There can have been few more symbolic moments this season than that at Eastlands two weeks ago, as the pages of Avram Grant’s notebook fell from his grip and blew into the wind. As the camera zoomed in, it transpired that they were blank. Roberto Mancini looked on bemused.
Relegation had already become a near certainty long before. This was just another small insight into the cluelessness that is our football club. No doubt, more significant details will emerge over the coming weeks and months now that the end of our six-year tenure in the Premiership is officially over following the shambolic but all too predictable collapse at Wigan.
Football fans are reluctant to admit that ultimately they are ignorant to what goes on behind closed doors and are not best placed to comment on the specifics of how the club is run. I work for a well-known television broadcaster and could give you some interesting insights. I won’t. But I could. I don’t work for West Ham and like all other frustrated fans can only speculate and grab on to those little insights that present themselves from time to time.
My own favourite telling moment of the season was one that I never saw myself but was described to me by an Evertonian friend who visited Upton Park for the 1-1 draw in December. As Victor Obinna lined up to take a free kick in front of the Bobby Moore Stand, the Everton fans looked on at the Inter Milan man with trepidation.
At that moment, Robert Green turned to the Everton fans and palms down, waved his hands and shook his head as if to say, ‘you’ve nothing to worry about’. The Everton fans, unable to comprehend that Green would turn on his own teammate so publicly, started to wildy jeer the West Ham goalkeeper. Obinna duly smashed the ball into orbit. Green turned to the Sir Trevor Brooking Stand, shrugged his shoulders and mouthed ‘told you so’.
It is this disunity that for me has been at the core of our problems this season. Lee Dixon recently visited the training ground and described it as “a total shambles”. According to the report in this weekend’s Daily Telegraph, Dixon said: “Players were arguing with each other, others weren’t trying, some were sulking.”
An afternoon spent in corporate hospitality at last week’s Blackburn game was similarly eye-opening. The set-up of the day was fairly amateur but that was no real surprise. What was quite alarming was the candid words of Hammers legends Phil Parkes and Julian Dicks before the game and at half time.
There was nothing too shocking about the description of Lou Macari as the “poisoned dwarf”, but then came the subject of Avram Grant and Dicksy’s recent interview with him for the position of reserve team manager. Dicks told how it was obvious from the moment he walked in that Grant was not interested and how “as you would expect, he had nothing about him”.
At half time, after 45 minutes of awful but fairly typical football, Parkes began his half-time talk by saying: “I’m as speechless as Avram Grant ... Tosser”. The response was laughter and applause. The brutal honesty was refreshing and I agreed with every word. But on reflection I wondered how a functional football club could allow people on its payroll to belittle the manager like that.
As we left the stadium, I shared in some banter with a few of the staff about how we’d always wanted to go to Barnsley and Coventry. At the time it felt good that we could laugh at our predicament so casually. In hindsight, it seemed sad and endemic of a club with rock-bottom expectations. If relegation is so trivial, what are we all doing here investing so much time and money?
That the line “My dreams, they fade and die” is ingrained in this club like words in a stick of brighton rock, is something I came to accept a long time ago. Now I wonder whether we even bother to dream.
Self-deprecating humour is no new thing. When we were relegated in 1992, the chant was, “We’re going down for the Millwall”. Nearly twenty years on, we cry: “Whatever will be will be / We’re going to Coventry”. All well and good, but give me “Same old West Ham / Taking the piss” any day.
But what else can the fans do but laugh when they’re so helpless to stop this unaccountable madness. The manager has never been remotely close to deciding upon his best eleven. Of the ten players that lined up for the first game of the season at Villa Park, only James Tomkins started at the DW Stadium today. And even he has been continually and inexplicably dropped following solid performances.
Green’s mate Obinna has not even made it on to the subs bench in the last two weeks. Julien Faubert sulked and has not been seen since. Multi-million pound signings Winston Reid and Pablo Barrera have disappeared without trace. Benni McCarthy was deemed so awful that we paid him off. How on earth can such mismanagement be allowed to prevail?
Amongst the furore surrounding Danny Gabbidon’s infamous final tweet, people failed to look past the expletive to read what he actually said: “You just don’t get it do you”. He’s absolutely right. We don’t get it.
