Wolves fans, crap t-shirts and Bobby Moore

I never saw Bobby Moore play and I never met him. I'm told he was a special player and a lovely bloke. The antithesis of Matthew Upson, if you like, the last West Ham player to wear the number six shirt before it was retired. If I cannot contribute much to the Bobby Moore plaudits and anecdotes, I do at least have a bit to say about his legacy.

I was at Upton Park in March 1993 for the first home match following Moore's death. As a ten-year old I was well aware of who he was, but the reality is that it was only in death that Moore was truly appreciated and lauded. The atmosphere at that match blew me away. Suddenly I became aware of what we had lost.

Standing on the North Bank watching on as Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters carried onto the pitch the Bobby Moore number six shirt-shaped bouquet made the hairs stand up on my neck like nothing else I'd known. Then a Wolves fan emerged from the South Bank and carried an orange and black bouquet to the centre circle. I hadn't realised until then that football was capable of this.

The emotion was compounded at the end of the season when I watched the season's highlights video. There's an interview with a guy from Manchester who travels down for every home match with his son who, we learn, wears number six for his local team. The bloke is crying as he speaks. It's as close as I'll ever get to understanding how people could get choked up about the death of Princess Diana.

It was years later that I learned the sad truth about Moore's life after retiring from football. I learned that after a short managerial spell at Southend no one was interested in giving him a break as a manager or coach. It's hard to believe that at the very least he did not have something to offer as a defensive coach. The closest he got to a break was writing a column for David Sullivan's Daily Sport. I could weep just thinking about the waste.

As a club, West Ham must hang its head in shame. Moore's last visit to Upton Park was curtailed when a steward apologised but said he'd been told to ask him to leave because he hadn't paid to be there. What I wouldn't give to find the man who made that call, and leave him alone with the old ICF boys for ten minutes.

I don't often agree with Harry Redknapp but he's right about this: What's the point in naming a stand after a man the minute he dies when you treated him so abysmally when he was alive?

It's hard to know how the current regime would have treated him. They were quick to take away the Lyall family's corporate box, so I fear they would have been equally insensitive. Nowadays, the club uses Moore's name to sell t-shirts. Not even good t-shirts.

I quickly shed that cynicism when I think of that fan from Manchester and the thousands of other fans who remember him for no ulterior motive, but simply to pay homage to a great player and a great man - the sort to whom no one in the modern game begins to compare. Or at least that's what everyone who ever knew him says - and that's good enough for me.

An open letter to Europol: extend your investigation to West Ham United

Dear Europol

Having read about your investigations into match fixing, I have some information that may be of interest to you. I understand that the allegations do not currently involve any English teams, but I have reason to believe that during the 2010/11 season, West Ham United deliberately tried to lose matches.

My suspicions were first aroused when the board appointed Avram Grant as manager. Grant’s previous club Portsmouth had just been relegated and while in charge at Chelsea, who at that time were winning trophies for fun, he won nothing. Only a club with a strong desire to lose football matches would have made such an appointment.

At Christmas, the plan seemed to be working perfectly. The team had only won two league games, thanks largely to Grant’s knack of selecting very bad players: Herita Ilunga, Radsolav Kovac, Luis Boa Morte, Tal Ben Haim and Benni McCarthy amongst others. Players such as James Tomkins who began to show potential were quickly removed from the team.

On New Years Day, the unthinkable happened, when West Ham beat Wolverhampton Wanderers by two clear goals. Panic set in. West Ham needed to start losing again – and fast. They did what anyone else in this situation would have done: they signed Wayne Bridge.

The genius behind this deal was that West Ham paid Bridge’s £90,000 a week wages, so from the outside it appeared as though the club were recruiting a genuinely good player. In reality, Bridge was a very bad footballer, to whom marking was an alien concept. This acquisition quickly paid dividends. On his debut, he was instrumental in a 3-1 defeat to Arsenal.

Another seemingly clever signing was that of Demba Ba, who had a history of knee problems to the point where Stoke City had turned down the chance to sign him. It was a strange signing, given that Carlton Cole was already playing an important role in the club’s strategy, but even he was prone to scoring every now and then.

Presumably the hope was that Ba’s dodgy knees would prevent him from scoring at all. But the signing backfired spectacularly. Ba scored in every other game. In a match against Wigan in May he scored both goals to put West Ham two nil up. There would have been some serious concern at half time, but there needn’t have been. With Jonathan Spector and Zavon Hines in the team defeat was never far away. West Ham lost 3-2.

I think the evidence is pretty damning, but naturally you will want to watch some of the matches yourself to see just how pathetically the team played. I would particularly recommend the 5-0 defeat to Newcastle in which Leon Best scored a hat-trick. I repeat: Leon Best scored a hat-trick. You may also want to look at the 3-0 home defeat to Sunderland, the 3-1 home defeat to Bolton Wanderers and the first half of the 3-0 defeat to Liverpool.

Matches in which leads were surrendered - Birmingham City (away), Manchester United (home), Aston Villa (home), Everton (away), West Brom (home), Wigan (away), Newcastle United (home) - illustrate clearly that this was a team that was made to lose.

Please let me know if you need anything further.

Yours faithfully

@OnWestHam

It's the midfield, stupid

The transfer window really shouldn’t be as intolerable as it is. Football fans taking pleasure from gossiping about which player is going where is hardly a new phenomenon. I remember as a kid in the early 90s devouring a Shoot magazine article predicting exactly which clubs would sign which players over the course of the coming summer months. It was great. But the effect of Sky Sports News and the ITK cretins ramming it down your throat every January has been to make unfounded speculation take precedent over any of the action that actually occurs on a football pitch. So let’s hear no more about it, and turn our attention to on-the-field matters.

A run of one win in 11 means that even members of the Big Sam fan club such as myself are starting to feel a little nervous. Seven of the next eight matches are against top-half teams. Wins are required in home matches against the likes of Swansea (tomorrow) and West Brom, otherwise we face a run-in of six-pointers against Southampton, Wigan, Newcastle and Reading.

We remain in a position that we would have taken at the start of the season: 13^th and seven points clear of the relegation zone. Beat Swansea tomorrow and all that’s required to beat the drop is a couple of wins and three or four draws. Anyone who had hoped for a comfortable top-half finish this season gets full marks for optimism and zero marks for an understanding of this club’s limitations.

Going forward – both in terms of the future and in an attacking sense – there are grounds for confidence. Andy Carroll is back and if he starts playing like an £80k/week striker should, West Ham fans will be rewarded for their patience. Supporting him are Kevin Nolan, Matt Jarvis, Joe Cole, Mark Noble and Mohamed Diame, with Jack Collison and Ricardo Vaz Te in reserve. I wouldn’t be foolish enough to say that team is too good to go down but, let’s be honest, there are far more inferior midfields in this league.

It is tempting to draw the conclusion that our achilles heel is therefore our back four and that having failed to strengthen in January, we will continue to leak goals. This is a conclusion that is reached by default, not by examination of what’s really happening. Winston Reid has been the player of the season. James Collins, though guilty of some howlers that have cost us dearly, is for 99% of the time a strong centre half. Joey O’Brien and Guy Demel are not the best full backs to grace the Premier League but they are perfectly competent. Sadly for them, they make good scapegoats.

Anyone who looks beyond black-and-white stats will know that you defend as a team. That’s all 11 players, not just the back four and goalkeeper. At times Andy Carroll takes this literally by dropping into defence to clear up long balls, but what is more important is that the midfield remain disciplined and act as a shield for the defence and pick up the runners. Perhaps the defence should have coped better at the Emirates, but why on earth were they put in a position where Arsenal could create four goalscoring opportunities in ten minutes? At the start of the season the midfield was an asset, but the last time it was really effective was at St James’s Park in November. So what’s changed?

Diame’s injury was obviously a big setback. But even since coming back from injury he has lacked discipline and has been much more prone to bomb up field leaving the defence exposed. In the first half of the QPR match Loic Remy and Adel Taarabt looked like they would tear us apart again and again. Kevin Nolan now plays as a forward rather than a central midfielder. There is little, if any, link up play between him and the more defensive midfielders, Noble and Diame. Noble seems to be compensating for Diame’s attacking instincts by planting himself permanently in front of the back four. It’s a role he can do, but it leaves little room for him to express himself as a creative midfielder.

The transfer window has reduced so much of football analysis to simply what players each team should sign. Sign these players and you’ll stay up. Fail to shift these players and you’ll go down. If the worst happens and West Ham do drop out of the Premier League, it will have very little to do with what we did and didn’t do in the transfer window, and a lot to do with the organisation of a group of Premier League-quality players. I think Allardyce knows how to put this right. I think we’ll be fine.