Kneel down if you love West Ham

The sale of £5 tickets for the Manchester City match was the focus of much attention but depressingly one particular issue got more attention than most.

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Like many football clubs, West Ham’s fanbase is not reflective of the local area’s inhabitants. Last weekend the club made an attempt to engage with the locals by offering subsidised tickets.  A laudable initiative you might think. The reaction amongst many fans suggests otherwise.

Tickets were sold to various organisations including Barking Enterprise Centre, Active Newham, the England Handball Association and London County FA UEL Sports Dock (yeah, me neither). Many fans took objection to people who may not be that interested in football, let alone West Ham, being given £5 tickets when loyal supporters fork out as much as £50 per game.

This is a legitimate concern, but one that needs to be put into context. This is the first time this particular initiative has been used. "Kids for a quid" takes place several times a season and dates back years. The subsidies for Saturday's game pale into insignificance compared to that scheme.

Both systems have exactly the same objective: to engage people who might not otherwise go to games, with the intention of keeping them as lifetime supporters. So why has this new initiative come in for so much criticism whereas the other is almost unanimously accepted?

The answer to that is quite easily gleaned from a cursory look at West Ham forums and blogs where the use of the phrase "political correctness" is used enough to make even a Daily Mail reader weary. In short, some fans object to the presence of Muslims at the Boleyn Ground. This issue came to the fore when a group of Muslims apparently took time out during the Manchester City match to pray. It could be that they were praying for a West Ham win but more likely is that they were practising their religion.

One fan seemed especially confused by this: "I have read reports that the half time break saw sections of the stadium kneeling and praying." This poor fella seems to have an image in his head of the Chicken Run falling to its knees in unison.

"Surely this is a breach of health and safety regulations (or whatever they call it)," he continued, rather giving away that he's not actually that concerned about health and safety after all.

Bizarrely, one angry blogger took exception to the club’s use of the term "community spirit".

"How can you criticise something which is ‘community spirit’ influenced? To do so would surely be churlish at best, xenophobic or racist at worst." Presumably he was hoping the scheme would be called "Cheap tickets for Muslims" thereby fully validating his outrage.

My favourite trait of these "racists" is their use of "inverted commas": "The main problem is the club are trying to "integrate" this new support as they see it," commented one. I can’t even understand what he’s saying, let alone argue with him.

Some people protested that the club needed to better communicate what was happening. Indeed. Perhaps Jack Sullivan could have tweeted something along the lines of: "You know them Muslims you see on Green Street, well some of 'em are gonna be inside the ground for the City game, is that cool?"

In the interest of balance I should emphasise at this point that I am not "whiter than white" on this subject (inverted commas denote this is not a racist comment). I am easily irritated and pretty intolerant of others. If I had to walk around some dude praying on the floor while I’m trying to get a Yorkie and a coffee, my instinctive reaction is going to be one of annoyance.

But you know what? It’s not that big a deal. It would just be one of many irritations I experience on matchdays: people jumping the queue at Upton Park station; people using the toilet cubicles to smoke; the bloke behind me making xenophobic comments about the opposition players. Hell is other people, whatever the people. The fella praying to a fictitious God (I told you I was intolerant) annoys me no more than any other member of the general public. If he enjoyed the game and wants to come back, then good on him.

There are some legitimate concerns about what happened last weekend, including the location of the £5 seats. But the disproportionate amount of talk about praying on the concourse betrays the underlying prejudice behind many fans’ concerns.

"Only found out about everything in the concourse coming out the ground. Seriously bad darts. Everything I don't want us to become," said one person on the KUMB forum. I give him credit for being more honest than those who simply bemoan political correctness. But I would ask that he thinks twice the next time he chants "east, east, east London". That song probably isn’t for him.

This is how it feels to beat Tottenham

The contrast between my expectations of this match and the outcome makes this one of my greatest all-time West Ham matches

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West Ham fans ahead of the match, trying to muster up some optimism

Do you remember where you were when West Ham won 3-0 away at Spurs? I do. I was in the upper south-west corner of White Hart Lane, struggling to absorb a feeling brought about by the most unlikely of victories. It is a pleasure to retell my experience of this day.

We will be talking about this for decades to come. And with good reason. Not only is victory at White Hart Lane a once-in-a-decade occurrence, a 3-0 victory is, at best, once-in-a-generation stuff. And don’t let your Tottenham-supporting mate patronise you with comments about it being our “cup final”. It was 1962 when Spurs last won by as great a margin at Upton Park. Smashing your local rivals in their own back yard is the high point of any fan’s football experience, whatever the team, whatever the league, whatever the country.

The context of the match made victory all the sweeter. Tottenham had spent over £100m during the summer. West Ham had spent around £20m on two players: one an existing player who was injured, the other Stewart Downing. Tottenham had conceded just two goals in their opening 11 competitive games of the season. West Ham had gone four away games without scoring.

I was very conscious of these stats as I made my way to Liverpool Street station to meet Steve, my brother. Steve is always the optimist. Quite an achievement for someone who has supported West Ham for the best part of 40 years. Surely he would provide some grounds for optimism, however small.

“A 0-0 draw would be a good result today,” I suggested. “Yeah if we’re lucky,” he replied. “You know on paper they should probably beat us 6-0?” I said, hoping to be contradicted. “Yeah I know”, came the defeated response.

Even Spurs fans on the train seemed oddly subdued, as if taking a few hours out of their day to watch the inevitable steamrolling of West Ham was an inconvenience.

Dazed and confused

Given the supposed predictability of the result, the build up to the game was dominated by police threats aimed at Spurs fans intending to sing “Yid Army”, and David Gold’s plea for the moronic section of West Ham’s following to refrain from singing about issues they don’t really understand. These events proved a footnote to the action on the pitch, which is how it should be. A chant of “30,000 muppets” was as close to the bone as the Hammers contingent got. Jim Henson might have objected to the derogatory referencing of his creation, but otherwise this was deemed acceptable. So let’s move on.

As kick off approached, Steve and I debated the merits or otherwise of Sam Allardyce’s starting eleven. The most significant decision was Modibo Maiga being dropped for Ricardo Vaz Te. No-one could argue with Maiga missing his first league match of the season. One of the things that Sunday reinforced is that he excels as an unused substitute. But Vaz Te as a lone centre forward? Steve’s optimism was starting to return. My view remained that the Portuguese is a Championship player, unlikely to trouble Matt Dawson and Jan Vertonghen. Big Sam had other ideas.

It took a few minutes of the match for it to sink in. Vaz Te kept sticking to the left flank. I know it’s not your usual position, I thought, but just get yourself into the centre. But the other players keep looking for you on the left? So you’re meant to be playing out there. So who’s playing up front? No-one? We’re playing 4-6-0?

Yes, we’re playing 4-6-0.

My initial reaction was one of irritation. So bad was our recruitment policy that we now had to resort to playing without a striker. This was a new low. But by the end of the first half I was cursing myself for having ever doubted Allardyce. Tottenham couldn’t cope with West Ham’s packed midfield. We were expecting Jussi to have a busy game. Halfway through the match, he had barely made a save. And it wasn’t as though we weren’t creating chances ourselves. A cleverly-taken Mark Noble free kick saw Kevin Nolan narrowly miss the target, while a couple of dangerous corners should have resulted in Hugo Lloris being tested.

At half time the talk was of whether the 4-6-0 masterstroke could see us fulfil the dream of taking a point. My worry was that we would create even fewer chances in the second half and Tottenham would inevitably nick one. A few minutes into the second half my fears multiplied. Jermain Defoe was set free. Only Jussi to beat. We all know how this ends, right? Wrong. Jussi pulled off one of his brilliant saves. This pivotal moment should not be forgotten, as so much of Jussi’s brilliance tends to be.

At 17:18 my dad sent me a text message: “Will we hold on for a point?”. “Probably not,” I replied. Before the final whistle I would send him three more messages, each one better than the last: “0-1”, “0-2”, “0-3”.

I have a soft spot for Kevin Nolan but when he’s not screaming at the ref or, more helpfully, scoring, he isn’t doing a lot else. On 66 minutes, he reached new levels of uselessness when he managed to block a Winston Reid shot bound for the back of the net. Suddenly that bit of luck that has evaded us on the road appeared: the ball rebounded straight back to Reid, who smashed the ball home. Delirium.

When you celebrate a goal at Upton Park, you stand and applaud politely (unless it’s a last-minute winner against Arsenal or Chelsea). If you’re feeling particularly exuberant you might pat your mate on the back. When you celebrate a goal at an away ground you jump up and down and punch the air a few times.

When you celebrate a goal at White Hart Lane it’s a bit different. Yes, you jump and down and punch the air. But it’s a bit more than that. You start hugging the stranger next to you – that’s right, the bloke with whom you’ve shared about ten words during the match. The bloke behind you jumps on top of you. You don’t mind, just as the bloke in front of you doesn’t mind when you fall on top of him. 3,000 cockneys going fucking mental. It’s beautiful. And to get to do it three times one after the other. This must be how people who are good in bed must feel, I thought to myself.

The joy of the last 25 minutes of the match was tempered by a disbelief at what we were seeing. Vaz Te’s goal was brilliant in its farce. Ravel Morrison’s goal was brilliant in its brilliance. Next time you watch Ravel’s goal on TV, look out for the West Ham fans on the far right of the screen jumping up and down in boyish anticipation as the ball glides over Lloris and rolls agonisingly towards the goal-line.

Apparently Spurs fans do sometimes stay to the end, but not on this day

There is something slightly anti-climatic about walking out of a stadium and reintegrating back into the quotidian after you have witnessed something like that. I made a conscious effort to savour it all. West Ham fans were not shy in basking in victory. One grumpy Spurs fan, rattled by the singing of a group of teenagers, grumbled that they were “boring”. Good one.

Queuing up outside White Hart Lane station it felt as though there were more Hammers than Spurs (which there possibly were given that half the home end filed out of the ground on 79 minutes). A group of olds guys behind me who thought they had seen everything were struggling to take it in.

“It’s the buzz, innit,” one said. “I’m buzzing. It’s all about the buzz. Match of the Day 2 tonight? I’m buzzing for that.”

The schadenfreude was almost as much fun. I can still picture the sullen look on a hundred faces, that realisation setting in that, despite the pre-season optimism, this year will be just like all the rest: a big fat disappointment.

'We love you West Ham'

What really mattered though was our fans. In no other situation in life would I choose to spend my time with these people. They’re not my family and they’re not my friends. But that common bond of supporting West Ham means our moods are so often in sync. We’ve had some bad days. Some really, really awful, depressing, soul-destroying days. This was one of the good days. This is when you get a return on the time and money invested in this brilliant football club. You don’t have to be a pessimist to support West Ham, but it does make the good days all the more rewarding.