. At the time of writing we are 7/1 to beat Cardiff 1-0. That may just be a good bet and a familiar scoreline.

2. Player of the year: Matt Taylor

The signing of Kevin Nolan was such a coup that any subsequent arrivals will inevitably pale into insignificance. We have been so spoilt that Messi could be snapped up tomorrow and fans would shrug and say ‘he’s a bit greedy though, isn’t he’. As a result, Taylor’s signing has been met with minimal excitement, with some even exasperated at the arrival of another ex-Bolton player. Known mainly for some spectacular long-range goals, Taylor is actually a real all-rounder who mixes high work-rate with natural ability. In the Premier League he is a handful. In the Championship he will be unstoppable.

3. Millwall hoodoo to be broken

Don’t know why, just got a feeling. Maybe Sam being an ex-player or something.

4. Big Sam to re-write I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles

I picture Sam reading the lyrics to himself with disdain ... “And like my dreams, they fade and die? Fade and die? We’ll be having none of that, you underachieving cockneys. I turn dreams into reality, me. And like my dreams, they come to life … - that’s more like it. Fortune’s always hiding? We’ll be having no hiding here, soft lad. No, no. Fortune’s round the corner. That’s where fortune is. Pretty bubbles in the air? Bubbles? Pretty? Footballs are what go in the air, not bubbles.”

5. A few surprises in the Championship

Given the history of this division, this is about as outlandish a prediction as guessing that Joey Barton is about to tweet some self-serving drivel. So to add some substance to my prediction, I would argue that Leeds and Ipswich - destined to finish outside the play-offs according to the bookies - are good value at odds of about 5/1 and 4/1 respectively for promotion. At the other end of the table I fear for Derby even with the added investment over the summer, and odds of 6/1 for relegation look attractive. Peterborough will definitely go down but the odds reflect that, so probably not worth a flutter.

6. The kids to make little impact

A lot has been made of Allardyce’s willingness to give youth a chance in the close-season friendlies, but the decision to allow Jordan Spence to leave on a year-long loan to Bristol City may be more telling. Given the net outflow of players this summer, the likes of Sears, Hines, Stanislas and Nouble are likely to be called upon when injuries arise, but whether they are considered first choices is doubtful.

7. Scott Parker to be gone by end of August; Greeno gone in January

Just a hunch. If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy.

8. Starting XI for last game vs Hull to have at least five changes from opening game vs Cardiff

Of the outfield players that lined up against Sunderland for the final game of last season, James Tomkins was the only survivor from the opener against Aston Villa. Admittedly, Allardyce differs from Avram Grant in that he understands things like tactics, and may therefore settle on his best XI a little more quickly. But with comings and goings still likely in August and again in January, don’t expect a settled side any time soon.

9. Sam Brown’s ‘I Feel Good’ to kick in when we score at Upton Park

Now that really would make me give up my season ticket. Or maybe Sam will look for something that he can - to use his word - “modify” for the East End. Then again, perhaps he’ll just appreciate being at a club where the fans do not need an atmosphere to be artificially created for them.

10. Some good awaydays

Our last tenure in the Championship gave me the opportunity to visit many grounds for the first time, including Pride Park, Elland Road and Valley Parade. With those stadiums now ticked off the list, new grounds present themselves, including the shiny new Brighton ground. The trip there on 22 October, comes four days after Southampton entertain us. If ever there were a time for taking an all-week sickie, this might just be it. Home games are likely to be tarred by continued London Underground closures. Here’s hoping that this season, the long walk from Canning Town will be worth the effort.

Come. On. You. Irons.