tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328008052024-03-14T10:56:00.233+00:00The H ListTHIS IS NOT THE WEST HAM WAYHeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.comBlogger356125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-44207881972599199762021-04-20T03:53:00.003+01:002021-04-20T09:43:18.504+01:00The First Day Of The Rest Of Our Lives <div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span jsname="YS01Ge" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); text-align: left;">"I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); text-align: left;" /></span></i><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span jsname="YS01Ge" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); text-align: left;">Or bow down and be grateful and say, "Sure, take all that you see"<br /></span><span jsname="YS01Ge" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); text-align: left;">To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me"</span></span></i></div><div><span jsname="YS01Ge" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36);"><i>- </i>Fleet Foxes<i>, "</i></span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36);"><i>Helplessness</i></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36);"><i> Blues"</i></span></span></span></div></div><p>Hey folks, long time no see. Been up to much? I just wanted to point out that somewhere in the dark back halls of whatever Zoom enclave these people inhabit, the chairmen of twelve European football clubs managed to concoct an idea that made both Prince William and Boris Johnson wince and say, "Lads, that's a bit elitist". In some ways, you can only admire that. </p><p><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiedb7kOL5Du0LobnoS9fApajjCFCf8Rm8yYZPlGz69eawTHFhh8KTIQfKAFglMEYeELPBPGB4VQJs05cZHj8kDABGhioMJFm2Zhbbpa6VTqM7e01b9NJV71hH7mWZGssZXRU2/s622/Screen+Shot+2021-04-19+at+22.05.00.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="348" data-original-width="622" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiedb7kOL5Du0LobnoS9fApajjCFCf8Rm8yYZPlGz69eawTHFhh8KTIQfKAFglMEYeELPBPGB4VQJs05cZHj8kDABGhioMJFm2Zhbbpa6VTqM7e01b9NJV71hH7mWZGssZXRU2/w400-h224/Screen+Shot+2021-04-19+at+22.05.00.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Liverpool</i><i style="font-family: inherit;"> v Man City. In </i><i>New</i><i style="font-family: inherit;"> York. Midnight kick off. Just like you </i><i>dreamed.</i><i style="font-family: inherit;"> </i></div><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><div style="text-align: center;"><i> "There's thieves among us, painting the walls</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>With all kinds of lies" </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>- </i>She and Him<i>, "Thieves"</i></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;">Unless you've been focusing with undue attention on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, you've probably noticed that several giants of European football, and also the current seventh and ninth best teams in England, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56795811" target="_blank">have had some thoughts</a>. A Super League has been proposed with eternal places available to twelve clubs from England, Spain and Italy, with no teams from Germany or France yet and five places available to waifs and strays, presumably to ensure that all the Founders have got someone to beat. Each club will remain in their domestic leagues, doubtlessly treating them with the same reverence that they traditionally reserve for cup competitions, and sundering over a century of history in the process. I'm immediately put in mind of that time Homer Simpson designed a car for his brother and bankrupted his </span>company. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcbu_YTkooQtEb_L9KKzihcOPFRPdIEhdqDop7aPycpLg2d15IbWcIRhdJreibzmu_z2F9ooDXYbFzLTmJxTKqkI7Ght6afVZsehUDYwGBApQsNTYVDb3lq96SbXgv1OXlfcRq/s494/Screen+Shot+2021-04-20+at+01.19.34.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="494" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcbu_YTkooQtEb_L9KKzihcOPFRPdIEhdqDop7aPycpLg2d15IbWcIRhdJreibzmu_z2F9ooDXYbFzLTmJxTKqkI7Ght6afVZsehUDYwGBApQsNTYVDb3lq96SbXgv1OXlfcRq/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-04-20+at+01.19.34.png" width="320" /></span></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><i>Look Marge, I designed a Super League!</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Condemnation has been widespread, with most punditry focusing on the fact that the new league is all about money and driven entirely by greed. Well, no shit. In that sense, the last twenty four hours has been very helpful in identifying exactly who might vote for that <a href="https://twitter.com/Cavalorn/status/654934442549620736?s=20" target="_blank">leopards eating faces party</a> that seems to have become so prevalent recently. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;">There is nothing profound in stating that football has succumbed to greed or that nobody cares about fans anymore. This has been true for an awfully long time, and these announcements do not somehow bring this to light. If you didn't think this before yesterday you haven't been paying attention. Nor should there be any scrabbling for the moral high ground from West Ham, Leicester, Everton et al. The only reason they haven't signed up for this is because they weren't asked. Those clubs literally sat around and watched inertly as lower league teams went to the wall, so spare me the idea that there is some kind of moral compass residing in the middle of the Premier League. A non zero threat to English football now is that whatever emerges from this wreckage is handed over to another self styled Big Six who immediately begin trying to siphon more money out of the sport. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;">But life sometimes casts unusual heroes and so it is that on a Monday night the entire country is watching Leeds - <i>Leeds!</i> - play Liverpool and it somehow feels like a battle line has been drawn. It's Us v Them, and God bless those beautiful Yorkshire top knots for their late equaliser. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;">But, when I read those who say "the game's gone", I have no idea what they mean. Have they watched the last twenty years of European football? The game hasn't gone anywhere. It's come. It's arrived on your doorstep in the shape of the Twelve Horseman of the Endless Makita Tournament, and they're not even bothering to beat around the bush anymore. The message of this power grab couldn't be any clearer if it was tattooed onto Roberto Firmino's teeth:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="background-color: white;">We can no longer afford to risk actual </span>competition. So we're not bothering with that anymore.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">That's it. There isn't any deeper meaning to this than a desperate desire to move to a model of guaranteed revenues. No more fucking about with playing actual games, or worrying about who has the best team. That's so last century, man. The pandemic has been both a disaster and a gift. It has ravaged them but it's mortally wounded us too. And so they strike now, and it has been quite a while in the making, after the years of appeasement have shockingly not worked. Fair enough, there's no historical precedent for that approach failing, after all. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">But what's really shocking about this is the bluntness with which this has all been stated. Never before have these clubs been quite so brazen about wanting to erode the pesky little notion of having to earn their revenues. Here it is in Technicolor, sponsored by Your Friendly Local PetroChemical Company and coming to a North American metropolitan hub near you soon. Watch on your iPhone, vote to tell Jurgen Klopp who to bring on next, and be sure to post an Instagram snap of where you're watching from so we can send you a t-shirt to remind you who you actually support in case you've forgotten after six years of exhibition games. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">If I may be so bold, I think it is this speaking of the unspeakable which is causing so much consternation. What is so embarrassing to the supporters of these clubs is that this latest stunt isn't really a huge leap from what these clubs were already angling for. The betrayal here is uttering the truth that these competitions have been rigged all along, and admitting that the only issue now is that they aren't rigged enough. The only way the lie works is if Liverpool fans can go to Madrid and win the Champions League and believe that they are the Rebel Alliance and not the Empire. Well, John Henry just arrived in a Super Star Destroyer, lads, and Jurgen is finding your lack of faith disturbing. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRN_axf8KDe7n1KFemH8mkZN1E1mrCUV037UhZjDJvD9PipVuVuINpsaO6GvS18iKB8YqkLH2Fui24mb-yQmvgbhRzxKkzjnTDnt465lM7J2Qlx6d_4ofvjN_iZdd_irhn_OFK/s816/Screen+Shot+2021-04-20+at+02.26.59.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="816" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRN_axf8KDe7n1KFemH8mkZN1E1mrCUV037UhZjDJvD9PipVuVuINpsaO6GvS18iKB8YqkLH2Fui24mb-yQmvgbhRzxKkzjnTDnt465lM7J2Qlx6d_4ofvjN_iZdd_irhn_OFK/w400-h200/Screen+Shot+2021-04-20+at+02.26.59.png" width="400" /></span></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><i>The Super League unveils it's new team coach designs</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;">It has been standard for years for these clubs to murmur about the prospect of a Super League and then have to be placated by a greater share of revenues or an easier path to qualification. Consider that UEFA's <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/champions-league-format-swiss-model-b1833885.html" target="_blank">proposed Swiss Style reformatting of the Champions League</a> was going to reserve two places for big clubs who, God bless 'em, hadn't quite managed to qualify but are good fun at a barbecue and therefore really needed to attend.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Where was the outrage and upset at these egregiously stupid amendments? Where was the demand for equality and a sense of competition then? Instead of righteous anger we've just been subjected to a continued party line that "everybody agrees that things need to change" but never any suggestion of what these changes should be. More equitable revenue sharing? Bans on player hoarding? Nope - just some vague mutterings that the games are all boring before the quarter finals because the same teams always win, as though this was some great existential mystery. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">I'm delighted that Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher are speaking so eloquently against this bullshit, that James Milner was prepared to register his distaste and I welcome the statements from the representative fan groups of the self styled Big Six. Don't underestimate the courage needed to stand up like that. But let's not kid ourselves that this hasn't been apparent for years. The owners have broken the omertà and spoken the truth aloud, and suddenly a lot of fans are being forced to confront realities they had previously been able to pretend didn't exist. Are we the baddies, indeed. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">When Liverpool won the league last year I wrote a rather <a href="https://twitter.com/TheHList/status/1276424332579930112?s=20" target="_blank">ungracious Twitter thread</a> where I posited the theory that such title wins were indistinguishable from those of any other big club. That Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool were simply homogenous entities whose success was built upon a structure designed to reward and elevate them. Lots of Liverpool fans called me a virgin, an insult I'd not heard for a few years, and told me they were massive. And yet here we are a year later and I still can't distinguish those clubs from each other, other than that they've all signed up for an endless exhibition tournament. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">What are their protests? That the same teams will be in it all the time? That there is no threat of big teams not qualifying? That it's boring? Er, lads, stop me if you think that you've heard this one before. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Because this is another aspect of the closed shop and the guaranteed revenues - there's not actually a need to win anymore. Early analysis of the financials of this thing are that the bulk of the money is dished out simply for being in it. James Corbett of <a href="https://offthepitch.com" target="_blank">OffThePitch.com </a>wrote <a href="https://twitter.com/james_corbett/status/1352652214272217088" target="_blank">this thread</a> a couple of months ago about the way the cash will be distributed in the brave new world, and you'll be delighted to hear that it's very much the taking part that counts. €180m for participating in the group stage (if you're a founder member) but just a further €30m if you win. Better yet, if by some miracle an interloping non founder member wins it, they get about half of what the big boys get just for being in the group stages. I suppose the one positive of this is that some men might finally get to experience what it's like to be paid like a woman.</p><p>There is a great Jerry Seinfeld bit in his stand up show when he starts speculating about horse racing. I can't do it justice so let me just repeat it for you here. </p><p><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"I’ll tell you one thing the horses definitely do not know. They do not know that if you should accidentally trip and break your leg at any point during the race we blow your brains out. I think they’re missing that little tidbit of information. I think if they knew that you’d see some mighty careful stepping coming down that home stretch. “Take it easy, take it easy.” “You win, I’ll place… whatever.” “The important thing is your health.”</i></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;">This appears to be the overriding principle of the Super League. Take it easy. You win, I'll place. The important thing is paying down the debt on your stadium. There's always next year, after all. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white;">***</span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><i>"And I could make you rue the day</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>But I could never make you stay" </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>- </i>The Magnetic Fields<i>, "All My Little Words"</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A fascinating aspect of this is that nobody, anywhere, appears to have asked the players what they think. It isn't just the fact that they risk being unable to represent their countries but that the Super League has the concept of a salary cap baked into it. <i>"Revenues are decreasing, salaries are increasing. So we need to do something" </i>says skilled mathematician Florentino Perez of Real Madrid, who signed 28 year old Eden Hazard for over €100m, paid him €400,000 a week and seems to be suggesting a bigger boy made him do it. If these lads had any fiscal sense at all they'd donate a few grand to the Tories, make friends with Matt Hancock and win themselves an NHS contract to pay down some of these debts. But no, it's got to be the death of football instead, say Florentino and Sheikh Mansour. Sigh.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghQP3p8Xusgpqhlg6Qos_pJTiAqtIKEtVV56zfwADhW8DrB6FSo__caaGq4QIi6h0vGheVPK2XeMSbhQumlnHVPbYxmTFxDr3007ClY6cArgcerKOnklkItnOLrcPPbO2M27kI/s682/Screen+Shot+2021-04-20+at+00.31.24.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="503" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghQP3p8Xusgpqhlg6Qos_pJTiAqtIKEtVV56zfwADhW8DrB6FSo__caaGq4QIi6h0vGheVPK2XeMSbhQumlnHVPbYxmTFxDr3007ClY6cArgcerKOnklkItnOLrcPPbO2M27kI/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-04-20+at+00.31.24.png" /></span></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Next stop, Sevilla and West Ham </i></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">But what's really interesting is how the players will react. Salary caps are generally pretty sensible until players - who drive all the value in the sport - start to see that the revenue they are generating is going to fine upstanding citizens of the world like Joel Glazer and Paul Singer, who appear to have spent their entire adult lives preparing to play the bad guys in 101 Dalmatians. It's not that I think players have any particular sense of morality about this stuff, but I do suspect they have a very good handle on what they are worth and giving it to Disney villains isn't going to be high on their agenda. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So, in summary, the Super League offers players a salary cap, no more international appearances and an even more watered down sense of competition than the piss weak Champions League we have right now. Hmm, nice job Joel, that coat is going to look beautiful. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I can't help dreaming of a wild scenario where the Founders press on with their league and players start to win legal battles to extricate themselves from their contracts on some technicality. A few might take a moral stand but I suspect a number will not accept missing World Cups for their countries. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And so, suddenly Messi goes to PSG and Ronaldo to Bayern and those Champions League TV rights still look pretty valuable. And as they come others start to follow - Kane to Roma, Ramos to Dortmund, De Bruyne to Sevilla and Son to West Ham. It's easy to laugh of course, but in 2000 the idea of a Super League containing Manchester City and Chelsea was just as fanciful as the notion of Toni Kroos playing for Porto. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Things change, the game moves on and evolves, even as these dunces try and draw a line in history and declare themselves as important forever more. It feels as though someone somewhere needs to log on to Wikipedia and point out to these clowns that Celtic, Nottingham Forest, Marseille, Porto and Ajax have previously done something that the likes of Arsenal and Spurs have never done, namely be champions of Europe. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span jsname="YS01Ge" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); text-align: left;">"You see I'm just like you</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); text-align: left;" /><span jsname="YS01Ge" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); text-align: left;">If you only knew</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); text-align: left;" /><span jsname="YS01Ge" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); text-align: left;">That I'm just like you"</span></i></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span jsname="YS01Ge" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); text-align: left;"><i>- </i>Red Hot Chili Peppers,<i> "Cabron"</i></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In writing this piece I suspect there is a chance that fans of the Big Six might think I blame them or somehow don't empathise with their position. Let me resolve that now. For those fans I have nothing but sympathy and I hold the people who own their clubs in utter contempt. Those charlatans, those grifters, those unworthy vultures who have besmirched the names of once great institutions. I have long held the view that football fandom is little more than a quirk of geography or family. What, after all, separates Spurs and West Ham fans beyond a postcode or a particularly dominant grandfather here or there? </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And what have Spurs fans done to deserve seeing their team be used as a tool to push through such damaging and corrosive measures? Similarly, are Liverpool and Manchester United fans now any more at fault than the rest of us were when the Premier League was formed and the football pyramid abandoned? Now more than ever is the time for football fans to come together and somehow try to reclaim what is ours. Of course it's easy to throw our hands up and look at the vast array of enemy forces lined up against us, but these things always begin with a single step. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The first and most critical action is a Europe wide promise to boycott the new league. Don't buy the subscriptions and if you have to because the TV network carries something else you want, then surely don't watch the games. It will be tempting, as the media start to warm to the idea and the PR campaign begins but the object of all fans here is to make the European viewing figures for this thing a disaster. I excuse the fans of the Big Six - what can they do but watch their teams? It's on the rest of us. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It's easy to say that these teams should be expelled from their leagues, and I've been giddy about this in the past. I still think this is ultimately the course of action that should be followed but practically one has to consider the financial realities. David Sullivan had an asset valued at £400m on Sunday morning, and by the time he went to bed that was probably halved. He still has to pay his players in a post pandemic economy, while TV companies circle, no doubt eager to get repayments of their rights monies as the big boys depart. But, here's the thing - with these teams gone, the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A all have a chance to be something they typically never are.....interesting. Sullivan et al have a chance to design something unique and marketable here. Call me old fashioned but an English Premier League where ten teams can realistically win has to have some value to TV companies. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And then imagine, for a moment, a group of European leagues with evenly shared revenues and evenly matched teams. Imagine a world where relegation wasn't financially catastrophic because the leagues were overseen by a set of rules not designed by men with the sensibilities of Charles Ponzi. The financial shock of these teams going is likely to be horrific in the short term, but both UEFA and FIFA have deep pockets and can tide teams over. In exchange they should bind those teams forever to their competitions and demand proper financial management and fair competition. Instead of being terrified of Nantes v Feyenoord in the Champions League final, we should aim for that because it would be evidence of a healthy <span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36);">competition, something not present in European football for decades, no matter what lies we have told ourselves. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36);"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;">This is an incredible opportunity for our leagues. We can build interesting, unpredictable competitions and sell that to the TV companies. What's our USP? Well, it's not the same twelve teams every week forever, for a start. And if the big boys want to come back, that's fine but they are to abide by our rules or they don't come back at all. If you're interested in my suggestions, <a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/07/lets-fix-modern-football-pipe-dreams.html" target="_blank">I fixed modern </a><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/07/lets-fix-modern-football-pipe-dreams.html" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36);" target="_blank">football</a> back in 2018 and I'm still pretty sure that a lot of this stuff would work. In a curious way, a lot of the things that made my suggestions unfeasible before would be removed with the departure of the Super League teams. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36);"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;">The most likely reality still feels to me that this backlash will force the big boys back to the table where they will negotiate a larger slice of revenues and, after taking a couple of weeks of public shaming, they will eventually persuade everyone that they should haven't to qualify for the Champions League. But make no mistake, what really ought to happen here is that this nail is smashed back into the wood with authority. It can't just be that we revert back to the current model and pretend all this didn't happen. They have to take losses now. This needs to result in a worse position than they started with. What are they going to do in response, form a Super League? <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/european-super-league-premier-six-23944605" target="_blank">They're already wobbling</a> - we hold the advantage here. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But, no, I sense more appeasement, and that peace will hold until some idiot president somewhere pisses away his latest UEFA cheque and starts making threats again. Not for nothing, but these dickheads can't make a profit with UEFA literally subsidising them, so it is interesting to me that JP Morgan are so happy to jump into bed and give them a credit line for this thing. I guess the belief is that with the importance of actual competition removed, there won't be the driver to overspend any more. Financial prudence through boredom, then. Lovely. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36);"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;">But it really shouldn't be this way. This should be the first day of the rest of our lives. There is an opening here for a brave and principled redesign of the game that puts genuine competition at the heart of the sport, and redistributes revenues to safeguard the future of the smaller clubs who hold the pyramid up. Even if the Super League takes off and is a huge success, this is still the answer. Everything is cyclical and nothing lasts forever. Ronaldo came from Sporting Lisbon, Wayne Rooney came from Everton, Luka Modric came from Dinamo Zagreb. New legends will emerge and teams will decline and fall as they always do. There is a chance here. This is the first day of the rest of our lives, folks. </div>HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-43453432717227528152021-01-08T03:10:00.000+00:002021-01-08T03:10:02.773+00:00In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (10 - 1)<p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">10. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R65pwVvyU3E" target="_blank">Spurs (h) 1-0 : 2016/17 Premier League</a></span></i></b><br /><i>(Lanzini (65))</i></p><p>Them again. </p><p>In truth this was a situation not unlike the corresponding fixture the season before. As then, Spurs desperately needed to win in order to keep their title challenge alive, but for the downwardly mobile Hammers this was a game we had to win to secure our mathematical safety. </p><p>Someone in the Metropolitan Police obviously likes a bit of an atmosphere and agreed to schedule this game on a Friday night, meaning that the general air around the ground was what you might have imagined at a pre Agincourt barbecue.</p><p>For a second consecutive season, Slaven Bilic hauled a terrific performance out of his players as their high intensity pressing caused Spurs an awful lot of trouble for a team who had built their success on such a tactic. While the visitors managed a couple of good efforts through Harry Kane and Heung Min-Son, the reality is that for a second season they simply faded a way at the point of their greatest need. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9IPQvdiVB9_XG33fE9PHdldmBKuR3H_ocpm1jjIYqyGsgH_zzz0IiDpS1bQyKORneUKeR1DJk1SCtg9ntRzjNIcH39N9af_fvK_gvqgSRQ2ez4iXZsMc76ajlDD2y1DXPI9xW/s615/Screen+Shot+2021-01-07+at+01.12.02.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="331" data-original-width="615" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9IPQvdiVB9_XG33fE9PHdldmBKuR3H_ocpm1jjIYqyGsgH_zzz0IiDpS1bQyKORneUKeR1DJk1SCtg9ntRzjNIcH39N9af_fvK_gvqgSRQ2ez4iXZsMc76ajlDD2y1DXPI9xW/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-07+at+01.12.02.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><i>If you look closely enough, you can see Jan Vertonghen's heart breaking</i></p><p>Some of that can be attributed to us, of course, as Bilic deployed an aged back three of Jose Fonte, Winston Reid and James Collins and they performed heroically. Elsewhere Cheikhou Kouyate was thundering about in midfield and even the much maligned Andre Ayew and Jonathan Calleri were outstanding up front. And for the possibly the only time in living memory there was an actual, audible atmosphere in the chemical waste dump that we call a ground. </p><p>I refuse to accept that the London Stadium is a good place to watch football, but on this night, in these circumstances and against these visitors there was a hint of electricity in the air. Not the kind you get from the mains, but more the spark you get when you take off an acrylic jumper in the dark. I suppose that's a start. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">9. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAO51dXvuWw" target="_blank">Arsenal (h) 2-1 : 1999/00 Premier League</a></span></i></b><br /><i>(Di Canio (29, 72) - Suker (77))</i></p><p>It's hard to believe now, I realise, but there was a time in the Nineties when Arsenal were the most feared team in the land. Manchester United were their great rivals but they tended to play a brand of football that either submerged you or gave you a chance. Arsenal, by contrast, didn't do chances. They either played you off the pitch with scintillating football or they kicked you off the pitch with a fearsome ruthlessness. I don't think teams ever really believed they could beat Arsenal, and Harry Redknapp especially appeared to hold a sort of reverence for them which often seemed to transmit to his teams. </p><p>On this day, we entered the Sunday afternoon fixture having not beaten them at home for thirteen years and not having won any of our previous eleven games against them. Most Hammers tended to arrive at Arsenal games knowing that the biggest mystery of the day was really <i>how</i> we would contrive to lose rather than <i>if. </i></p><p>This one started slightly differently, however, as the good early season form generated by our UEFA Cup run carried over into the match. Paolo Di Canio was soon tormenting the visitors with his unconventional strike partner Paulo Wanchope, and we looked a bit more up for it than previously. Di Canio opened the scoring on the half hour after a long mazy dribble in which he was seemingly tackled about five times and eventually ended up with him tapping in from six yards while David Seaman went for a stroll around Newham. </p><p>His second was more memorable, as he sent Martin Keown on his own journey of discovery and left him stranded in the box to make it 2-0. Things all then went a little bit Upton Park as Davor Suker quickly pulled a goal back before mild mannered midfield philosopher Patrick Vieira upended Di Canio and got sent off. Not content with that, he returned to spit at Neil Ruddock and gave a pretty good impression of a man desperate to incite a riot. We clung on, somehow, as Arsenal kept knocking at the door, even as we lost Marc Vivien Foe to a second yellow card of his own. </p><p>We would beat them only once more at Upton Park, when Marlon Harewood scored a last minute winner in 2006 and Alan Pardew promptly started a fight with Arsene Wenger. Halcyon days. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">8. <a href="https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2020/march/19-march/throwbackthursday-highlights-tottenham-hotspur-2-3-west-ham" target="_blank">Spurs (a) 3-2 : 2017/18 League Cup</a></span></i></b><br /><i>(Ayew (55, 65) Ogbonna (70) - Sissoko (6), Alli (37))</i></p><p>Perhaps a League Cup 4th Round tie shouldn't be featuring quite so highly on this list, but to counter that argument I would ask how often you go to Wembley, are two down at half time and come back to win? </p><p>We came into this game on the back of a truly awful 3-0 defeat at home to Brighton, in which we allowed Glenn Murray to score twice and as a result should probably have been relegated there and then. Slaven Bilic was under huge pressure having spent all his summer transfer budget on the players who could easily have been cast in <i>The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel </i>and speculation was rife that he was about to be sacked. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQqWCKckh3f4zHMG6PKHly13a1vHI6KSTt8qYD0Ha7IcYTzcRRWudEoUywVFeq8wz8RSsDGiwbVbIHPPto7wzbUOmSXiydb5sB87t4WsLAnlcQ2F6wh7-0GG-7dFlLeb_G1u6f/s705/Screen+Shot+2021-01-07+at+19.52.39.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="415" data-original-width="705" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQqWCKckh3f4zHMG6PKHly13a1vHI6KSTt8qYD0Ha7IcYTzcRRWudEoUywVFeq8wz8RSsDGiwbVbIHPPto7wzbUOmSXiydb5sB87t4WsLAnlcQ2F6wh7-0GG-7dFlLeb_G1u6f/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-07+at+19.52.39.png" width="320" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><i>Adrian auditions for A Hobbit's Tale</i></p><p>Those calls only got louder when we allowed alleged footballer Moussa Sissoke to run straight through our defence after just six minutes here to open the scoring. Spurs had a number of other chances before Delle Alli scored a second courtesy of a big deflection off Declan Rice, and at that point most of us in the away end were pondering at what point it was socially acceptable to leave. </p><p>At half time, my old school friend and OLAS contributor Dave Terris produced a <i>Galaxy </i>bar and we tacitly agreed that when it got to four we'd probably start tunnelling our way out. </p><p>But somewhere in the bowels of a half full Wembley, Bilic was casting some sort of magic spell. I don't think that it was much more meaningful than <i>"Abracadabra, give it to Lanzini", </i>but it worked a treat as the Argentine was suddenly everywhere and Spurs were all at sea. We pulled one back after fifty five minutes when an Edmilson Fernandes drive was only parried by Michel Vorm to Andre Ayew who made no mistake from eight inches out. Ten minutes later, Lanzini got in behind the Spurs defence and picked out the Ghanaian again with a beautiful flick and just like that we were level. I should add that the scenes in the away end when this one went in were pretty reminiscent of a rave I once went to in Majorca. </p><p>The comeback was complete just five minutes later when Angelo Ogbonna headed in a Lanzini corner and just like that we had turned it around. Spurs chucked back a few tame counterpunches but we held on to complete a remarkable, thrilling, life affirming win. </p><p>For Bilic, this was his last hurrah as we would next throw away a two goal lead at Crystal Palace and then attempt to play Liverpool without a defence and lose 4-1. He was sacked after that particular nightmare, but on this cold October evening at Wembley everything was just about perfect. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>7. <a href="https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/845150" target="_blank">Everton (a) 3-2 : 2015/16 Premier League</a></i></span></b><br /><i>(Antonio (78), Sakho (81), Payet (90) - Lukaku (13) Lennon (56))</i></p><p>A recurring theme of the Slaven Bilic era was the team coming back from two goals down to earn points. On the face of it, that's not a bad habit to have although it's also probably true that a tendency to concede two goals all the time probably isn't the hallmark of a good team. But in 2015/16, no rules seemed to apply; Leicester could win the league, Spurs could have an actual title run and West Ham could win on Merseyside. </p><p>We entered this game in 6th place but without a win against Everton in the Premier League in sixteen attempts. The reverse fixture had been highlighted by us going a goal ahead and Everton midfielder James McCarthy then kicking Dimitri Payet out of the game. That one foul probably ended up costing us a Champions League place as Payet would miss the next seven games, of which we would win only one.</p><p>But on a spring afternoon on Merseyside we - eventually - got some retribution. Before we got to that point, however, like with all epic tales things would have to get pretty bleak. Romelu Lukaku opened the scoring, as required by law, by rolling teenager Reece Oxford far too easily and slotting home after just thirteen minutes. Things then went a bit weird as Kevin Mirallas was sent off for a poor tackle on Aaron Cresswell. Instead of spurring us on, however, it seemed to inspire Everton who continued to be the better team and eventually got a neat second through Aaron Lennon. A dismal day was then compounded when they were granted an incorrect penalty. As Lukaku stepped up it seemed like our propensity to fall behind in games had finally caught us up. </p><p>Adrian, however, had other ideas as he saved both the penalty and later another breakaway effort from Lukaku. With just twelve minutes to go our right back - Michail Antonio, if you're still trying to solve the puzzle as to why we were so bad defensively - popped up to head a consolation. Rather enjoyably, Everton then collapsed like American democracy, and Diafra Sakho soon headed an equaliser. We piled forward, with Andy Carroll barrelling around like a possessed bowling ball, and with just seconds remaining Payet latched on to a Sakho flick to poke home a wonderful winner. A moment to savour in a season of them. We left Goodison in fifth place and would then watch our season dissolve in a flurry of poor refereeing decisions, bad luck and the stupidity of not buying an actual striker in January. Plus ca change. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>6. <a href="https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/1365944?PLAYLIST=1581408#!" target="_blank">Spurs (a) 3-0 : 2013/14 Premier League</a></i></span></b><br /><i>(Reid (66), Vaz Te (72), Morrison (79))</i></p><p>Another trip to White Hart Lane and a thoroughly enjoyable Sunday in the early season sun. Having won against Cardiff on opening day, we had gone winless while Spurs were unbeaten at home and had only conceded two goals all season. </p><p>Big Sam Allardici, however, is not a man to worry about such niceties and decided to shake things up and employ the <i>"False Nine"</i> system popularised by Spain at the recent World Cup. This involved having Ravel Morrison and Mohamed Diame rotating in and out of the striking role, and leaving the notorious high defensive line of Andre Villas Boas without anybody to mark. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXj9RmJjSsXINzftwD7SdkAXREn5vxvq3e5nz25Pfsg-rsf_opGM1BtxImjcQBxSZFgOpahdjH-_EX7vLQwTj8gof7km0Q1RsCaBPICNiw_rtOPB2xJtwVFF8-qDe3_C9jdcyK/s614/Screen+Shot+2021-01-07+at+22.17.20.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="345" data-original-width="614" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXj9RmJjSsXINzftwD7SdkAXREn5vxvq3e5nz25Pfsg-rsf_opGM1BtxImjcQBxSZFgOpahdjH-_EX7vLQwTj8gof7km0Q1RsCaBPICNiw_rtOPB2xJtwVFF8-qDe3_C9jdcyK/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-07+at+22.17.20.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>What could have been</i></div><p>For an hour the system worked excellently, as our extra numbers in midfield crowded out the home team, and allowed us to break forward from time to time with purpose. We took the lead from a corner when Winston Reid headed goalwards, had the ball rebound back to him from Kevin Nolan and then poked home. Six minutes later, Ricardo Vaz Te broke on to a Mark Noble through ball, shot against Hugo Lloris, fell over and then scored as the ball bounced back and hit him mid fall. Lovely stuff all round as we rode our ricochets into a two goal lead. </p><p>The general shittiness of our opening two goals was cancelled out, however, by the brilliance of our third. Nomadic wunderkind Ravel Morrison picked up a pass inside our half and dribbled through the Spurs defence - it contained Michael Dawson but it was still impressive - and then lifted it over Lloris to seal our victory. A fabulous goal to seal a fabulous win. </p><p>Sadly, Allardyce was so pleased with his tactical innovation that he persisted with it for a further five winless games, until someone eventually told him that strikers were for life and not just for Christmas. We would beat Spurs twice more that season whilst losing 5-0 to Championship side Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup, and 9-0 on aggregate to Manchester City in the League Cup semi finals. Say what you like about Allardyce but he didn't do anything to change our reputation as a side you should never, ever include in a bet. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>5.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl1eQ3kN2q4" target="_blank"> Ipswich Town (h) 2-0 : 2003/04 Play Offs</a></i></span></b><br /><i>(Etherington (50), Dailly (71))</i></p><p>If you know - you know. </p><p>I don't think I'll forget this night as long as I live. </p><p>Alan Pardew had taken over from Glenn Roeder with the club not so much in a state of flux as occupying the centre of a black hole with no laws of physics applying. The stars were mostly gone, and even those who had stayed such as David James and Jermain Defoe would leave by January. In their place was a transitional mix of the young and talented types like Michael Carrick, Matthew Etherington and Bobby Zamora alongside older heads such as Steve Lomas and Andy Melville - the slowest man I have ever seen play football. </p><p>The side was a bit of a patchwork, with no recognised left back meaning that Hayden Mullins was needing to be deployed there by the end of the season. We looked for a while like we might struggle to make the play offs but ended up in fourth, which gave us a trip to Ipswich Town who had finished a point behind us. They won a nervy and underwhelming first league 1-0, leaving everything riding on the return fixture. </p><p>But West Ham under the lights is a different kind of ask altogether. From the moment the first leg finished Pardew was stoking things up, telling Ipswich that they would be facing an altogether different challenge when they came to East London, and he wasn't wrong. Spurred on, the crowd had the old place shaking like it hadn't done for quite some time and when the players emerged there was a mild concern that the roof wasn't going to survive the aural assault. </p><p>We started like a lightning bolt and Ipswich soon looked like they had channelled their inner Spurs as they froze in the face of the onslaught. Kelvin Davis made a number of outstanding stops in a one way first half, but there was a sense of inevitability about the opening goal. Carrick took a short corner to Etherington, everybody groaned, and he duly smashed it in the top corner to take the pin out of the grenade.</p><p>Twenty minutes later the oft vilified, but never shirking Christian Dailly got hit in the nuts at a corner, stood up long enough to poke in the second goal and then collapsed in agony. It was a peculiar moment as the players couldn't celebrate while the crowd were blissfully unaware and re-enacted the fall of the Berlin Wall. </p><p>We held on, even as Ipswich hit the post late on, and a play off final was sealed. That ended dismally, but on this particular night, when the ground shook and the night was filled with song, West Ham was the only place to watch football. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>4.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl1eQ3kN2q4" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-1sxlqivTQ" target="_blank">Metz (a) 3-1 : 1999/00 Intertoto Cup</a></i></span></b><br /><i>(Sinclair (23), Lampard (43), Wanchope (78) - Jestrovic (68))</i></p><p>If you're a West Ham fan of a certain age then you'll know what I mean when I say that Metz is a word you hear whispered on the wind. Fans talk about it all the time, and it resides somewhere within the fabric of the club simply because of how great this particular night was. </p><p>It's easy to mock the Intertoto Cup, and many do, but we finished in 5th place and should have gone straight in to the UEFA Cup but instead were made to play in this new, and curiously constructed, competition. So, in July we played FC Jokerit of Finland and SC Heerenveen of the Netherlands to qualify for this - bizarrely one of three finals taking place that night on August 24th 1999. The others were won by Montpelier and Juventus, but we went in to our game 1-0 down having disappointingly lost at home to a Louis Saha goal. </p><p>I think part of the allure of this game is that the conditions, in a foreign country, in glorious sunshine, in a totally different atmosphere against players and clubs we'd never see before - all of that felt like it belonged to other clubs. Certainly we had seen it on TV but it had always seemed so out of reach. The very notion that you could go to watch West Ham in a competitive match in France in a place called the Stade Saint Symphorien seemed like the kind of thing that belonged to a bygone era. And thus thousands of West Ham fans made that trip and turned the night into quite an event. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTgdBgnibWCuCOOlT9hpZGjqdgGJ-aD_tCwY9-yhxGOnBaOmYMddFhX06oWsA3KWuL0GH7PIUjd3EQ7WLsmq1nu8v0quSavsMtvXDNcxK5piChTT2YQh9ALJajaUqP9JiqvIMM/s440/Screen+Shot+2021-01-07+at+23.38.36.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="298" data-original-width="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTgdBgnibWCuCOOlT9hpZGjqdgGJ-aD_tCwY9-yhxGOnBaOmYMddFhX06oWsA3KWuL0GH7PIUjd3EQ7WLsmq1nu8v0quSavsMtvXDNcxK5piChTT2YQh9ALJajaUqP9JiqvIMM/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-07+at+23.38.36.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Visiting diplomats</i></div><p>We started well, even though we had only two available defenders, and actually had two goals ruled out before Trevor Sinclair cut in and fired in a great low left footed shot to give us the lead. The excellent Frank Lampard then freed Paolo Di Canio down the right hand flank a minute before half time, surged into the box and finished off an elongated one-two by volleying home the Italian's cross.</p><p>As the night drew in and the sun went down, the atmosphere cranked up further and when Metz scored an excellent goal of their own through Nenad Jestrovic it seemed like we would be in for a nervous last twenty minutes. That feeling was only exacerbated when there were clashes in the crowd, but thankfully Paulo Wanchope skipped past the keeper in typically inelegant style to score our third and seal the tie. </p><p>As with so many things connected to West Ham, this was a missed opportunity. Rather than being the building block that we all hoped it would be, this game stands as a kind of high water mark - Di Canio in his pomp, Ferdinand and Lampard happy and outstanding, Cole and Carrick on their way and a selection of young, excellent professionals around them. It wouldn't last. It never does.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>3.</i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl1eQ3kN2q4" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/306555?FOOTBALL_CLUBS=25" target="_blank"><i><span style="color: #0000ee;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><u>Manchester United</u></span></span> (a) 1-0 : 2006/07 Premier League</i></a></span></b><br /><i>(Tevez (45))</i></p><p>Has any game ever been so memorable while being quite so unmemorable? This was a match that was solely about the result, and everything else was just ballast. Going into the game we were in 17th, but with an inferior goal difference courtesy of a first half of the season where we played with a rush goalie. With our two main rivals - Wigan and Sheffield United - facing each other, we knew that a point would definitely keep us up, but a defeat could easily send us down. </p><p>Not only that, we faced the daunting prospect of having to win at Old Trafford, where Manchester United had lost just once in yet another title winning season. In retrospect, it can't be denied that the hosts were focusing on their FA Cup final to be played the following week as they left Giggs, Ronaldo and Scholes on the bench. With that said, they were still fearsome and we relied on Robert Green to make a string of fine saves to keep us in the game. </p><p>We also lost quietly underrated left back George McCartney early in the game, but didn't miss a beat as Lucas Neill continue to marshall our back line superbly. And then, and then....</p><p>With half time imminent, Carlos Tevez played a one-two with Bobby Zamora, watched the ball skew up into the air from a defensive challenge, and calmly slid the dropping ball past Edwin van der Sar on the half volley. It was a wonderful goal, not least because it also helped to ratchet up the tension at Brammall Lane, where Sheffield United were losing to Wigan. </p><p>We held on, not without incident but also not without a sense of purpose and steel, and in the Manchester drizzle we celebrated a remarkable escape and a dismal season. Tevez would never play for us again and our Icelandic owners would soon go bankrupt, leading us on a journey that would end with David Sullivan and David Gold purchasing the club as a distressed asset a few years later. Whether you think Tevez should have been playing, or whether you believe Neil Warnock's relegation was really underserved, you can't deny that the miracle run-in of 2007 was an extraordinary sequence of performances for which Alan Curbishley probably deserves far greater credit. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>2.</i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl1eQ3kN2q4" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/879483" target="_blank">Spurs<i> (h) 4-3 : 1996/97 Premier League</i></a></span></b><br /><i>(Dicks (20, 72 p), Kitson (22), Hartson (38) - Sheringham (8), Anderton (29), Howells (53))</i></p><p>By the end of February 1997, West Ham were going down. We hadn't won in eight games and prior to the arrival of Spurs had lost five in a row, including a cup defeat at home to Wrexham that was so bad the video is probably used by the CIA in torture sessions. </p><p>Harry Redknapp had begun to notice that his strike force of Iain Dowie and Mike Newell was a tad unthreatening, and in fact no striker had scored for us that year, forcing him to shell out £7m for Paul Kitson and John Hartson. </p><p>Both would start this game, and score, on a night when it felt like the wind and rain was moving horizontally across the pitch. Things started poorly, however, when Teddy Sheringham opened the scoring with a smart header. We were indebted to talismanic skipper Julian Dicks for our recovery as he thumped in a header from a Michael Hughes corner after twenty minutes to equalise. Just two minutes later, a second Hughes corner got held up on the wind and Kitson ducked underneath it to nod home. </p><p>The lead held for seven minutes before Darren Anderson lobbed Ludek Miklosko to equalise - a status quo which held for all of nine minutes before Hartson demolished Sol Campbell to crash home a Dicks free kick. We led at the end of a crazy first half, but David Howells would soon restore parity with the best goal of the night from outside the box. Amid the madness of this game I always think it's worth remembering that Howells played despite his father dying earlier that day. </p><p>As misfortune would have it, it was cruelly to be Howells who then fouled Hartson to give Dicks the chance to put us back into the lead from the spot. To say that he smashed it home would be to greatly understate the violence of his penalty. The appropriate term would probably be whatever one uses to describe the action of a bazooka. </p><p>We held on and stayed up, and that game remains indelibly inked in my mind. Those lights, that pitch, the rain, that performance. I doubt there have been many more entertaining games of football ever played in this country. </p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>1.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl1eQ3kN2q4" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/1196117" target="_blank">Manchester United (h) 3-2 : 2015/16 Premier League</a></i></b></span><br /><i>(Sakho (10), Antonio (78), Reid (80) - Martial (51, 72))</i></p><p>Is there such a thing as destiny? Whenever we're about to play a team who haven't won in a while we all seem to think so. And so, maybe that's what this was. I don't know but it was a game unlike any other. There is nothing quite like saying goodbye, after all. </p><p>A confession - I didn't go to this game. I had no season ticket this year, but I did have a new phone, which proved terribly unhelpful when a mate messaged me on my old one to ask me if I wanted his spare ticket. He still sends me a screenshot of that from time to time, if he thinks my mental health seems too stable. </p><p>I had made my peace with leaving, and had made my last trip on a frigid February afternoon to watch a tepid 1-0 win over Sunderland. But on this night I felt the pull. I almost went down to the ground just to stand outside, which was an urge that several thousand others chose not to ignore. This had the knock on effect of delaying the kick off as the Manchester United team bus couldn't get through the throng outside having seemingly asked my wife how long they would need to get there, and duly left half an hour after they were supposed to have arrived. </p><p>When the game got going it was...perfect. A balmy night for shirt sleeves and raised hairs alike, and the lights beating down one final time. Diafra Sakho - a madman - opened the scoring after just ten minutes and to be honest, it felt like there was an inevitability to everything that followed. Of course we would dominate and miss lots of chances. Of course they would equalise just after halftime, and then accidentally score to take the lead with just twenty minutes of football left at our home. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY6pSSWnUh9QIxX7d3UCEWaVuD-JPwf_Z9Dn9t39ktqNKSlWCljLzHPaaUr8suxeKjDtrDto0OfyQsvNRrHnN08JB4hHjb5zg01TQCM96ME5Y_jkmXFVuyiApsMJOSpKl7Fprb/s765/Screen+Shot+2021-01-08+at+01.46.40.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="765" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY6pSSWnUh9QIxX7d3UCEWaVuD-JPwf_Z9Dn9t39ktqNKSlWCljLzHPaaUr8suxeKjDtrDto0OfyQsvNRrHnN08JB4hHjb5zg01TQCM96ME5Y_jkmXFVuyiApsMJOSpKl7Fprb/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-08+at+01.46.40.png" width="320" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><i>You beautiful bastard</i></p><p>From there, of course we wouldn't buckle and of course Michail Antonio - a consistent scorer of important goals - would head our equaliser. And of course, with ten minutes to play, Dimitri Payet would conjure one last assist and Winston Reid would write one final line on the bottom of the script. </p><p>In some ways, I still feel emotional about that night and that season. Riven throughout this series of articles is a lament for what we gave up in leaving Upton Park. For all those dreadful home performances - and there were many, lest we romanticise it too greatly - there was also something buried under the surface that could be mined by the right players or managers. When the lights were on and the mood was with us, we could move mountains at that place. We could rise above the natural limitations of our station and become something better. The harsh truth is that the London Stadium has no such seam to mine, and indeed was supposed to be the thing that made us better. It has not. We must build something different so that when somebody writes this equivalent piece in fifty years time, when Brexit has started paying dividends, it can be filled with amazing nights from that stadium. Over to you Moyesy. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><i>Honourable Mentions:</i></b></p><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Arsenal (a) 1-0 : 2006/07 Premier League</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Wigan (h) 3-2 : 2009/10 Premier League</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Manchester City (a) 2-1 : 2005/06 FA Cup</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Chelsea (h) 1-0 : 2002/03 Premier League</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Sunderland (a) 1-0 : 2000/01 FA Cup</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Spurs (a) 2-1 : 2013/14 League Cup</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Manchester United (h) 2-2 : 1996/97 Premier League</i></div><p><br /></p><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2019/08/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_6.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (50 - 41)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (40 - 31)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_8.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (30 - 21)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_31.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (20 - 11)</a></div>HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-88026578922302326022021-01-08T02:57:00.002+00:002021-01-08T03:12:09.046+00:00In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (20 - 11)<div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">20. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc3SDvm4k4A" target="_blank">Chelsea (a) 3-2 : 2002/03 Premier League</a></span></i></b><br /><i>(Defoe (40), Di Canio (49, 84) - Hasselbaink (21 p), Zola (74))</i></div><div><br /></div><div>In 2001, popular and populist manager Harry Redknapp was sacked by chairman Terry Brown and eventually replaced by lugubrious coach Glenn Roeder. Despite a drastically low set of expectations, Roeder steered us to a seventh place finish and in truth it looked like there were a lot of building blocks for the future. Youngsters Joe Cole, Michael Carrick and Jermain Defoe were emerging, Glen Johnson was on the way and England internationals Trevor Sinclair and David James were in place to complement the excellent strike pair of Paolo di Canio and Frederic Kanoute. </div><div><br /></div><div>The idea that we could get relegated in 2003 with that squad still seems absurd, but we somehow managed it, and an entire generation of outstanding youth players was wasted. However, one of the few bright spots in the season came in September when we travelled to high flying Chelsea, bottom of the league and still searching for our first win. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9mg7jzbEJKwcNJczU3vXDHtGvX4c8jb5slSmJ4SJnLFjXYhufSvV5P_QiNmZH_veKDoZhZ43fC2J2PCKB2jr4YQMs-cIQqx-nAISgAzq5c3pdbuBopA6CD08DbVoGI-Tz104_/s481/Screen+Shot+2021-01-05+at+00.07.34.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="481" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9mg7jzbEJKwcNJczU3vXDHtGvX4c8jb5slSmJ4SJnLFjXYhufSvV5P_QiNmZH_veKDoZhZ43fC2J2PCKB2jr4YQMs-cIQqx-nAISgAzq5c3pdbuBopA6CD08DbVoGI-Tz104_/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-05+at+00.07.34.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Not pictured - Gary Breen, supreme</i></div><br /><div>Things started poorly when Scott Minto conceded a ludicrously soft penalty and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink scored his customary goal against us. Substitute Defoe snuffled an equaliser just before half time and then shortly after the interval Di Canio scored one of the best goals I've ever seen when he flicked up a loose ball with his right foot and smashed it home from thirty yards with his left. Even now, it perplexes me why that goal doesn't feature in more Premier League <i>"Best of..."</i> compilations. </div><div><br /></div><div>Minto carried on his tremendous day at the office by needlessly fouling Gianfranco Zola with a quarter of an hour to go and the Italian punished him with a glorious free kick. Di Canio, however, was not to be denied and with minutes to go he profited from some marvellously <i>Mighty Ducks </i>style Chelsea defending to pilfer a winning goal. This match was also notable for being the only time that Gary Breen would ever play well for us. What. A. Day. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">19. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kjiv2YVAXo" target="_blank">Liverpool (a) 3-0 : 2015/16 Premier League</a> </span></i></b></div><div><i>(Lanzini (3), Noble (29), Sakho (90))</i></div><div><br /></div><div>When looking for reasons why Slaven Bilic remains so beloved by West Ham fans despite presiding over some truly abysmal football teams, I think you have to look at games like this. West Ham, incredibly, had not won at Anfield since 1962 before this game, which is the kind of losing record that you typically only see in wrestling where the matches are actually fucking fixed and one party isn't trying. </div><div><br /></div><div>But in 2015/16 both ourselves and Liverpool were different animals than we'd seen before or after. We had Dimitri Payet, while Brendan Rodgers was trying to mould a team while Simon Mignolet was in goal for him. Tough gig. </div><div><br /></div><div>We started brightly with Manuel Lanzini scoring after just three minutes on his full debut, and Mark Noble adding a second on the half hour after a wonderfully slapdash bit of defending from Dejan Lovren that was part falling over and part performative dance. Philippe Coutinho was then correctly sent off for a stupid lunge on Payet, which referee Kevin Friend decided to even up by sending off Noble for a perfectly fair tackle later on. It seems you still have to knock the big boys out to get a draw in the Premier League.</div><div><br /></div><div>Diafra Sakho then broke away to score a last minute third and seal a 3-0 win at Anfield, which is the kind of sentence that thousands of West Ham fans thought they would never see in print. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">18. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jszHCk0Cr4E" target="_blank">Spurs (a) 4-1 : 1993/94 Premier League</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Jones (37), Morley (60 p, 73), Marsh (80) - Sheringham (66 p))</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Another day, another highly enjoyable visit to White Hart Lane. I think this Easter Monday victory lives long in the memory as it allowed thousands of teenage Hammers like me to strut around the various schools and workplaces of Essex and East London for quite a while, such was the comprehensive nature of our win. </div><div><br /></div><div>Things started cagily, with West Ham probably needing a win to be sure of avoiding relegation in our first Premier League season, and Spurs dangerously close to being pulled into the dogfight themselves. Peter Butler was injured early on and replaced by Steve Jones, which proved to be the turning point as he quickly ran on to an Ian Bishop through ball and smashed home his most famous goal for us. </div><div><br /></div><div>On the hour mark, Trevor Morley conned Kevin Scott into fouling him in the area and picked himself up to give us a two goal lead from the spot. Feeling the game needed an injection of life, Morley then went up the other end and gave away a penalty of his own to allow Teddy Sheringham to pull one back for the home team. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1dl2BHsfKMVtTPcwYMRXsDECLJbOdZcP2yOpwFB0md1MACwEC5qA1P4PEhRPu8LpQuu8F1qTvYpasyClf9EGdmvweVfoVIdGLo0BpDYbQ3cNdMvsV84xUWY1jEOD-mGFQT14/s704/Screen+Shot+2021-01-05+at+01.18.58.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="704" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1dl2BHsfKMVtTPcwYMRXsDECLJbOdZcP2yOpwFB0md1MACwEC5qA1P4PEhRPu8LpQuu8F1qTvYpasyClf9EGdmvweVfoVIdGLo0BpDYbQ3cNdMvsV84xUWY1jEOD-mGFQT14/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-05+at+01.18.58.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I'm pretty sure this is Mike Marsh</i></div><br /><div>However, with Bishop having a masterful game in the middle we never really looked like losing and Morley soon added a second after some more Ardilesian defending from Gary Mabbutt. Mike Marsh, another underrated signing, would add a late fourth as Spurs simply abandoned the notion of defending and we coasted to a thumping victory that left Spurs in 15th place and just three points above the relegation zone. Sadly, they would survive but it was enjoyably close for a while there. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">17. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1NucckyDXc" target="_blank">Man Utd (a) 1-0 : 2000/01 FA Cup</a></span></i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Back in 2001 the footballing world was a vastly different place. A year earlier Manchester United had withdrawn from the FA Cup in order to play in the FIFA World Club Championship and been pilloried for the decision. Unpopular anyway, this was seen as the ultimate snook cocking and a bridge too far for the English media. In typically modest fashion, United continued to refer to themselves as the holders of the trophy having won it in 1999 and their reputation was further enhanced when it emerged that they had already booked their favourite hotel in Wales for May, in anticipation of making the final again in Cardiff. </div><div><br /></div><div>When we were drawn against them in the Fourth Round it was a genuinely huge game, shifted to the Sunday to be covered by ITV and West Ham were given 9,000 tickets for the match. Alex Ferguson picked his strongest side, which was borderline unbeatable at the time, while we sweated over injuries to Shaka Hislop and Frederic Kanoute. The Mali striker was crucial as without him we tended to all but disappear in away games. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwATf5kALd1S9-qcYk0cx7_ZRGE43PhWHchbQuBaXHdFa-O1GKslUKVA-M6DpZUx3-At-o1dfhoeYBoLEigDS3i1CRGrfD6gbB7qkL9JD42oAiDzoZbM_glBiqTu4L_s5gQ2Be/s773/Screen+Shot+2021-01-05+at+01.44.56.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="601" data-original-width="773" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwATf5kALd1S9-qcYk0cx7_ZRGE43PhWHchbQuBaXHdFa-O1GKslUKVA-M6DpZUx3-At-o1dfhoeYBoLEigDS3i1CRGrfD6gbB7qkL9JD42oAiDzoZbM_glBiqTu4L_s5gQ2Be/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-05+at+01.44.56.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Paolo, relaxing</i></div><br /><div>Still, the omens weren't all that great with our back five containing the octogenarian pairing of Stuart Pearce and Nigel Winterburn, and Hislop patently unable to kick a ball. With United hammering at us early on, it never really felt like we were going to win and indeed most fans were having post traumatic flashbacks to our 7-1 defeat there a year before. </div><div><br /></div><div>However, the key to the victory was our brilliant homegrown midfield of Frank Lampard, Joe Cole and Michael Carrick. As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2020/mar/31/my-favourite-game-manchester-united-west-ham-2001-fa-cup" target="_blank">Jacob Steinberg</a> observed in <i>The Guardian</i> when he described this as his favourite West Ham game, the great sadness was that this performance heralded an end and not a beginning. The young trio controlled the game and gave us the platform to grow into the game and eventually steal a late winner. </div><div><br /></div><div>The goal itself is pretty famous, as Kanoute freed Paolo di Canio who ran into the box, ignored Fabien Barthez trying to tell him he was offside and slotted home the winner. We would be drawn away at Sunderland next, who were actually second in the league at the time, and beat them too before losing a borderline Shakespearean home quarter final to Spurs. </div><div><br /></div><div>I actually didn't even bother to apply for a ticket to this game, such was my pessimism, and I got what I deserved as I had to watch on TV with the rest of the world. When we were drawn at Old Trafford again a couple of years later I made sure I didn't miss out. </div><div><br /></div><div>We lost 6-0. </div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes God is a little too on the nose, you know. Still, Let's All Do The Barthez.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">16. <a href="https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/11704823/tottenham-0-1-west-ham-michail-antonio-goal-ends-spurs-perfect-record-at-new-stadium" target="_blank">Spurs (a) 1-0 : 2018/19 Premier League</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Antonio (67))</i></div><div><br /></div><div>It's not often that football games live all that long in the memory. They feel important and substantial and then another one arrives five days later and suddenly that's the only game that matters. The value we ascribe to certain fixtures is rarely, if ever matched by their real life impact. It's therefore sometimes the case that you need a bit of history alongside the actual game to make it truly stick in the mind. </div><div><br /></div><div>So, what sets this 1-0 victory at White Hart Lane apart from the equivalent Dani game in 1996? Well, for a start this game was played in a totally different stadium. Having "lost" their attempt to win the Olympic Stadium and then benefitting from a weirdly fortuitous set of fires on land where they wanted to build, Spurs then spent <i>$1 billion </i>on building their new, incredible home. It might feature a cheese room, and ludicrous, unnecessary extras but it is undeniably an astonishing place to watch football, and will stand as an eternal monument to the half arsed job that was done on our new place. </div><div><br /></div><div>But if the stadia aren't comparable then all that remained was for us to go and make the pitch our own. And with Spurs unbeaten in their new home with no goals conceded, that looked a pretty formidable ask for Manuel Pellegrini's new look West Ham, who had picked up just one point from their previous eight away games and were struggling to cope with their managers indecipherable prognostications about having a "<i>big club mentality</i>". </div><div><br /></div><div>However, with Spurs focusing half an eye on their Champions League semi final with Ajax, it's also true that this was a good time to be playing them even if they did play their best available team. The game started in a characteristically frenetic style and Spurs edged a first half in which our influential forward Marko Arnautovic touched the ball just seven times. He would make up for this in the second period however, alongside Mark Noble who simply took the game over and began to pull the strings in the same way as Bishop in 1994. </div><div><br /></div><div>Eventually, on 67 minutes, Arnautovic got free on the right, picked out Michail Antonio and the striker smashed home the first opposition goal at the new White Hart Lane, and then celebrated by pretending to hump a donkey on a space hopper. As you do. </div><div><br /></div><div>Things got a bit Twilight Zone thereafter when the two best chances in the rest of the game fell to our marauding centre back Issa Diop and an enthusiastic amateur footballer by the name of Vincent Janssen who won a competition to play up front for Spurs for the final twenty minutes. </div><div><br /></div><div>Still, we held on and, as with The Emirates, planted an eternal flag as the deserved first winners at the new North London stadium. We were all also introduced to those to two Spurs lads who film themselves watching matches and, well, more from them later. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>15. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2EPC_pwqU4" target="_blank">W</a></i></b><b><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2EPC_pwqU4" target="_blank">igan (a) 3-0 : 2006/07 Premier League</a></i></b></span></div><div><i>(Boa Morte (30), Benayoun (57), Harewood (82))</i></div><div><br /></div><div>I don't know if you guys recall this, but there was a stage in the 2006/07 season when it seemed like we might go down. In fact, after a Wes Craven directed last minute defeat to Spurs in March we were bottom of the league, 11 points from safety, without an away win all season and facing a run-in that involved trips to Arsenal and Manchester United. So, in summary, we were fucked. </div><div><br /></div><div>To add to the mess, controversial summer signing Carlos Tevez had still not scored all season and his pal Javier Mascherano was apparently stuffing his face with pizza in a Docklands flat having failed to displace Hayden Mullins from our midfield. Still, by the time we got to Wigan, things were slightly brighter after unlikely wins over Blackburn Rovers, Everton and Arsenal, sandwiched around a truly awful defeat at relegation rivals Sheffield United. </div><div><br /></div><div>At one point it looked as though Tevez might not play in this game as the club had to mount the first of several legal defences regarding the validity of his registration. They emerged triumphant - in a fashion - with a record £5.5m fine, and the Argentine played and starred in this remarkable win. </div><div><br /></div><div>Things began with a huge army of Hammers heading north on coaches paid for by the players, at the arrangement of Lucas Neill and Nigel Reo-Coker. With around 7,000 fans packed in behind the goal there was a tangible fission of excitement on the air. A win would pull us level with Wigan and put increasing pressure on the likes of the faltering Sheffield United and Fulham. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUO4bq6wWzCgtV1VLL-swqg2ymRqb2tAG8pHCmVdwhoPJ4aZzaa3tgekUgQCK40sujrd1Hlau2LgaqVjWlexUgZkjO3ZZ_UH_8aA7a9bqqtFSrrpoRT0ImciS_KDBl2vsyt8nz/s704/Screen+Shot+2021-01-05+at+20.15.57.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="704" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUO4bq6wWzCgtV1VLL-swqg2ymRqb2tAG8pHCmVdwhoPJ4aZzaa3tgekUgQCK40sujrd1Hlau2LgaqVjWlexUgZkjO3ZZ_UH_8aA7a9bqqtFSrrpoRT0ImciS_KDBl2vsyt8nz/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-05+at+20.15.57.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Boa Morte scores. Horsemen of the Apocalypse on their way</i></div><div><br /></div><div>After an opening half an hour where we were well on top, Neill launched a through ball for Luis Boa Morte to run on to. Wigan keeper John Filan weighed up all possible options and chose the worst one available by running directly at Boa Morte, who lobbed him for his first goal in claret and blue. He would literally have been better off doing The Barthez,</div><div><br /></div><div>Bobby Zamora could have made it two before half time, but we would soon seal the win with a fabulous breakaway goal where Tevez, Zamora and George McCartney would combine to set up Yossi Benayoun. Substitute Marlon Harewood added a late third, and The Great Escape was well and truly on. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the end, Sheffield United would end up being relegated, which I'm sure everyone would agree was a shame. Oddly, the long trip home was punctuated by seeing demoralised Charlton Athletic fans who had travelled to watch their team play at Blackburn Rovers as part of Alan Pardew's inspired <i>"Operation Ewood" </i>escape plan. They lost 4-1. </div><div><br /></div><div>Our karmic retribution would come in the summer when Henry Winter, Neil Warnock and a confused judge would request we pay £25m to Sheffield United over the Tevez affair. Still, we'll always have that goal from Luis Boa Morte. </div><div><br /></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">14. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC28wPce-oQ" target="_blank">Arsenal (a) 2-0 : 2015/16 Premier League</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Kouyate (43), Zarate (57))</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Back to 2015/16 and back to those improbable away results conjured up by Slaven Bilic. On the opening day we made the short trip to The Emirates where it was reasonable to assume that we were going to get our usual hiding at the hands of Arsene Wenger's men, especially as we had only just returned from being dumped out of Europe at the hands of Romanian powerhouse Astra Giurgiu, or <i>Astra Fucking Goo Goo </i>to give them their full title. While it's true that the Arsenal of 2015 wasn't the Arsenal of 2005 it is also true that they weren't the shower that we've seen parading around the Premier League recently, so we were heavy underdogs.</div><div><br /></div><div>The game was an entertaining affair, played out in bright sunshine and with a pleasing flow. New signing Angelo Ogbonna was rock solid at the back, while 16 year old Reece Oxford made Mesut Ozil disappear long before it became as fashionable as it is now. But the real star was new boy Dimitri Payet, who played in a nominal left wing role and was simply majestic. He crossed just before half time for Cheikhou Kouyate to give us the lead, while Petr Cech conducted an experiment in finding out exactly how badly a goalkeeper could misjudge a dive. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Czech's misery continued later when Mauro Karate fired past him from twenty yards and we hung on to seal a comfortable win. Notably Matt Jarvis and Kevin Nolan appeared as late substitutes, signifying a kind of handover from the old Allardyce era to what seemed like it might be a sun drenched modern adventure under Bilic. We lost 4-3 to Bournemouth a week later. Never change, lads. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">13. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hsld0k4TzU" target="_blank">Spurs (a) 3-3 : 2020/21 Premier League</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Son (1), Kane (8, 16) - Balbuena (82), Sanchez (OG 85), Lanzini (90)) </i></div><div><br /></div><div>Oh baby. Lanziniiiiiiiiiiii!</div><div><br /></div><div>You shouldn't really have a draw this high in a list of your greatest games, but then again you shouldn't draw a game where you are three goals down with eight minutes to play. For all those hundreds of games we watch and attend, for all those insipid defeats and tedious draws that we immediately consign to the wastepaper bin of history, it only takes one game like this to make you remember precisely why you first fell in love with the game. Football, bloody hell. </div><div><br /></div><div>To the neutral this must have been a bizarre match to watch. Spurs opened the scoring within a minute when we decided not to bother tackling Heung Min-Son, and Harry Kane soon added another couple. All three goals were brilliantly conceived and executed and at that point for West Ham fans it was simply a case of how many more they would score, and how much longer we would be able to keep watching. </div><div><br /></div><div>But Jose Mourinho isn't a coach to ever let loose the handbrake and David Moyes has imbued his team with a steel that hasn't been seen in a West Ham team for quite some time. Even at 3-0 we were still playing alright, with the obvious caveat that the home team had mostly gone into a mode of containment and were content to wait for chances to hit us on the break. As it was, Kane was denied a perfect hat trick by the post, and then everything went...nuts.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiItqbXFaZiXljWasxQAlLjUvwn4YjeO9rbegAPeVcoA2g950Tt3xMpWxT9XLga9Cbx-lnvfRKoPiy_3KyJXcxn9rH18DgNk1qVrUVqmX1ToLonceYMj-Q8x5vIv84C0KYYPFEF/s715/Screen+Shot+2021-01-06+at+22.15.03.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="418" data-original-width="715" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiItqbXFaZiXljWasxQAlLjUvwn4YjeO9rbegAPeVcoA2g950Tt3xMpWxT9XLga9Cbx-lnvfRKoPiy_3KyJXcxn9rH18DgNk1qVrUVqmX1ToLonceYMj-Q8x5vIv84C0KYYPFEF/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-06+at+22.15.03.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Manuel Lanzini. I love you</i></div><div><br /></div><div>First, Fabien Balbuena made up for some questionable defending on the Son goal to head a consolation, and then Andriy Yarmolenko and Vladimir Coufal combined to force Davinson Sanchez to head a bit more consolation into his own net, and suddenly we had five minutes of hope left. The pivotal moment arrived when keen golfer and amateur footballer Gareth Bale went through and ruined his coming home party by shooting wide with the goal at his mercy. Reprieved, we went up the other end and with four minutes of added time already in the book Manuel Lanzini smashed home a thirty yarder off the underside of the bar, Moyes did a little jig on the touchline, we all felt <i>extremely</i> consoled and Mourinho took it all with the customary good grace for which he is famous. Oh, to have been in the away end when that went in. </div><div><br /></div><div>Better still, whenever I think of this game I am reminded of this - the best, and most dramatically executed headphone push of all time. </div><div><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">INJECT IT INTO MY VEINS 💉💉💉 <a href="https://t.co/HAVVqS2zeZ">pic.twitter.com/HAVVqS2zeZ</a></p>— Chris Scull (@cjscull) <a href="https://twitter.com/cjscull/status/1317892160906289152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 18, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script></div><div><br /></div><div>No. No. No. No. NO. NO!</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">12. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyPTs4HORgI" target="_blank">Arsenal (a) 3-2 : 2005/06 Premier League</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Reo-Coker (25), Zamora (32), Etherington (80) - Henry (45), Pires (89))</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Another entry into the history books and arguably the most unlikely victory on this list. In 2006, Arsenal were in the middle of Arsene Wenger's reign and as strong as ever. Filled with world class superstars, they were especially formidable at Highbury in their final season there before moving to The Emirates. They would lose just two home league games all season and this, famously, was one. </div><div><br /></div><div>We weren't in great shape going in to this game as we had no right back, with Tomas Repka having headed back to the Czech Republic a couple of weeks previously, and were thus forced to deploy the extremely left footed Clive Clarke there. Things began predictably as Arsenal swarmed all over us, and Robin van Persie slammed a strike against the woodwork, but having battled through the initial flurry we broke away and took the lead as Sol Campbell channelled his inner Gary Breen and Nigel Reo-Coker snatched an opener. Seven minutes later Bobby Zamora slapped Campbell around like a piñata and curled home a beautiful second and all of a sudden it was one of <i>those </i>nights. </div><div><br /></div><div>Arsenal, however, remained Arsenal and Thierry Henry snatched one back on the stroke of half time to keep us all fidgeting. On another day the immense pressure applied to us in the second half would have seen a comfortable Arsenal win but between a heroic defensive performance, Shaka Hislop's heroics and some good old fashioned luck we kept them at bay. With just ten minutes left, Reo-Coker won the ball back high up the pitch and set up Matthew Etherington whose shot deflected twice on its way in. Sometimes it's just meant to be. </div><div><br /></div><div>Robert Pires did score in the 89th minute because why not, but we held on for a famous win and became the last away team to win at Highbury. Deliciously, we would then become the first team to win at The Emirates where Zamora bagged us a 1-0 win the following season as part of The Great Escape in another game that narrowly failed to make this list. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">11.<a href="https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/1607751" target="_blank"> Bradford (h) 5-4 : 1999/00 Premier League</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Sinclair (35), Moncur (43), Di Canio (65 p), J Cole (70), Lampard (83) - Windass (30), Beagrie (44 p), Lawrence (47, 51)</i></div><div><br /></div><div>I know what you're thinking - just another typical 1-0 down, 2-1 up, 4-2 down, 5-4 victory. But this might be the definitive game of the Harry Redknapp era as it showcased almost everything good and bad about that time. We began the game in 10th position with the sense of yet another lost season hanging over the ground. Our main focus had been on the League Cup where we made a run to the quarter finals and actually beat Aston Villa in a thrilling, pulsating game that ended up being settled on penalties. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the purest West Ham fashion imaginable we then ended up having to replay that match after it emerged that substitute Manny Omoyimni, who didn't actually touch the ball while on the pitch, had already played in the competition and was cup tied. Rather than chuck us out of the competition as they probably should have done, the league let us replay the game knowing full well that would be a more painful process, and they were right as we lost 3-1 and Paolo di Canio missed a fateful penalty. </div><div><br /></div><div>By the time Shaka Hislop broke his leg two minutes into this game it seemed like more of the same. On came the much hyped young reserve goalkeeper Stephen Bywater, who looked like he was borrowing his big brothers kit, and played like he was wearing his mums oven gloves. </div><div><br /></div><div>Incredibly the game was still goalless on the half hour mark when Dean Windass headed in a corner with Bywater rooted to his line. Trevor Sinclair quickly equalised before John Moncur got in on the act with a screamer of a goal to give us the lead and then immediately conceded a soft penalty that Peter Beagrie put away. </div><div><br /></div><div>The key observation from those of us in the ground at this point was that in order to win the game it seemed pretty imperative that everybody did their best to ensure Bywater wasn't required to touch the ball for the rest of the match as he appeared never to have seen one before. Sadly this ploy failed as Jamie Lawrence took advantage of two further howlers to give the visitors a (sort of) shock 4-2 lead. </div><div><br /></div><div>While all this was going on Di Canio was engaged in a seemingly endless battle with referee Neale Barry as he was denied penalties on at least two occasions where the foul was certainly worse than Moncur's in the first half. After the second of this he ran across to the bench and demanded to be taken off, sitting down on the turf and generally turning in the kind of performance that would get you booed offstage in the West End for being too hammy. Instead of treating this as a shocking lack of professionalism everybody just shrugged and said "That's Paolo" and sang his name. <i>{Insert eye roll gif}</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Shortly after, Paul Kitson was fouled and the penalty was finally given. Nominated penalty taker Frank Lampard picked up the ball only to find Di Canio trying to wrestle it off him. Being a well run and thoroughly professional outfit everybody told Di Canio to piss off and reminded him that he'd missed his last penalty and wait, oh no, we let him take it because we're about as professional as your average Sunday League team. </div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, he scored and everyone sang his name so that was great.<i> {Insert eye roll gif}</i>. A few minutes later Trevor Sinclair set up Joe Cole for the equaliser, and with Bradford quite rightly still reasoning that if they could just get a shot on target they'd win, everybody stopped defending and it was all tremendous fun. </div><div><br /></div><div>With seven minutes to go, Lampard got some sense of redemption when he picked up a Di Canio pass and smashed home a left footed winner from the edge of the box. What a springboard for the rest of the season, I hear you say. Not really, we lost 4-0 at home to Everton the next week. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2019/08/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_6.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (50 - 41)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (40 - 31)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_8.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (30 - 21)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_33.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (10 - 1)</a></div></div>HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-82385085659208752542021-01-08T02:41:00.004+00:002021-01-08T03:11:43.553+00:00In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (30 - 21)<p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;"> 30<span>. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6zmNObisCw" target="_blank">Chelsea (h) 2-1 : 2015/16 Premier League</a></span></span></i></b></p><i>(Zarate (17), Carroll (79) - Cahill (56))</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div>The 2015/16 season remains a curiosity in the Premier League archives, largely because it took the unusual step of actually being interesting. Most West Ham fans look back upon the season as a great success as we marauded to 7th in the league behind the brilliant Dimitri Payet and generally played entertaining football that proved a stunning antidote to that produced by Sam Allardyce.</div><div><br /></div><div>Personally I felt it was a missed opportunity. Manager Slaven Bilic didn't seem to have much more tactical acumen than just telling his team to give it to Payet whenever possible, and as with so many before and after him, he chose to discard effective combinations elsewhere in order to crowbar Andy Carroll into his side. On certain days however, that strategy was to prove exceptionally effective and this was one. </div><div><br /></div><div>Jose Mourinho's side arrived here as champions but finished the day in 15th as Upton Park offered up yet another barnstorming London derby and sent another local rival home sheepish in defeat. We opened the scoring early with a smart strike from Mauro Zarate, and held that lead comfortably as Chelsea then saw Nemanja Matic correctly sent off for two yellow cards. </div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNsitokGC22dSYh9n5SbObeZhVMFaKYVQTQoD_fVjdsRtRwwcEAwHC6k5OhiZktXYrzyALu_9Ept6FC3Pjw4piGsG1wYIBba61FDUHJj81Q6MnxeOdKZawV8Qo62zEorJIY7JV/s938/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+22.13.59.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="580" data-original-width="938" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNsitokGC22dSYh9n5SbObeZhVMFaKYVQTQoD_fVjdsRtRwwcEAwHC6k5OhiZktXYrzyALu_9Ept6FC3Pjw4piGsG1wYIBba61FDUHJj81Q6MnxeOdKZawV8Qo62zEorJIY7JV/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+22.13.59.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Mourinho in repose - 2015, Artist Unknown</i></div></div><div><br /></div><div>At this point Chelsea went collectively mental, everybody got booked and Mourinho was sent to the Directors Box, which produced this absolutely gorgeous Renaissance painting of a photo when we would later score our winner. In the intervening period, however, Chelsea would shape up pretty well with ten men and Gary Cahill bagged a deserved equaliser. </div><div><br /></div><div>With time slipping away Bilic sent on Carroll, which is akin to releasing a lion in a classroom to sort out an unruly set of teenagers. Even so, Carroll thunderbastarded an Aaron Cresswell cross into the net with ten minutes to go and the roof nearly came off the ground. We went up to third and then promptly lost 2-0 at Watford a week later to highlight why it would be Leicester and not us who would take advantage of a season of madness. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">29. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMKxK0SKcQE" target="_blank">Manchester City (h) 2-1 : 2014/15 Premier League</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Amalfitano (21), Sakho (75) - Silva (77))</i></div><div><br /></div><div>When Sam Allardyce arrived at Upton Park, <i>this </i>was what we were promised. A well organised team, sprinkled with skilful attackers in front of a solid defence and a few bloody noses for the big boys. In truth, he didn't particularly deliver on that but he did briefly stumble upon an exciting looking combination in the first half of the 2014/15 season. </div><div><br /></div><div>This game is included primarily because Manchester City were the real deal at this point, and defending champions to boot. They came fully armed with the likes of Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Yaya Toure and this victory remains one of the few times we have laid a glove on them in the modern era. </div><div><br /></div><div>This West Ham team was anchored around the wonderful Alex Song, who was magnificent this season, and led by the attacking duo of Enner Valencia and Diafra Sakho who feasted on service from a rejuvenated Stewart Downing. </div><div><br /></div><div>We opened the scoring here when Song and Valencia combined to set up Morgan Amalfitano for a tap in. We then rode our luck quite significantly as City did the cross bar challenge for an hour. Sakho seemed to have wrapped it up with a thumping header late on, but a frankly brilliant Silva goal meant the last ten minutes were terrifying. Still, we held on and rose to fourth before Allardyce changed the system to try and get Carroll back into the team. We won just three games after Christmas and finished the season in twelfth. </div><div><br /></div><div>Another waste. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">28. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4vBBx4KN1s" target="_blank">Preston North End (N) 1-0 : 2004/05 Play Off Final</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Zamora (57))</i></div><div><br /></div><div>While I don't generally have fond recollections of our Play Off adventures as I think they simply tend to highlight the debacle that various boards have made of running the club, it's also true that as purely theatrical events they can't really be beaten. </div><div><br /></div><div>This was no different, although by this stage these games had devolved into paralysing, nervy affairs rather than the free flowing buccaneering matches of old. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ4MbH2byf299Hyyk-8rm2-u8fhmLQ7yeFeFh2h57TFZFOsf2G3e8Bpg8TkCrraltu957k56WxZp43_qidB1HXrmCTrPGKl1cpjqsA_FlpjAmswB8Avz6AKBTBX-UFojRU1o2v/s261/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+22.56.11.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="261" data-original-width="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ4MbH2byf299Hyyk-8rm2-u8fhmLQ7yeFeFh2h57TFZFOsf2G3e8Bpg8TkCrraltu957k56WxZp43_qidB1HXrmCTrPGKl1cpjqsA_FlpjAmswB8Avz6AKBTBX-UFojRU1o2v/s0/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+22.56.11.png" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>The. Exact. Same. Haircut</i></div><br /><div>This match was particularly tight, as Preston seemed to freeze a little, perhaps wary of the growing tradition for sixth place teams to arrive in the play offs and beat those who had finished above them. We actually started the better team and some unholy combination of events led to Tomas Repka hitting the post in the first half. Preston improved after the break, albeit we continued to look more threatening and it wasn't all that surprising when man of the moment Bobby Zamora swept in a Matthew Etherington cross to give us the lead. </div><div><br /></div><div>After that we retreated to defend our advantage and try and hit them on the break, which did wonders for cardiac health in the East End, and also threw in a horrific looking injury to goalkeeper Jimmy Walker as well. </div><div><br /></div><div>We clung on, as we probably deserved to, but in truth I think there were very few fans who watched this game and felt particularly confident about Pardew's men in the Premier League. Still, a day to say you were there and it felt like something approaching a catharsis considering that we had lost the equivalent match a year previously with a dismal display against Crystal Palace. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">27. <a href="https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11661/12019188/west-ham-3-2-chelsea-andriy-yarmolenko-wins-it-late-on-as-hammers-shake-off-var-controversy" target="_blank">Chelsea (h) 3-2 : 2019/20 Premier League</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Soucek (45), Antonio (51), Yarmolenko (89) - Willian (42 p, 72))</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Ah, the London Stadium! There aren't too many matches from the Indian burial site on this list, largely because we've been almost unrelentingly shit since we've moved there, but this one from the middle of a pandemic makes the cut. </div><div><br /></div><div>At the start of the day we were out of the bottom three solely on goal difference and seemingly staring relegation in the face after an especially insipid 2-0 defeat to Spurs. However, the arrival of Tomas Soucek and Jarrod Bowen had given an added thrust to our attack while Michail Antonio was about to go on one of those red hot streaks that make him such a favourite for Fantasy League managers. </div><div><br /></div><div>Here we were mugged initially, when a Soucek goal was bizarrely ruled out by VAR on the grounds that Antonio was lying down in an offside position, and made to pay immediately when Willian gave Chelsea an undeserved lead. However, the Czech midfielder wasn't to be denied and headed us level right on half time. Antonio soon gave us the lead before Willian smashed in a fantastic free kick to leave us staring at a, frankly, not terrible point. However, Andriy Yarmolenko got free in the last minute to run on to an Antonio through ball and steal all three points and, essentially, seal our survival. The Ukranian is a bit of a poster boy for the stupidity of the Pellegrini/Sullivan axis but there's no doubt about him on two fronts - firstly, he should never be given any defensive responsibility, and secondly, he is deadly if you let him on his left foot. </div><div><br /></div><div>For all that I think we have actually benefitted from not having to play in front of crowds, I can't help wishing I had been there to see this particular last minute winner. Not that I don't generally enjoy the fruity conversation while we all stand aimlessly at a Stop/Go sign in the middle of the set of <i>28 Days Later </i>but it would all have felt just a touch more romantic on this balmy July evening. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">26. <a href="https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/1833699" target="_blank">Manchester City (a) 2-1 : 2015/16 Premier League</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Moses (6), Sakho (31) - De Bruyne (45)</i></div><div><br /></div><div>In truth, the reverse fixture from this season was a better game - a pulsating 2-2 draw that saw a Dimitri Payet masterclass at Upton Park. However, it also worth remembering that this was a win against the then most expensive starting line up in Premier League history, and the first defeat of the season for the unbeaten City. This remains our only league win at the Etihad and for that reason I have included it here - you just don't win there very much these days. </div><div><br /></div><div>Things began well when Victor Moses beat Joe Hart low to his left from long range (who knew?), and got even better when Diafra Sakho added a second on the half hour following a goalmouth scramble. Kevin de Bruyne pulled one back on his home debut but Adrian was unbeatable in a lively second half and we hung on for a remarkable victory. </div><div><br /></div><div>This win actually took us into second place but we would draw the following match at home to Norwich which was entirely in keeping with our wildly unpredictable form this year. I can't think of many sides who could win successive away matches at Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City and still lose 4-3 at home to Bournemouth but that was to be our lot this season. I don't think Slaven Bilic was a great manager, but you can't deny that he managed some great results. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">25. <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sx97LGqGap8" target="_blank">Liverpool (N) 3-3 : 2005/06 FA Cup Final </a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Carragher (OG 21), Ashton (28), Konchesky (64) - Cisse (32), Gerrard (54, 90)) 1-3 on penalties</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Too soon? It's too soon, right?</div><div><br /></div><div>I still can't really talk about this game. Objectively it's probably the best Cup Final of the modern era and subjectively, the bravest West Ham performance I've ever seen, but I still can't even really devote any emotional real estate to it. It simply makes me sad. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiirkP-1Fh-idDz6gQ28juA0kulWZTi8C-ZLdgs7p1GJUovlTr6362oQPDHk7Kl38OyqCZ3RvVui_TzRhoAJspMK1m4kOkBZDaMUnTGiAp-oi0ICWL7PjdVEVWjtygs09i_3LOC/s788/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+23.53.52.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="788" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiirkP-1Fh-idDz6gQ28juA0kulWZTi8C-ZLdgs7p1GJUovlTr6362oQPDHk7Kl38OyqCZ3RvVui_TzRhoAJspMK1m4kOkBZDaMUnTGiAp-oi0ICWL7PjdVEVWjtygs09i_3LOC/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+23.53.52.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Yes, it's too soon</i></div><br /><div>We had some luck in the semi final when we were drawn against Middlesbrough and Liverpool were left to deal with Jose Mourinho's borderline invincible Chelsea, a team we had little chance of beating. As it was, Rafa Benitez took care of his long time nemesis and we met in the match that was once the highlight of the English season. </div><div><br /></div><div>Truthfully, we should have won - even Alan Hansen was to admit as much in his BBC column - but were denied by the force of nature that is Steven Gerrard. I can't deny the brilliance of the man but I begrudged him that day. He won plenty in his career. This one was ours. </div><div><br /></div><div>Things began brightly when Dean Ashton and Lionel Scaloni combined to force Jamie Carragher into putting through his own net. Ashton followed up with a second shortly after and I admit that I foolishly began to dream. Gerrard, however, was just revving up and he soon set up Djibril Cisse for the first Liverpool goal and then smacked home an equaliser. Boyhood Hammers fan Paul Konchesky then fluked a cross into the net to put us 3-2 ahead and it seemed that he would be the hero of the day until a moment of oft overlooked controversy. </div><div><br /></div><div>In injury time, with West Ham in possession we put the ball out to allow a Liverpool player to receive treatment, but when the ball was thrown back to Scaloni he was immediately pressured by Liverpool players. It's not a huge scandal - it was the last minute after all - but faced with that pressure the Argentine miskicked it aimlessly to the middle of the park. From there the ball was headed out to an exhausted Gerrard who, well you know. </div><div><br /></div><div>Extra time continued in the same vein and despite our evident physical superiority we couldn't snatch the winner we deserved. In a moment of huge pathos, our own brilliant skipper Nigel Reo-Coker headed against the bar and the rebound fell to the injured Marlon Harewood who screwed the ball wide with the goal gaping. On such moments do cup finals hang, and we then took the worst set of fucking penalties in history and that was all she wrote. As a game this should be higher, and as an emotional experience this probably shouldn't be on the list at all. I'll let you decide whether this rating feels right. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">24. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxTjHH5O5Ho" target="_blank">Ipswich Town (a) 2-0 : 2004/05 Play Offs</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Zamora (61, 72))</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Context needed. </div><div><br /></div><div>In 2004 we had powered into the play offs, lost our first leg game at Portman Road and then simply blown Ipswich away in the return leg. This time around we needed a final day victory at Watford to edge out Reading and claim sixth place, and in truth while there is often a narrative around destiny that is attached to teams who finish sixth, we were a nervy bunch heading into the 2005 iteration. </div><div><br /></div><div>In a twist of fate we faced Ipswich again, but this time with the first leg at Upton Park. We blitzed them once more to go two up before collapsing and letting them get away with a slightly undeserved draw. Much of the pre match discussion therefore focused on whether we would crumble as Ipswich had done a year earlier in the second leg - traditionally games that end up being on the insane side of mental. With a younger team featuring Elliot Ward and Anton Ferdinand at centre back, I suppose that wasn't completely crazy but we made a mockery of such fears with a splendid display. Again, Tomas Repka was an unlikely early threat but the real damage was done by Bobby Zamora who scored two second half goals, with the second being a fantastic first time cushioned volley, off an inch perfect through ball from strike partner Marlon Harewood.</div><div><br /></div><div>Actually, both goals were created by Harewood who was in fine form, while Matthew Etherington was sublime and for a second consecutive year we brushed Ipswich aside pretty easily. They must hate us down there. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">23. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8JHVgS6bAA" target="_blank">Blackburn Rovers (h) 3-1 : 2005/06 Premier League</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Sheringham (46), Reo-Coker (62), Etherington (80) - Todd (18))</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Just a few months after that victorious night at Portman Road we were back in the Premier League after a two year absence. These days I think there is an acceptance that the gap between the bottom of the top flight and the top of the Championship is pretty minimal. However, in 2005 we snuck up with a squad of players picked up from other Championship teams and then supplemented them with a number of other largely unproven types like Danny Gabbidon, James Collins and Yossi Benayoun. </div><div><br /></div><div>Over time those fears would be dispelled, and probably should have been dispensed with the minute we saw that Blackburn were captained by Andy Todd, but after we went one down in the first half (to a goal by Todd, naturally) there was a communal sense of nervousness. </div><div><br /></div><div>With the rain falling, and the team kicking towards the Bobby Moore end, there was a general feeling on the air that something special needed to happen. Teddy Sheringham got things going by rolling in an equaliser after Todd turned back into a pumpkin, and then Nigel Reo-Coker smashed home a fabulous second just after an hour. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgff5_SqT2VkMdiB8dmxLOrgY4N1n2MqrBD0YNh0IFI0HmFSg9wSBiH9xchipf6TclwZsbAdsyVEfLdt8JLzCF3KGKATwuUUoRJJudV32EeYqTmAai7XYUk2CJtHI0VhKbhcpqk/s241/Screen+Shot+2021-01-04+at+22.05.13.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="241" data-original-width="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgff5_SqT2VkMdiB8dmxLOrgY4N1n2MqrBD0YNh0IFI0HmFSg9wSBiH9xchipf6TclwZsbAdsyVEfLdt8JLzCF3KGKATwuUUoRJJudV32EeYqTmAai7XYUk2CJtHI0VhKbhcpqk/s0/Screen+Shot+2021-01-04+at+22.05.13.png" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Better than we remember, I think</i></div><div><br /></div>We extended our lead with a late goal from Matthew Etherington and everyone went home feeling pretty good about our newly minted young side, except for Mark Hughes, which just added to the glorious sense of occasion. <br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">22. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXV_SU9sXSo" target="_blank">Chelsea (h) 3-2 : 1996/97 Premier League</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Dicks (55 p), Kitson (68, 90) - Vialli (26), Hughes (87)) </i></div><div><br /></div><div>Upton Park under the lights, man. Was there anywhere better to watch football? Well, yes, when you're watching your team lose to Stoke, but on other nights you'd swear the place was doused in magic. </div><div><br /></div><div>By March 1997 we were slumped in the bottom three and desperately pinning our hopes on the newly arrived strike pairing of John Hartson and Paul Kitson. The squad was a slightly strange mix of the old - Dicks, Potts, Bishop, Dowie, Breacker - and the new - Porfirio, Lampard, Ferdinand, Williamson - and while that may have looked good on paper, it was turning out to be pretty shit on actual grass. </div><div><br /></div><div>This was shaping up to be another typically disappointing night when a Bishop mistake allowed Gianfranco Zola to slip in Gianluca Vialli for an opening goal. This held until the 55th minute when Julian Dicks nearly took the net off when he smashed home the equalising penalty. Not long after, Kitson smartly gave us the lead but we seemed to have blown it when Mark Hughes headed an 87th minute equaliser. Undeterred we went up the other end in injury time and Kitson smuggled in an Iain Dowie header to give us a deserved, and vital, win. </div><div><br /></div><div>I once wrote of Upton Park that as Neil Young said, <i>"when she danced we could really love", </i>and this was one such night. Songs rising up to the roof and then bouncing around the place and seemingly dragging the team forward like an invisible magnetic force. Looking back, Kitson's winner wasn't so much an event at a football match as it was a cosmic certainty. It's not that the London Stadium can't offer up such moments but they seem totally out of place when they arrive. At Upton Park they were constantly hovering just out of sight, permanently imminent like a song you hear in the back of your mind, or a fight in a McDonalds. God, I miss that place. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">21. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGRc-owgAlU" target="_blank">Spurs (h) 1-0 : 2015/16 Premier League</a></span></i></b></div><div><i>(Antonio (7))</i></div><div><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></b></div><div>Some games of football carry a weight. From the day I got up on the March 2, 2016 until the moment the final whistle blew I carried a lead lined blanket on my chest. This was the last time Spurs would visit Upton Park, this was their first chance of going top of the league in March since 1964 and it's not an exaggeration to say that this felt like <b><u>the</u></b> pivotal game in the title race so far. A win was really the only acceptable outcome. </div><div><br /></div><div>We were battling injuries, and indeed finished this game with a back three of Cheikhou Kouyate, a hobbling Angelo Ogbonna and teenager Reece Oxford. It didn't matter, as we dominated from start to finish and totally outplayed a Spurs team who didn't manage a shot in the first half and did nothing to dispel the myth that they tended to bottle the big occasion. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFMMci5kfDqRqBrdy2PxCx3BNoNYdBu2pogij9pvyhtXqvT1-RDkghsnw-VImrQn4dNw0eyxrJvzIqZAvVlGG-ExkkF7b8tjp4JHW9FspYxmNL5OYQ4LafvB-fuRJMSg5dE-62/s934/Screen+Shot+2021-01-04+at+23.11.43.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="703" data-original-width="934" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFMMci5kfDqRqBrdy2PxCx3BNoNYdBu2pogij9pvyhtXqvT1-RDkghsnw-VImrQn4dNw0eyxrJvzIqZAvVlGG-ExkkF7b8tjp4JHW9FspYxmNL5OYQ4LafvB-fuRJMSg5dE-62/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-04+at+23.11.43.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Would I let him drive me home? No, but the man scores big goals</i></div><br /><div>From the moment that Michail Antonio headed in a Dimitri Payet corner in the 7th minute, the away supporters were forced to stand in silence and watch as Slaven Bilic wrung yet another manic performance from his charges. Payet was supreme but so too were Mark Noble and Manuel Lanzini, while the famed Tottenham pressing game foundered repeatedly on a rock solid backline. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's true that when I researched this piece I could have picked about twenty games with Spurs. The really sad truth is that for all the drama and late goals, for Spurs they have generally been winners and for us they've typically been equalisers. But when we've won games, they've really meant something in terms of stopping Spurs. I'd really rather that these matches were about our success rather than their failure but I suppose that's the truth of the era we're currently in. So yeah, fuck it, we derailed their first title bid in years and it was really rather enjoyable. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2019/08/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_6.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (50 - 41)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (40 - 31)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_31.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (20 - 11)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_33.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (10 - 1)</a></div></div><div><br /></div>HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-40367190456317675772021-01-08T02:28:00.004+00:002021-01-08T03:11:20.003+00:00In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (40 - 31)<p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;"> 40. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHF6tJJAbDU" target="_blank">Derby (a) 5-0 : 2007/08 Premier League</a></span></i></b></p><p><i>(Bowyer (42, 59), Etherington (51), Lewis (OG 55), Solano (69))</i></p><p>Any assessment of this game needs to acknowledge that this Derby County side was - quite literally - the worst to have ever played in the Premier League. They won one game all season, mustered just eleven points and generally played with all the natural athleticism and skill of the prison guards in <i>Mean Machine</i>. </p><p>That said, when we played them we had most of the first team out injured because it was November and that's the law, so the context was that Derby were pretty optimistic about beating us that day. As things turned out, they were suitably crap and Alan Curbishley's reserves were well organised enough to take the lead before halftime with a smart Lee Bowyer goal. Thereafter we went mental, scoring four times in twenty four minutes after the interval before everyone agreed that things were getting embarrassing now and we took pity on Derby and declared. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaRrbqNeLIRwkWDRpTpZYCLc1QEP8NMjXvnSzVluL5co4RrCY2bNGntYXe09PrF9hrZvFI_v1OhU-J5wPysN2nIPLwXUjBYhysPS51X3jylKwZUcOY6pVVHHhnNbqfxFuuHaV-/s200/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+13.41.06.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="146" data-original-width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaRrbqNeLIRwkWDRpTpZYCLc1QEP8NMjXvnSzVluL5co4RrCY2bNGntYXe09PrF9hrZvFI_v1OhU-J5wPysN2nIPLwXUjBYhysPS51X3jylKwZUcOY6pVVHHhnNbqfxFuuHaV-/s0/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+13.41.06.png" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><i>The rare, contented Bowyer</i></p><p>Upon reflection this game might be most remarkable as the day we finally saw what we had in Bowyer, whose signing caused such controversy at the time and who never really captured the form that had made him such an electrifying player for Leeds in earlier years. On his day - and this was his day - he was an excellent midfielder. </p><p>As far as away days go, I'm not sure they come much more fun than this. </p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">39. <b><i><a href="https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2016/november/29-november/hammers-famous-cup-win-over-united" target="_blank">Manchester United (h) 4-0 : 2010/11 League Cup</a></i></b></span></p><p><i>(Spector (22, 37), C Cole (56, 66))</i></p><p>Now this was a weird game of football. By early evening most of East London was under snow so my dad and I agreed that given West Ham's state of the art pitch defrosting system consisted mainly of pouring hot water on the lines, we could safely assume the game was off. I went to the pub and was fairly surprised when I found out the game was going ahead, and then absolutely fucking startled when Jonathan Spector scored twice inside 37 minutes to put us two goals up. Carlton Cole added a pair of his own in the second half and in general we absolutely battered the visitors. </p><p>There is no doubt that the Manchester United side was missing most of their stars but it's also true that we fielded such legends as Pablo Barrera, Tal Ben Haim and Radoslav Kovac. Looking back it's not all that hard to understand how we were eventually relegated in last place. </p><p>Still, under the astute tactical guidance of legendary manager Avram Grant, we actually advanced all the way to the semi finals of this competition and were somehow 3-1 up on aggregate with just 31 minutes to go in the second leg, before collapsing and getting knocked out by Birmingham City. </p><p>In the darkness of an exceptionally bad season, this result was a tremendous bright spot. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">38. <a href="https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/1897409" target="_blank">Charlton (a) 4-4 : 2000/01 Premier League</a></span></i></b></p><p><i>(Kitson (3, 30, 64), Defoe (84) - Euell (21, 28), Johansson (51, 90))</i></p><p>It's possible that there has been a worse defensive performance than this in the Premier League but click on the link above and check this one out so you have a baseline, at least. Quite how our back four didn't involve a juggler on a unicycle, a seal balancing a ball on his nose and a real life actual clown remains a bit of a mystery. </p><p>For all that, terrible defending can often lead to fun games and this was no exception. We scored early through Paul Kitson and then stood spraying water out of plastic flowers as Jason Euell scored twice in quick succession. Kitson equalised with the best goal of the night and had to do so again just after the hour once we'd allowed Jonathon Johansson to run unmolested through what we were at that point laughingly calling our back line. </p><p>Glenn Roeder then brought on Jermain Defoe to a chorus of boos as a result of him having left Charlton for us as a kid and he looked to have snatched victory with a fine late volley. Sadly, we couldn't hold on as Johansson scored a last minute overhead kick, despite the best efforts of our defenders on unicycles, to cap one of the most entertaining games in Premier League history. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">37. <a href="https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/1204092" target="_blank">Southampton (h) 3-3 : 1993/94 Premier League</a></span></i></b></p><p><i>(Williamson (11), Allen (62), Monkou (OG 90) - Le Tissier (45, 65 p), Maddison (52))</i></p><p>One of the great unspoken joys of being a football fan is that from time to time you are able to experience opposition players at the height of their powers. The real pleasure is in being able to beat them, of course, but from time to time it's enough to simply luxuriate in their presence on your patch of grass. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4HsR-Jn_Yv9Uod8drkJgi6goh-INtFfUHUmke8OZuZOtHnvPwBihaRxMJBX_2vDuNxBuDWpC5VZb6lqgvO42DXWskZSONvGDE8MeOr9eN4ODInSFbw0j1-6Vy6mfR0L13FTQq/s570/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+15.36.39.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="570" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4HsR-Jn_Yv9Uod8drkJgi6goh-INtFfUHUmke8OZuZOtHnvPwBihaRxMJBX_2vDuNxBuDWpC5VZb6lqgvO42DXWskZSONvGDE8MeOr9eN4ODInSFbw0j1-6Vy6mfR0L13FTQq/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+15.36.39.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Not the sturdiest looking wall I've ever seen</i></div><p>Matthew Le Tissier was one such player. It helped that he played for Southampton and not one of the bigger teams, where he would have inevitably become hated. Instead he stayed on the south coast and spent his career performing miracles to keep a generally limited team in the league. On this afternoon, yet another final day extravaganza, Saints needed points to stay in the division as one of four teams facing the drop, while Upton Park was packed as fans took the chance to say farewell to the old North Bank. In many ways this was the end of a very specific era - this was a farewell to terracing and the English game and welcome to Sky, globalisation and the gradual removal of football from the place it previously existed in our society. </p><p>So we scored early through home debutant Danny Williamson, before Le Tissier began bending the game to his will. He equalised with a sumptuous free kick, and then set up Neil Maddison to head the visitors into a vital lead. As the heavens opened Martin Allen levelled things up before Le Tissier scored his second from the spot. With just seconds remaining and chaos in the ground as fans were again spilling on to the pitch, Ken Monkou headed an own goal to briefly threaten Saints attempt at staying up. </p><p>As it was, their point was enough, and we all got to witness a bravura performance from a giant of the era. It's a rare day when opposition fans truly enjoy an enemy player but I loved watching Le Tissier and I greatly respected the loyalty that tied him to his first club when he could really have gone anywhere. Perhaps that is why he was so widely admired - because at heart he did what all fans would love to have done. He played for his hometown team, become their best ever player, turned down millions elsewhere and retired a legend. For Matt Le Tissier, read every kid in the country. What a player. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">36. <a href="https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2020/april/23-april/watch-again-west-hams-may-2006-win-over-tottenham-hotspur" target="_blank">Spurs (h) 2-1 : 2005/06 Premier League</a></span></i></b></p><p><i>(Fletcher (10), Benayoun (80) - Defoe (35))</i></p><p>More final day drama and this time it is one of the few Premier League games that can be summed up with a single word. And with this being West Ham, that word naturally is...lasagne. </p><p>With Spurs a point ahead of Arsenal heading into the final game of the season, and with us a week away from our first cup final for twenty five years, there was a lot of trepidation heading into this game. As much as it would have been delicious to deny Spurs their first Champions League campaign, most fans were adamant that the first team needed to be rested to avoid inevitable injury. </p><p>In the end, Alan Pardew mixed and matched playing his first choice defence but resting most of his attacking options. The real drama, however, was taking place off the pitch as the Spurs squad was struck down with a dose of food poisoning and spent most of the morning of the match throwing up. Despite their best efforts to get the fixture postponed, the Premier League were having none of it and the game went ahead at the same time as Arsenal were facing Wigan in the last ever match at Highbury. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEMZ2TzQmKnrP-Ij-Zxn-oAJBzP06Nm-7nScigl1DkL_N79SanetU6y4ucZ0SIOnOWMsyiRSfPN_FqtcXwe596-hGAwCXPzh-4VxuScG9p6X9GvfrddfT3OIiip5uTDZpWOp6w/s708/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+16.44.53.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="365" data-original-width="708" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEMZ2TzQmKnrP-Ij-Zxn-oAJBzP06Nm-7nScigl1DkL_N79SanetU6y4ucZ0SIOnOWMsyiRSfPN_FqtcXwe596-hGAwCXPzh-4VxuScG9p6X9GvfrddfT3OIiip5uTDZpWOp6w/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+16.44.53.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Chefs Kiss</i></div><p>We started the brighter, unsurprisingly as most of the Spurs players were on their knees, and Carl Fletcher smashed home the opener after just ten minutes. In truth, Spurs put on a pretty brave display in the circumstances and former Hammer Defoe burgled an equaliser before half time. The second half started with Teddy Sheringham missing a penalty against his former side (notice the difference there?) and continued manically amid the news that Arsenal were somehow contriving to lose to Wigan. </p><p>The universe righted itself, however, and the Gunners were soon in front and then Yossi Benayoun crafted an outstanding winner with just ten minutes to play. He latched on to a back heel from Marlon Harewood - which was hard - drifted past Michael Dawson - which was not - and then lifted the ball into the roof of the net. Cue pandemonium and the possibly apocryphal tale of Arsenal fans singing <i>"Bubbles" </i>at Highbury. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">35. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mowphuUlyo" target="_blank">Blackpool (N) 2-1 : 2011/12 Play Off Final</a></span></i></b></p><p><i>(C Cole (35), Vaz Te (87) - Ince (48))</i></p><p>I debated for a long time about including this game. In some ways it is more a monument to the club's failures than a moment of glory, but I suppose that at times it is worth acknowledging that winning big games at Wembley isn't something that happens every day. </p><p>We found ourselves in the Play Offs courtesy of too many draws over a long campaign, but it's worth acknowledging that Sam Allardyce did a terrific job in taking the wreckage of the Avram Grant era and moulding it into something half decent. Facing us were Blackpool, who had played pretty well all season under Ian Holloway but actually finished eleven points behind us in the league, while we won the two league fixtures against them by an aggregate score of 8-1. It felt like a game we couldn't really lose, whilst also feeling exactly like a game we would lose. </p><p>In truth the match was pretty scrappy, but Carlton Cole scored an excellently crafted goal before half time to give us the lead. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiWTZYQn-7MvW5QpO2msz2gcd4ulE5Xk_WPS3nNuArWWNHpR_tIQX7oIRCzjRmbnm5phyphenhyphenUotLW5rgL36pxacQMU8YEIJhws9F-BO6vdx17clpnzRmeLnO3MLPx7lNNgW6l_kBe/s709/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+17.11.51.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="467" data-original-width="709" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiWTZYQn-7MvW5QpO2msz2gcd4ulE5Xk_WPS3nNuArWWNHpR_tIQX7oIRCzjRmbnm5phyphenhyphenUotLW5rgL36pxacQMU8YEIJhws9F-BO6vdx17clpnzRmeLnO3MLPx7lNNgW6l_kBe/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+17.11.51.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Tom Ince, son of noted Hammers enthusiast Paul, then scored an oddly similar looking equaliser, and when Kevin Nolan thumped a fabulous volley against the bar in the closing stages it felt like extra time was inevitable. As it was, Nolan and Cole combined to set up Ricardo Vaz Te to slam home an 87th minute winner and spark wild scenes in the West Ham end. The play offs are tremendous - now let us never play in another again. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">34. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgcZZQtXJqw" target="_blank">Bolton (a) 3-0 : 1994/95 Premier League</a></span></i></b></p><p><i>(Bishop (46), Cottee (68), Williamson (89))</i></p><p>An esoteric choice perhaps, but a personal favourite. Back in the Nineties it felt to me as though we won away games with the same frequency that bands I liked appeared on Top of the Pops. In the three year period from 1993 - 1996, for example, we played 59 away games and won 11. So those victories became important due to their scarcity and this is one that lives in the memory of the frozen teenage me who watched this from the open terraces next to the supermarket that occupied the corner of Burnden Park. </p><p>Bolton, in truth, were not very good and ended up being relegated after finishing bottom. However, at the point we played them in November we were in our usual bottom half strife and coming off a thumping 4-1 home defeat to Villa. </p><p>However, we exploded into life here as three excellent goals from Ian Bishop, Tony Cottee and Danny Williamson sealed a comprehensive win. The latter, in particular, was an outstanding solo effort whereby Williamson picked up the ball in his own box and ran the length of the pitch before smashing it home with his left foot. Nary a tackle to be seen, of course, but like I said - Bolton were pretty crap. A rare Northern foray where we returned with the points, and to punish us we have not won at Bolton since. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">33. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ijfb2bv4w0" target="_blank">Manchester City (a) 1-0 : 2002/03 Premier League</a></span></i></b></p><p><i>(Kanoute (81))</i></p><p>Hmm. Should any game from this dismal season really be making this list? And if it's going to be any then shouldn't it be the nails-to-the-quick home victory over Chelsea a week later? Perhaps, indeed probably yes, but I've gone for this simply due to the madness around the game. A week earlier we had snatched a 1-0 victory over Middlesbrough, only for manager Glenn Roeder to then be admitted to hospital with a serious blockage to the brain. In addition, I can't quite divorce my recollection of that Chelsea game from the news later that night that Bolton had got a point at Southampton and we were probably going down. </p><p>Into that breach stepped Trevor Brooking as caretaker manager, while alleged club legend Paolo di Canio pondered whether to return from a self imposed strike in Italy to play for the club. First up was a trip to mid table Manchester City, who were a long way from being the Manchester City we know and hate today, but were still much better then us. </p><p>In a tense, end to end affair we eventually snatched a late winner when Don Hutchison hit the post from about four inches out only for the ball to fortuitously rebound to Freddie Kanoute who tapped in the winner from two inches. In the end, it wasn't enough as we famously went down with 42 points and half the England team. But still, for a few minutes in Manchester it seemed we might escape. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">32. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oZ64qafhi4" target="_blank">Blackburn Rovers (h) 2-1 : 2007/08 Premier League</a></span></i></b></p><p><i>(Ashton (39), Sears (81) - Santa Cruz (19))</i></p><p>Much of the Alan Curbishley era was characterised by a kind of stolid nothingness that seemed designed to tempt fans into wishing for something more. And so it was, and I'm not sure we ever really appreciated quite how hard it is to stay in the Premier League without an <i>Eastenders </i>style drama every single season. </p><p>By the time this game rolled around in March 2008, we were firmly stuck in 10th place and never destined to move from it. With Craig Bellamy having moved on, much of the buzz among the fanbase was around the prospective arrival of some young players from the Academy at last. Jack Collison, James Tomkins and Freddie Sears would all debut that season, with the latter causing the greatest excitement with his remarkable goalscoring feats in the youth set up. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEnjphLVFzMn5BJ3shw6RTB3oy3nhPvxrx4VYCIgcJN63wzVassV8fPzrvDCH0TjUMMQLBooMaAYM0aYg415Ltpoleq5VTp2Mzk8CaLPNM1AotOj_LaQumYrS9gbCPEHOxAmHR/s723/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+21.26.57.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="535" data-original-width="723" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEnjphLVFzMn5BJ3shw6RTB3oy3nhPvxrx4VYCIgcJN63wzVassV8fPzrvDCH0TjUMMQLBooMaAYM0aYg415Ltpoleq5VTp2Mzk8CaLPNM1AotOj_LaQumYrS9gbCPEHOxAmHR/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+21.26.57.png" width="320" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><i>A moment - an undeniable moment</i></p><p>At the point we played Rovers we were coming off three consecutive 4-0 defeats to Chelsea, Liverpool and Spurs, and Curbishley was given what I believe I am contractually obliged to refer to as "<i>the dreaded vote of confidence</i>" by the Board. It seems odd to say now but the clamour for the inclusion of Sears was rapidly becoming a crescendo. Fans were demanding that the 18 year old be given his chance. </p><p>However, when Roque Santa Cruz smartly gave the visitors an early lead it looked like Curbishley was on the ropes again before Dean Ashton equalised with a typically excellent goal just before half time. </p><p>The second half was pretty even before Sears entered the fray with a quarter of an hour to go. Within just 6 minutes he ran on to an Ashton backheel and although his shot was saved, the rebound popped up perfectly for him to head in a debut winner. Generally this would be considered an unremarkable, unnoticed game in a typically grey season but on that day, in that moment when the crowd seemed to suck the ball into the net it seemed like substantially more. </p><p>Sears would end up forging a solid career with Ipswich Town, while it was actually Collison and Tomkins who would go on to be excellent Premier League performers, but his debut was an electric lightning bolt across the sky. Anyone who was there will never forget it. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">31. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryAceJnMVmM" target="_blank">Middlesbrough (N) 1-0 : 2005/06 FA Cup </a></span></i></b></p><p><i>(Harewood (78))</i></p><p>I'm not sure exactly what this game is best remembered for. </p><p>Perhaps it was the emotional pre match tribute to the recently deceased John Lyall, when a minutes silence became a stadium wide chant of <i>"Johnny Lyall's claret and blue army". </i>Or maybe it was the moment when goalscorer Marlon Harewood was asked in his post match interview whether he felt West Ham had really only turned up at half time, and he replied by saying <i>"No, we've been here all day"</i>. </p><p>Instead, it's probably true that a largely forgettable game is best remembered for the moment that Dean Ashton headed on a long ball and Harewood controlled it, held off Gareth Southgate and smashed home a glorious winner. Fittingly this game took place at Villa Park, which was famously the site of our last FA Cup semi final twenty five years previously. On that day a Tony Gale red card had ended a glorious cup run, but instead here we prevailed and advanced to a memorable, yet traumatic final with Liverpool. </p><p>The hangover from this cup run continues to this day. It doesn't help that everybody rotates their team for cup games these days and with bigger teams now having such large, strong squads that the gap between us and them is now a canyon. But fans still fixate on this season, and argue that the couple of league places that we sacrificed to have this cup run were completely worth it. And maybe they are right, because there haven't been many better feelings in the last thirty years than watching Marlon Harewood smash that fucker in and send us to a cup final. </p><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2019/08/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_6.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (50 - 41)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_8.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (30 - 21)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_31.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (20 - 11)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_33.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (10 - 1)</a></div>HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-22105878707737190942021-01-08T02:16:00.005+00:002021-01-08T03:10:54.719+00:00In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (50 - 41)<b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">50. <a href="https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2020/may/27-may/50greatestmatches-34-west-ham-united-2-0-cambridge-united">Cambridge United (h) 2-0 : 1992/93 Division 1</a></span></i></b><br />
<i>(Speedie (47), C Allen (90))</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div>In a tremendously on brand turn of events, West Ham voted for the creation of the Premier League and then promptly got relegated before it could begin. So we begin our list of the best games of the Premier League era in the newly created Division 1. Excellent. </div><div><br /></div><div>This was a slightly curious match for me, as I queued for the only time in my life to try and get into the South Bank on the day of its farewell. Perhaps unsurprisingly I was left locked out and ended up following this game through the medium of radio, garbled messages on the Barking Road, crowd noises and quite possibly the TV, but I can't recall exactly. Either way it's one of the few games on here that I didn't see in the flesh. </div><div><br /></div><div>With this being the final day of the season we needed a win to secure our promotion to the Premier League while Cambridge needed a victory to stay up. A nervy first half was helped along by news that promotion rivals Portsmouth were losing to Grimsby and things improved further when David Speedie smashed in a smart opener two minutes after the break. This was a particularly weird plot twist as Speedie may well be the most hated West Ham player of my lifetime. </div><div><br /></div><div>A nervy half would follow as Portsmouth took the lead in their game, and Cambridge had a goal narrowly ruled out for offside, but Ian Bishop and Julian Dicks combined to set up Clive Allen for a last minute tap in. By this point the stands were overflowing to the point that fans were simply standing on the touchline and a pitch invasion soon followed. Never has so much Bukta been seen in one place. </div><div><br /></div><div>
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<b><i>49. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BbRzB0WI-s" target="_blank">Sheffield Wednesday (h) 4-3 : 1999/00 Premier League</a></i></b></span><br />
<i>(Wanchope (28), Di Canio (62 p), Foe (70), Lampard (76) - Rudi (38), Jonk (48), Booth (66))</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>When talking about Upton Park on a recent commentary, Gary Neville described it as having a "touch of madness" about it. By the end of the twentieth century, Harry Redknapp had built a team which epitomised this as he seemed to view defending as a sort of optional extra and in 1998/99 fashioned a team which somehow finished fifth in the league with a negative goal difference. That laissez faire approach to defensive organisation tended to lead to thumping away defeats but a succession of utterly crazy home games where no deficit seemed too great to overcome. </div><div><br /></div><div>In November 1999, we saw one such barnburner as bottom of the league Sheffield Wednesday rolled into town to face their hated old boy Paolo di Canio, and after 66 minutes were 3-2 up following a fantastic thumping header from Andy Booth. Shortly after, Danny Sonner was sent off for fouling di Canio and within six minutes two goals from Marc Viven-Foe and Frank Lampard had sealed a bonkers win. Wednesday would end up being relegated, which sort of seems fitting if you are so bad that you let Foe score against you. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfMWLtfbj_1Q7FtkUt0Fm6oAGx7BhSIvIxJGXZ_eGkBeD2ifHpTa_3mKvzoC4F29ATouiOGeL20rAk2s1QW0D-A9aeJ1Gt3Ypvdf0yEew23dK4aHVFPT28uKHpngN89wMN33fU/s776/Screen+Shot+2021-01-02+at+22.30.53.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="559" data-original-width="776" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfMWLtfbj_1Q7FtkUt0Fm6oAGx7BhSIvIxJGXZ_eGkBeD2ifHpTa_3mKvzoC4F29ATouiOGeL20rAk2s1QW0D-A9aeJ1Gt3Ypvdf0yEew23dK4aHVFPT28uKHpngN89wMN33fU/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-02+at+22.30.53.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>These two people do not look like they should be playing a professional sport against each other</i></div><div><br /></div><div>
<b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">48. <a href="https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2020/may/20-may/50greatestmatches-41-west-ham-united-3-1-wolverhampton-wanderers" target="_blank">Wolverhampton Wanderers (h) 3-1 : 1992/93 Division 1</a></span></i></b><br />
<i>(Morley (58), Dicks (63 p), Holmes (87) - Bull (57))</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Sometimes games of football are not about football. In March 1993 Bobby Moore passed away and for the first time in my life I saw collective grief. I still vividly recall the sight of the Upton Park gates being draped with flowers and scarves of all teams, and the pindrop minutes silence before the game as the players gathered around a floral number 6 in the middle of the pitch. This felt like less of a football match and more a kind of communal memorial wake. </div><div><br /></div><div>We fell behind to a fabulous goal from Steve Bull, before Trevor Morley equalised almost immediately with a goal that featured Julian Dicks decapitating a man in the buildup. Dicks briefly stopped the Highlander imitations to howitzer home a penalty to give us the lead, before Matt Holmes finished things off with a neatly taken third. I rarely believe in destiny but there are certain games that football teams simply are preordained to win, and this was one.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_srb2LIivria5Ui80wyWKfD7c9PHM9sFkJxdYGCCt5nwr6vBegvJJtAG6LOM_Y0h04kbmkeQWsPpzm6BwHJYE4eJBBiGuPX46W2T5DyXme10IrvC1ppgXltCNGL0Xiowgqmt/s706/Screen+Shot+2021-01-02+at+22.43.36.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="373" data-original-width="706" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_srb2LIivria5Ui80wyWKfD7c9PHM9sFkJxdYGCCt5nwr6vBegvJJtAG6LOM_Y0h04kbmkeQWsPpzm6BwHJYE4eJBBiGuPX46W2T5DyXme10IrvC1ppgXltCNGL0Xiowgqmt/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-02+at+22.43.36.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>I think the general tone around Moore has become increasingly mawkish and sentimental but in 1993 there was a genuine and tangible sense of sadness that engulfed the ground that day. It was a fitting way to say goodbye. </div><div><br />
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<b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">47. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLT6cxVcnPY" target="_blank">Spurs (h) 2-1 : 1998/99 Premier League</a></span></i></b><br />
<i>(Sinclair (39, 46) - Armstrong (72))</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>The first of a number of games against Spurs, although there is an argument that this shouldn't make the cut given the utter mediocrity of late 90's Tottenham sides. However, the importance of this result was that it saw us go second in the table as we moved into December. We would promptly drop to sixth by losing 4-0 at Leeds a week later but that's both beside and exactly the point. This was an unusually upwardly mobile side, filled with all the inconsistency of a West Ham Nineties team. </div><div><br /></div><div>This match was highlighted by brilliant performances from Eyal Berkovic, who ran rings around a pedestrian Spurs midfield, and Trevor Sinclair who bagged both goals to win the game. The second, in particular, was a fantastic outside of the foot finish as he ran on to an inch perfect through ball from Paul Kitson. </div><div><br /></div><div>We may roll our eyes at the continuous playground taunts from our North London friends about these games being our cup finals, but we can't ignore that they just carry a bit more weight than the average London derby. This period marked possibly the only extended time in my fandom where we were clearly better than Spurs. </div><div><br /></div><div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">46. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIW4QeHwNnY" target="_blank">Manchester United (h) 1-1 : 1994/95 Premier League</a></span></i></b><br />
<i>(Hughes (31) - McClair (52))</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>This might well be in the top ten most famous games in Premier League history, but I can't quite bring myself to place it higher given the relative lack of meaning for us. I'd rather celebrate achievements of our own than the failure of others. Still, this was one of those games to tell the grandkids that well, yes, you were there. </div><div><br /></div><div>With this being the final game of the season, we went into the match safe from relegation whereas Manchester United needed to win in order to try and snatch the title from Blackburn Rovers. We took a deserved first half lead through a smart Michael Hughes finish, after which things descended into an hourlong attack versus defence exercise which primarily involved Andy Cole wasting gilt edged chances as Ludek Miklosko had the game of his life. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfHMoL73kubdlFTFi5jT6HLgrAXN3Ox9d0Mmz2l_QR_bWGdjY1xJTX7N6gUI9tfg44QJgyFckYD-mO1AnEsRL3Yf5UF-Kofj2QWqGu_8cRHJjjda06D7WT0hM6gdrCn5O5kCji/s595/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+10.21.36.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="561" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfHMoL73kubdlFTFi5jT6HLgrAXN3Ox9d0Mmz2l_QR_bWGdjY1xJTX7N6gUI9tfg44QJgyFckYD-mO1AnEsRL3Yf5UF-Kofj2QWqGu_8cRHJjjda06D7WT0hM6gdrCn5O5kCji/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+10.21.36.png" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Paul Ince in a Manchester United shirt!</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Brian McClair equalised in the second half but we held on, which was just as well for Blackburn as they had fluffed their lines totally at Anfield and lost 2-1. In the end, a win would have been enough for Alex Ferguson but for the second time in quick succession he was denied at Upton Park, and our reputation as a bellwether away fixture for potential champions was cemented. </div><div><br /></div><div>This also had the added effect of denying a league title to hated former player Paul Ince, and cementing one for the popular alumni Tony Gale, which was a nice moment if you are into such things. Which we all undeniably are. </div><div>
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i>
<b><i>45. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWKSR7g2JlQ" target="_blank">Reading (a) 3-0 : 2007/08 Premier League</a></i></b></span><br />
<i>(Bellamy (6), Etherington (49, 90))</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>One of our more curious rivalries that has sprung up in recent years is the one we have with Reading. It stems back to the time we poached Alan Pardew from them, continued as we edged them out of the 2004-05 playoffs, went on through their 6-0 drubbing of us in the dreadful 2006-07 season and then back into the Championship when Jack Collison made himself something of a hero by clobbering Jimmy Kebe after the latter started showboating on yet another a typically dire away day at the Madjeski. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the midst of all that came a simultaneous moment of redemption and a glimpse into a future we would never have. Alan Curbishley presided over that 6-0 defeat on New Years Day 2007 and thus will have taken great pleasure in this thumping win just eight months later. </div><div><br /></div><div>For the first time, Craig Bellamy started a game alongside Dean Ashton, and the two were soon causing Reading all sorts of problems. Bellamy opened the scoring after just six minutes, and then combined to set up Matthew Etherington for the first of two excellent goals just a minute into the second half. That dream strike pairing looked tremendous and for the first time in years, fans began to ponder what a really good team might look like. Naturally they would start just one more game together before Ashton was lost to injury and Bellamy had agitated his way to Manchester City. But for one glorious afternoon at the Madjeski, we had something to dream on. </div><div><br />
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<b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">44. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZovbdfmjFs" target="_blank">Blackburn (h) 2-0 : 1994/95 Premier League</a></span></i></b><br />
<i>(Rieper (50), Hutchison (83))</i><br />
<br />Just weeks before denying Manchester United the title, we had chucked a similar spanner in the works of Blackburn Rovers who visited us with an 8 point lead over Manchester United and the title seemingly sewn up. By contrast we were in the bottom four, which was material as this was the season that four teams were to be relegated in order to reduce the Premier League to twenty. </div><div><br /></div><div>Although we were unbeaten in six, the congested table and a lack of wins was causing great consternation, particularly with Blackburn, Liverpool and Manchester United still to play. As it was we turned in a fabulous performance and deservedly beat the champions elect. The first goal came from Marc Rieper, recipient of one of my favourite Harry Redknapp quotes ("<i>He's 6"4, speaks perfect English and looks like Superman. We all hate him</i>"), and the game was wrapped up with a late Don Hutchison winner. In between we kept the famous SAS partnership of Shearer and Sutton in check, and made the title race interesting again. Not a bad days work. </div><div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />
<b><i>43. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doyo5Oz54_I" target="_blank">Southampton (h) 2-1 : 1996/97 Premier League</a></i></b></span><br />
<i>(Hughes (73), Dicks (81p) - Heaney (19))</i><br />
<br />Our 1996/97 season was, by anyone's standards, bonkers. We began with a forward line of Steve Jones and Iain Dowie, cycled through Tony Cottee and Mike Newell, briefly flirted with Florin Raducioiu and Paulo Futre before desperately bringing in John Hartson and Paul Kitson to save the season in February.</div><div><br /></div><div>And while the campaign is probably best remembered for a typical late season surge to avoid relegation, there was also this insane early season game which might be one of the most purely entertaining matches seen at Upton Park in the twentieth century. </div><div><br /></div><div>By August we were something of an oddity in the Premier League as we dabbled with bringing in large numbers of overseas players and briefly earned the nickname of the West Ham United Nations before bigger clubs began to do the same. Against an all British XI from Southampton - albeit one featuring the brilliant Matthew Le Tissier - we turned in a barmy performance that involved us going a goal behind and then simply throwing on attackers until we eventually snatched a late win through Michael Hughes and a Julian Dicks penalty. Francis Benali then added a nicely stereotypical red card to proceedings by attempting to murder Futre in the dying minutes. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEiAv42fv7Ug_f5Nd8xWJ8bP35G0JKjFUDghqVGVsJ3gAh1CfL2lyBjAhGXnS-jXUr-XgN4K3Q_VgOTv9mD-tXGEXrWrsLocsJ1oO81ASzou_u_s9tbcT4hADz2fYRkfJ3QMWC/s641/Screen+Shot+2021-01-08+at+02.13.20.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="641" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEiAv42fv7Ug_f5Nd8xWJ8bP35G0JKjFUDghqVGVsJ3gAh1CfL2lyBjAhGXnS-jXUr-XgN4K3Q_VgOTv9mD-tXGEXrWrsLocsJ1oO81ASzou_u_s9tbcT4hADz2fYRkfJ3QMWC/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-08+at+02.13.20.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Famous West Ham No 10 Paulo Futre</i></div><div><br /></div><div>The highlight of the day was unquestionably seeing Futre briefly conjuring memories of his former self, a brilliant player who joined us far too late in his career to ever be much more than a ghost of the artisan who had graced Europe priorly. By the end of this game we essentially had a two man midfield of Hughes and Danny Williamson, with a forward line of Futre, Ilie Dumitrescu, Florin Raducioiu and Iain Dowie. Can't imagine how we ended up in a relegation battle. </div><div><br /></div><div>I've linked to the full, albeit grainy, Match of the Day recap for this one. It's well worth eight minutes of your time.<br /><br />
<b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">42. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YllnytRA_o" target="_blank">Manchester City (N) 0-3 : 2018/19 Women's FA Cup Final</a></span></i></b><br /><i>( - Walsh (52), Stanway (81), Hemp (88))</i><br /><br />Sometimes you can win while losing. Not often, but sometimes. This was one such occurrence as the newly professional West Ham Women made a remarkable run to the FA Cup final, before bravely falling to the better funded, better paid and, well, just better Manchester City. </div><div><br /></div><div>This should have been the best attended Women's FA Cup Final in history, with two Premier League clubs and one based in London but the FA ended those hopes by scheduling the game on the same Saturday as a full slate of Premier League games. With the the men at home to Southampton, and the Premier League refusing to rearrange the kick off time, the game attracted "only" 43,264 which was a pretty good effort in the circumstances, but a terribly missed opportunity as 50,000 potential fans went to the London Stadium instead of this game. It bemuses me that the authorities still seem to believe that the key to the success of the professional women's game is attracting new fans rather than trying to build on the back of established fanbases. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLJNI_rcUtEoD50_KvKnKDyiVIQmitJh4NoU2OEim476epxkZEJR6iAtuMnh5iE9PIoww5m-H5TV1DlfL5gVAIeJa9XQEnaaY1EQw5-JUELMuMaFMYGFVtv4Z-lou4m_k1m3lg/s630/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+12.15.25.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="630" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLJNI_rcUtEoD50_KvKnKDyiVIQmitJh4NoU2OEim476epxkZEJR6iAtuMnh5iE9PIoww5m-H5TV1DlfL5gVAIeJa9XQEnaaY1EQw5-JUELMuMaFMYGFVtv4Z-lou4m_k1m3lg/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+12.15.25.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>West Ham actually had the better of the first half as their psychopathic work rate restricted City admirably, and indeed they should have taken the lead but Jane Ross was denied by a smart save from Karen Bardsley with a point blank header. They faded badly in the second half, however, although conceding two in the last nine minutes put an unfairly one sided slant to the result. </div><div><br /></div><div>But, in the wider scheme of things, this wasn't so much about the outcome but the simple fact that women were able to represent West Ham at Wembley. After decades of male oppression, to hear "<i>Bubbles</i>" ring around the national stadium while eleven women wore our colours with distinction felt like a seismic moment. To have been able to witness it with my daughter made it even more special. Watching players like Claire Rafferty, Adriana Leon, Kate Longhurst and Gilly Rafferty run themselves into the ground for our club - her club - was something worth waiting a long time to see. </div><div><br /></div><div><i><br /></i>
<b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">41. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTgXcoct_pA" target="_blank">Leicester (h) 4-3 : 1997/98 Premier League</a></span></i></b><br />
<i>(Lampard (15), Abou (31, 74), Sinclair (65) - Cottee (59, 83), Heskey (66))</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>I don't think it's all that much of a surprise that a large number of these games take place on the final day of the season, when our tremendously "<i>ahfuckit</i>" approach to defending really comes into its own. </div><div><br /></div><div>This was an absurd game, that could as easily have taken place on a school playground as a Premier League pitch. Both teams entered the day with an outside shot at qualifying for Europe which was a pretty good achievement as we couldn't even get a sponsor in those days. </div><div><br /></div><div>We raced out into a two goal lead with excellent strikes from Frank Lampard and Samassi Abou, before Tony Cottee dragged Leicester back into it with a smart finish. Trevor Sinclair and Emile Heskey then exchanged goals before Abou seemingly sealed it with another fine finish. However, Cottee popped up with another late strike to leave us all squirming for the final ten minutes as Leicester employed a Rush Goalie and we tried out the hitherto alien concept of trying to stop them scoring. </div><div><br /></div><div>We finished the season in eighth position, albeit we should really have finished higher but for a disastrous end to the campaign, which saw us win just two of our final eight fixtures. Looking back I don't think we ever really got over the disappointment of losing two cup quarter finals to Arsenal in the same season, including an FA Cup penalty shoot out that was apparently scripted by Morrisey. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (40 - 31)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_8.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (30 - 21)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_31.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (20 - 11)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_33.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (10 - 1)</a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-36140256381295592712021-01-08T02:06:00.007+00:002021-01-08T03:10:32.971+00:00In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"And now there are no games</i><br />
<i>To only pass the time" - </i><br />
The Byrds<i> - "</i><i>Going Back" </i>
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A couple of years ago I attempted to rank the <a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers.html">best 50 West Ham players of all time</a>, and ended up in more arguments about Yossi Benayoun than I expected. With that task behind me I decided that the time was ripe to spend my lockdown summer pondering the best matches I've seen as a West Ham fan. And yes, I'm aware it's now 2021 but you know that my favourite speed, much like Mark Noble these days, is "glacial". </div>
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Before I start, an important caveat - I restricted myself to the Premier League era. I didn't do this for any particular reason other than that I had to draw a line somewhere, as the previous list taught me that trying to assess players and matches you've never seen is tremendously difficult. So I decided to limit myself to the period from 1992 until now. It doesn't make a huge amount of sense, and precludes me from including Eintracht Frankfurt, Dinamo Tbilisi, many of our various trips to Wembley over the years, or my own favourite match - the 1991 FA Cup semi final against Nottingham Forest. But there you go. </div>
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So, before I launch into this list I should explain a little about my criteria. "<i>Best</i>" is a subjective, almost meaningless term in this sense. Some of my favourite games have been draws, and objectively some of the best games we've been involved in have been defeats. No impartial assessment of this period would exclude the pulsating 4-3 home defeat to Spurs in 2007, for example, which is one of the benefits of not being impartial as it'll be a cold day in North London before I include that game. </div><div style="text-align: start;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: start;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaUuDjTCoF5poF6sIU88V7mBdMh_ew2Dcs6fRjPm8GVOVMTcl_rsTVUIrt12f7tCvzHlsrnsjHhYhPGP-UQFZgCGf24OnSKltnrT6d25nJhYPLKmjr5v1QSHlOotUufyYOftGu/s660/Screen+Shot+2021-01-04+at+00.26.26.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="660" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaUuDjTCoF5poF6sIU88V7mBdMh_ew2Dcs6fRjPm8GVOVMTcl_rsTVUIrt12f7tCvzHlsrnsjHhYhPGP-UQFZgCGf24OnSKltnrT6d25nJhYPLKmjr5v1QSHlOotUufyYOftGu/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-01-04+at+00.26.26.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>This one makes it, mind you</i></div>
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The list is thus an illogical, emotional trip that characterises "best" in any number of ways. Upon reflection it seems I have a predilection for games where we were underdogs, and thus there are multiple matches against the biggest teams of the time. Others make it for their wider significance, some make it because the game itself was thrilling, and then there are those that just had....<i>something </i>special about them. </div>
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I have tried to steer clear of choosing games due to personal milestones. I met my wife as West Ham were winning 3-2 at Chelsea in 2002, for instance, but that's not the reason it makes the list. Likewise, I haven't included our 2-1 win at Watford in 2000 despite the fact it coincided with me seeing a West Ham fan pick up a six foot advertising board from outside a pub and throw it through a window on the other side of the street in a frankly demonic show of strength. As such, it's quite likely that there are games missing from this list which probably ought to be there. I'm fine with that, not least because I am fairly certain that this list would be different if I did it again tomorrow. That's certainly how the list of our best players ended up. </div><div style="text-align: start;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: start;">So, please, dive in and enjoy a nostalgic trip down Green Street and feel free to let me know where I went wrong in the comments.</div><div style="text-align: start;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: start;"><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2019/08/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_6.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (50 - 41)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (40 - 31)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_8.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (30 - 21)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_31.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (20 - 11)</a></div><div><a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-retro-50-best-west-ham-games-of_33.html">In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (10 - 1)</a></div></div>
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HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-43808521271198399602019-12-29T20:56:00.002+00:002019-12-30T16:41:37.713+00:00The Slow, Dissolving Dream<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"What's left for you and me?</i></div>
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<i>I ask that question rhetorically"</i></div>
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<i>- </i>Alvvays<i>, "In Undertow"</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpO6JZp7HEWabNMPK-KFcjOAxgs-sK455pY03lSFaWwgQk741Ka9rlnQSPgqnbtrIu0EGY_V28a3BzVXF0PqQscwA0Kplw9gtPYxqeKTXycmyLhiXxKmkkc573C3DjW2ElDgXd/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-11-23+at+19.10.07.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="383" data-original-width="681" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpO6JZp7HEWabNMPK-KFcjOAxgs-sK455pY03lSFaWwgQk741Ka9rlnQSPgqnbtrIu0EGY_V28a3BzVXF0PqQscwA0Kplw9gtPYxqeKTXycmyLhiXxKmkkc573C3DjW2ElDgXd/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-11-23+at+19.10.07.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>McNulty!</i></div>
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The West Ham board have been doing stupid things. It's The H List bat signal.<br />
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I am, I suspect, quite a long way behind the rest of you, but I have stumbled upon something that has rather simplified my life. Much like the brilliant, multi faceted Showtime drama <i>"The Affair", </i>this required alternate viewpoints and an ability to stop seeing only one side of the story, but after a decade of smashing my head fruitlessly against the wall of Sullivanism I have finally seen the light.<br />
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For those of you who have read The H List for a while, you will know that I have spent years battling against the way West Ham has been run. Why, I pondered, would a football club that has ambitions to break into the Champions League be managed this way? What logic was driving the baffling sequence of decisions that have been the hallmark of this decade of ownership? What, assuming you weren't a blackmail victim, would convince you that signing Carlos Sanchez was a good idea?<br />
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My repeated conclusion has been fairly straightforward; the people in charge of West Ham don't know what they are doing.<br />
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And, in fairness, the results have tended to back that up.<br />
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But after a while, I began to slightly question my logic. People do not tend to make billions while being idiots. They are certainly capable of poor decisions, but they aren't generally stupid. Now, there is the wrinkle that our owners made their fortunes in an unusual way. The requirements of making lots of money from porn are not exactly the same as those in manufacturing or finance. Sullivan and Gold didn't need a genius design, or fossil fuels or a whizz bang trading algorithim or anything unique like that. No, they simply needed to be prepared to operate in a murkier part of society than others had been prepared to do before them. They needed sharp elbows, a different take than wider society on sex, and a willingness to flirt with the laws of the day. I make no judgement about any of that, but it's also true that once they had that cash they then stuck most of into property and let market forces do the rest.<br />
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So those skills don't really translate to running a wider, more traditional business. Filming and selling hardcore pornography doesn't require business acumen so much as having a different view on prurience to the vast majority of the country. </div>
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And so here we are in 2019 with West Ham having lost more Premier Leagues matches this decade than anyone else, and the club is still run and operated in exactly the same way it has been since Gold and Sullivan arrived in January 2010. And the club have duly finished the decade exactly where they started it - 17th in the Premier League, facing relegation and with no discernible plan for the future.<br />
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So with that in mind I just couldn't see the point of writing this column any more. How many ways can you say the same thing before it ceases to have any meaning?<br />
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Of course, following West Ham in the Olympic Stadium era has been an even more frustrating experience than any of us could have imagined. Rather than catapulting the club on to greater heights, it has instead become a test of strength. How much do you <i>really </i>love West Ham? Enough to give up the vast majority of the things you used to enjoy about football to continue watching them? Do you want to watch the same shit football but just from further away? Well, unbuckle and despise the ride because that's what you're doing.<br />
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And so my analysis of the club's owners still seemed pretty sound; they don't know what they're doing. I'm right, aren't I? Consider the league finishes of the club under the ownership of Terry Brown and then under David Sullivan:<br />
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<tr class="tableizer-firstrow"><th>Terry Brown</th><th>Finish</th><th>David Sullivan</th><th>Finish</th></tr>
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<tr><td>1992-93</td><td>2nd (Div 1)</td><td>2009-10</td><td>17th</td></tr>
<tr><td>1993-94</td><td>13th</td><td>2010-11</td><td>20th (Relegated)</td></tr>
<tr><td>1994-95</td><td>14th</td><td>2011-12</td><td>3rd (Championship)</td></tr>
<tr><td>1995-96</td><td>10th</td><td>2012-13</td><td>10th</td></tr>
<tr><td>1996-97</td><td>14th</td><td>2013-14</td><td>13th</td></tr>
<tr><td>1997-98</td><td>8th</td><td>2014-15</td><td>12th</td></tr>
<tr><td>1998-99</td><td>5th</td><td>2015-16</td><td>7th</td></tr>
<tr><td>1999-00</td><td>9th</td><td>2016-17</td><td>11th</td></tr>
<tr><td>2000-01</td><td>15th</td><td>2017-18</td><td>13th</td></tr>
<tr><td>2001-02</td><td>7th</td><td>2018-19</td><td>10th</td></tr>
<tr><td>2002-03</td><td>18th (Relegated)</td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>2003-04</td><td>4th (Championship)</td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>2004-05</td><td>6th (Championship)</td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>2005-06</td><td>9th</td><td></td><td></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Five of the top six West Ham Premier League finishes happened under Terry Brown. So yeah, how good can you really be when you're demonstrably worse than a caravan park owner who thought we once got relegated because it was our turn. I say again (and again and again) - they don't know what they're doing.<br />
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Right?<br />
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But that just didn't sit easily with me. Wealthy people aren't always smart, and smart people aren't always wealthy, but unless you inherit your money the truth is that billionaires are likely to be smarter than the average bear.<br />
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So, what if my analysis was fine, but I was simply asking the wrong question?<br />
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<i>"Why do they keep failing?" </i>is a perfectly reasonable question to ask, and <i>"because they don't know what they're doing" </i>is a very reasonable answer. But then I was hit by a notion not unlike Morrissey's double decker bus...<br />
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What if they're not failing?<br />
What if this is fine?<br />
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<b style="text-align: center;"><u>What if the things that you want for West Ham are not the same as the owners?</u></b><br />
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And that, my friends, was when it all began to make a lot more sense. We had made the mistake of assuming that success for them was the same as success for us. And with every misplaced pass, every abysmal signing and every short term bodge job it came became ever more clear that this was simply not the case.<br />
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<i>"I thought it started as a daydream</i></div>
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<i>But I'm not dreaming anymore"</i></div>
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<i>- </i>Mattiel,<i> "Keep the Change"</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnQ7-eTt58HFY4ecH3A19g8_c3ijH3UiCMaS1HNgUcA6rAokBPmNLPm5D0hvODc6VlwqQsr-gzReKMyNA-x2HUUdOCtxQ5yDh1bqwZYMLjME7EPmKVv4jAqkivDV36y045Xosf/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-12-27+at+17.04.10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="462" data-original-width="644" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnQ7-eTt58HFY4ecH3A19g8_c3ijH3UiCMaS1HNgUcA6rAokBPmNLPm5D0hvODc6VlwqQsr-gzReKMyNA-x2HUUdOCtxQ5yDh1bqwZYMLjME7EPmKVv4jAqkivDV36y045Xosf/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-12-27+at+17.04.10.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Same</i></div>
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Firstly, I want you to click on <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/27/business/manchester-city-silver-lake/index.html" target="_blank">this link</a> and read the attached story, for it is key to everything I am about to posit.<br />
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For those of you with the work rate of a West Ham wide player, let me summarise. This link tells the story of how investment firm Silver Lake recently purchased a 10% stake in Manchester City's parent company for $500m. For those paying attention at the back, that values Manchester City at a cool $5bn. Now, this might seem as relevant to West Ham as the stock price of Waitrose to your local second hand car dealership, but sadly it's not.<br />
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Booming valuations of sports franchises have a knock on effect, and an astronomical valuation like this has the consequence of helping to raise the price of teams like West Ham. It matters not that City are run by an oil rich state and we are being run into the ground by snake oil salesmen - we occupy broadly the same real estate and that is all that matters. Call it trickle down economics, or call it a symbol of how fucked up the world is, but you can probably value West Ham somewhere around $500m nowadays assuming - <b>and this is the kicker </b>- that they remain a Premier League club.<br />
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And thus I began to view West Ham a little differently.<br />
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Us fans may pore over u23 score lines, scout Belgian central midfielders on YouTube and look longingly to the Bundesliga for a sexy young saviour, but the sad truth is that none of that matters. West Ham is not a club with aspirations about floating - West Ham is a club determined not to drown.<br />
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Now let me be clear about what I mean by this because I think this could be prettily easily construed as me suggesting that the owners are asset strippers or uninterested leeches, and I don't think that's really true. I believe that David Sullivan and David Gold would like West Ham to be successful, and I can even allow myself to be convinced that as supporters they feel the highs and lows just as we do. </div>
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But their primary driver is simple; <a href="https://www.cityam.com/revealed-west-ham-owners-free-cash-olympic-stadium-deal/" target="_blank">in summer 2021 the club can be sold without any of the proceeds needing to be repaid to the public purse.</a> (*) Assuming that West Ham are still a Premier League club at that point and that $500m valuation holds, then Sullivan and Gold will be free to sell up and bank the kind of profit that one does not usually see when you flog an asset based in a leased building, constructed to last a fortnight.</div>
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So while I accept there is a nice spot in the Venn diagram where the things we want overlap with the owners, we can stop kidding ourselves about the wider dream. We aren't going to see <a href="https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/new-pictures-show-progress-new-3202993" target="_blank">£100m plans for training facilities</a> or substantial investment in a new scouting and analytics set up, or a tonne of money being thrown at the women's team, because these things just cost money and depress the amount of the money the owners will trouser in a sale. You don't stick long term expenditure projects on a balance sheet when you're preparing to sell up. </div>
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I don't doubt for a moment that the owners would like West Ham to be successful but that is a secondary consideration to avoiding relegation. Champions League football would be a wonderful boon to the valuation of the club, but it's a very long shot. As such, you are seeing a football club run more to avoid finishing 18th rather than with the intention of finishing 6th. And I have found that once I started viewing things through that prism, it all made a lot more sense.<br />
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Sullivan has always been prepared to spend money - and let me be clear here when I say that this is primarily because it's the clubs money and not his - but there has been a distinct lack of any kind of cohesive plan in any of it. Think of the endless words written on this site crying out for strategy, forward thinking purchases, better facilities, investment in the marginal things that might eke out the odd point here and there and then remember that the club is valued the same whether we finish 14th or 9th.<br />
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It's not that they don't care - they just don't care about what we care about.<br />
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<i>"Anybody with a worried mind, could never forgive the sight</i><br />
<i>Of wicked snakes inside a place, you thought was dignified"</i><br />
<i>- </i>Vampire Weekend<i>, "Harmony Hall"</i></div>
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<i>Just a fabulous group of people</i></div>
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I suspect a decent number of you are wondering what took me so long. This is all probably fairly obvious stuff. </div>
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Perhaps I always realised this too but never wanted to admit it to myself. But let's be clear, the realisation that your football club <i>isn't primarily concerned with winning football games</i> is actually quite a hard thing to type in black and white. </div>
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It is the end of the slow, dissolving dream that moving to Stratford was done to enhance the fortunes of the club, and instead is the realisation of a long gestating nightmare that the club can sit and fester until a buyer can be found who has the cash and wherewithal to try and do anything other than just exist. </div>
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You see, all of those articles and those conversations and arguments about who to buy and sell were all had in good faith. They were all held by fans assuming that the owners were wanting the same thing as them. And while I don't doubt that Jack Sullivan really does love West Ham, and that David Gold would really like us to beat Palace instead of allowing Jordan Fucking Ayew to waltz through our defence, they have a hundred million reasons not to demand change.</div>
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The visit of Leicester was, in many ways, the perfect send off to this decade for West Ham. Here is a club who have climbed through the divisions, won the league, made a Champions League quarter final, weathered the death of their owner and most recently sold their best player for £80m while replacing him with a home grown kid <i>and</i> simultaneously improving their squad. They have plans for a monumental training ground and can attract top managers because it is seen as a premier place to work. They are, by any definition the antithesis of West Ham.</div>
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The owner of StatsBomb wrote this Twitter thread on Friday and while I broadly agree with him, he really should be using Leicester and not Liverpool to illustrate his point. But the wider issue that he correctly identifies is that the Premier League will leave teams like West Ham behind. We have survived so long because of our relatively higher income, and the general stupidity of those around us. In a couple of years that advantage will be gone, and while we may survive this year the writing is certainly on the wall for the near future. The current iteration of West Ham has the same bright future as the gramophone.</div>
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If the Premier League were like North American sports, there would be a monster analytics revolution in progress right now.<br />
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Teams would look at what Liverpool have done, follow the breadcrumbs of how they have done it, and hoover every smart analytical mind into the sky.</div>
— On an Island (@mixedknuts) <a href="https://twitter.com/mixedknuts/status/1210546048176918529?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
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But I digress.<br />
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So, we play Leicester in the final game of the decade at 5.30 on a Saturday evening. The game isn't televised but kicks off late to allow Westfield shoppers to spend their cash in the daytime. You and me can wait. West Ham were, by pure coincidence, away on Boxing Day once again.<br />
<br />
Our best player is Michail Antonio, who made such an impact when he arrived in 2015 that David Gold was tricked into tweeting a picture of him with a missing persons report. Having settled in, he was then used by the fans favourite manager of the decade - Slaven Bilic - as a right back, and fucked our only chance of ever making the Champions League.<br />
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Years later, he is by some distance the most effective player in a team featuring four £20m+ signings, and without him we look like Destiny's Child sans Beyonce. He starts on the bench here having crashed a £200k Lamborghini into someone's house on Christmas Day, while dressed as a snowman.<br />
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And that, my friends, is pretty much the only three paragraphs you will ever need to explain your support of West Ham to a non believer. </div>
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<i>Not even close to being the biggest car crash of this Christmas</i></div>
<i><br /></i>So Leicester arrive, play their reserves and beat us so comfortably that Manuel Pellegrini just gives up and lets some small children in the seats behind him make the substitutions. The crowning moment came in the second half when Issa Diop produced a piece of defending that looked suspiciously like when I play my kids at FIFA and I press all the wrong buttons and my player does a goal celebration instead of a sliding tackle.<br />
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And after all that, and since the time I started writing this piece, Pellegrini was sacked.<br />
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***</div>
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<i>"Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes</i></div>
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<i>You'd know then what a drag it is to see you"</i></div>
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<i>- </i>Bob Dylan "<i>Positively Fourth Street</i>"</div>
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He will, one assumes, be followed by David Moyes, who ought to have been given greater consideration two summers ago and we will begin the now customary annual bailing of water in the hope of making it through to the summer where we can, ahem, rebuild.<br />
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People will be upset about Moyes and see it as a regressive, uninspired choice without putting the pieces together that this is a regressive, uninspiring club. The team is listless and without direction because the club is too. There is no culture of success or excellence anywhere at West Ham and that is reflected in everything that happens at the club. There is a reason that every interaction with supporters is seen as transactional; there is a reason that kids don't want to go the to Stadium; there is a reason that the Academy doesn't produce good players. The culture is one of abject mediocrity that even hard working, dedicated employees cannot transcend. It hangs over the club like a shroud and is Karren Brady's great bequeathment to us. Not bad for someone who is hardly ever here.<br />
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Managers have to be paid outrageously to come, because they must work within the restrictions laid down by the Board. No long term planning, no vision and nothing to harm the balance sheet. For this privilege Pellegrini took home £8m a year, and it's why I have no sympathy for him. He came back from a retirement in China and changed absolutely nothing about the club. He took that money and shut up about what was needed for West Ham. He deserves nothing and can't piss off soon enough, what with his main achievement being to transform Sebastian Haller from pretty good to Priti Patel.<br />
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And in that vein, why do we think so many of our players clearly don't give a shit about West Ham? What linked Payet, Arnautovic, Diame, Sakho, Hernandez, Carroll et al was that they all fundamentally understood that they were playing for a club with no ambition. And thus, when the chance came for them to better themselves or enrich their fortunes they took it. And I don't blame them one bit. We paid Javier Hernandez more than Harry Kane, but look at what Spurs were able to offer their player. It is no wonder that the team so frequently look like they'd rather be anywhere else than here. After all, so would half the crowd.<br />
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So Moyes will come, and this time he will have more leverage and I suspect that he may wrest a little more control away from Sullivan. I don't have any particular issue with appointing Moyes as he has a vision and some semblance of an idea about how to build a stumbling club. And frankly, who do people think would be better who would realistically come? Frankly the appointment of Moyes or Chris Hughton or Danny Cowley is all a bit moot. Nobody is going to be able to thrive under these circumstances.<br />
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Either way, I think it's likely that Moyes will be paid an eyewatering amount and given a contract up to that magic 2021 date and then everything will be reassessed. Yet more treading water and frantically hoping not to drown, and all the while ensuring that the balance sheet is kept pristine.<br />
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In some ways I don't even really blame Sullivan and Gold for their stance. They have, correctly in my view, decided that success in English football would require an amount of cash and intellectual heft that they do not have. Young players with resale value require scouting, higher transfer fees outlaid on less sure things, and giving up control to others. Sullivan won't do that, and instead prefers to sign the likes of Yarmolenko or Hernandez because he thinks he knows what he is getting for a shorter, controlled period of time. In much the same way as Mike Ashley, the owners are simply sitting in and waiting for someone else to come and make the investment that they cannot.<br />
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But what an impact that is having on the club. This is starting to feel terminal. Everywhere I look there are empty seats and apathy is starting to take the deepest root I have ever seen amongst our support. I still feel there will be one more Burnley incident before the whole thing goes full Wimbledon, but it's not an exaggeration to say that <i>"I just don't care any more"</i> feels like the new refrain from the terraces. Maybe it's me, and a reflection of my own ennui, but I don't think so. Fans aren't stupid and watching a club be transparently run for the benefit of two individuals has poisoned the experience. And that stadium. That fucking stadium.<br />
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My own view is that fans have been extraordinarily patient with these owners, and far too willing to forget old mistakes in the face of a brand new fixture list and a couple of sunny pre season friendlies. But that's a part of the great set of lies we mid-table fans must tell ourselves. We have to pretend that these new signings are the ones, or that the chairman really is trying to produce a younger, faster team even as he extends Pablo Zabaleta's contract, because otherwise what is the point?<br />
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Well, once again we're forced to ask that question - what is the point? Nobody believes in the slow dissolving dream anymore, and we can't go back to what we had before. I don't have the answer but I'm happier now I don't have to try and pretend that the club are trying to win. Moyes is fine because it doesn't matter who they appoint. It's all about drifting and listless nothingness. It's about hanging on until something better comes along. It's the fading and dying of dreams.<br />
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Happy New Year everyone.<br />
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<i>(*) This article contains a link to a City AM piece that incorrectly states that the earliest date at which the club can be sold without a slice going to the public purse is 2021. This date is actually 2023 (thanks to Mark Inskipp on <a href="https://www.kumb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=176208&start=600" target="_blank">KUMB</a> for picking this up). It doesn't change my thoughts about any of the above - it's just a longer period of purgatory for us. </i></div>
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HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-9919738921289342462019-02-15T13:43:00.000+00:002019-02-19T13:57:46.080+00:00An Inconvenient Truth<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Seems like every time you turn around,</i><br />
<i>There's another hard luck story that you're gonna hear"</i><br />
<i>- </i>Bob Dylan<i>, "Black Diamond Bay"</i><br />
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There is an issue that has been vexing West Ham fans this week. It's been bubbling around for a while and finally came to the surface during our rousing 1-1 draw at home to Liverpool. You probably know what I'm talking about...yes, it's the huge issue of away fans sitting in the home end at the London Stadium. Time to dust off the laptop, say I. </div>
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<i>That's not the current club crest, oh wait.</i></div>
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I've followed this topic all week as various forums and social media platforms have been awash with West Ham fans who are <i>extremely </i>upset about this. I keep reading about this great scourge and how we ought to be telling stewards as soon as we see anyone in an opposition hat, and how the club ought to be doing more to stop it. I'm not necessarily opposed to that line of thinking, as I think it is a problem if home fans can't get tickets at the expense of travelling supporters, but I confess I don't see this as being all that troubling considering we struggle to fill the stadium. I've sat in the home stand at opposition grounds to watch West Ham on their travels so I'd be fairly hypocritical if I started objecting to it now. </div>
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But, no! The West Ham online community has spoken and we must have a zero tolerance policy on away fans in the home end. The answer to the question <i>"What number of away fans is acceptable in the home end?" </i>is categorically zero. Remember this number, because I'll return to it. Zero. None. Nil. </div>
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One would be too many. Got it?<br />
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Because West Ham fans are very clear on this point. </div>
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***</div>
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<i>"Another head aches, another heart breaks</i></div>
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<i>I'm so much older than I can take"</i></div>
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<i>- </i>The Killers,<i> "All These Things That I've Done"</i></div>
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As I write this piece, the <a href="https://www.whufc.com/fans/osb/profiles">Official West Ham Supporters Board</a> (OSB) are meeting. You might recognise the name because they were in the news recently when a member of the group, Nik Tucker, resigned from his position after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/feb/01/west-ham-supporters-board-member-resigns-over-controversial-posts-nik-tucker">posting homophobic and anti-Semitic images</a> on his website. I have never met Tucker, or heard of the website, but I've seen the pictures and they don't leave much room for argument.<br />
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Those who know him speak of a man who runs a boxing club, gives his time freely to the community and doesn't practice discrimination. I have no reason to doubt any of that but it rather serves to highlight that decent people can still unwittingly propagate anti Semitism when they aren't attuned to what it actually is.<br />
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None of this would be all that newsworthy were it not for the fact that Tucker had been selected by the club to serve on the OSB. The process for this involved individuals garnering a small number of nominations from fellow season ticket holders, writing a profile of themselves which was then presented on an anonymous basis to a selection panel which may or may not have included some former players. That group then chose the representatives, thus leading to the possibility that Tucker found himself on the board because Carlton Cole didn't do a background check on him - and that, ladies and gentleman, may be the single most West Ham sentence ever typed.<br />
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Also included in the OSB is a guy by the name of Greg Smith, who attended the infamous <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/dec/07/west-ham-under-growing-pressure-to-explain-board-fan-support-for-dfla">Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) march in October last year</a>. I have already written about that <a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/10/and-into-fire.html">here</a> and will return to it later. I continue to find it strange that the club don't consider the use of their image by the DFLA to be a significant problem.<br />
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What is clear is that none of the individuals on the OSB have been elected by supporters, and that the body has been set up because West Ham still refuse to engage with the West Ham United Independent Supporters Association (WHUISA). The latter is an actual democratic group with over 5,000 paying members and a committee who are required to stand for election. They are recognised by, and affiliated to, all relevant supporters groups, and yet West Ham continue to do everything they can to avoid speaking to them.<br />
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The OSB, meanwhile, has members representing such minority groups as BAME, LGBT and disabled fans, which is quite right and also others such as the West Stand, which is quite weird. I have no reason to doubt the good intentions of any of the members, but I am struck by what lengths Karren Brady will go to avoid sitting down with WHUISA and answering questions from people who the fans actually elected to speak on their behalf.<br />
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If you want to hear an explanation of what the OSB are doing then there is a good section <a href="http://playbackmedia.co.uk/podcasts/stop-hammer-time/">here</a> towards the end of the Stop!Hammer Time podcast, where Pride of Irons chair Jim Dolan talks about the good work being done. I applaud the intentions, but disapprove of the gerrymandering.<br />
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Now, at this point you may think that I'm just going over old ground, but where this gets interesting is how this news reached the wider consciousness. Nobody in the West Ham world knew about this until Tucker himself posted about it on his website, where he described his departure as being <i>"by (cough) mutual consent...I suppose I am just one of those dinosaur fans who the club would like to be extinct", </i>which is a strange way of saying sorry.<br />
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This was picked up by Jacob Steinberg of The Guardian, who has been covering the issues between the Hammers board and support for years, and then suddenly it became big news in the West Ham world. At this point; cavear emptor - I consider Steinberg to be a friend, even though we have a thoroughly modern friendship that has only ever involved us meeting once very briefly on a five minute stroll to the stadium for a home game. We have, however, exchanged messages and emails in the past, he has been very supportive of The H List, and I think he has been fearless in highlighting issues within West Ham.<br />
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For the crime of reporting something that the individual had already publicly posted, he was then attacked on Twitter and online. He was described variously as a grass, a Spurs fan, a blood sucking leech, a scumbag, a c*nt and received a number of threats both veiled and overt, and often dripping in anti-Semitism.<br />
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Included in this barrage were comments from well established West Ham social media personalities including Nicky Hawkins of West Ham Fan TV (*), who launched an impassioned defence of Tucker before revealing that he hadn't actually seen the posts in question, but he couldn't have put up anything anti-Semitic or homophobic because he was their mate. But this is an example of what he posted:<br />
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<i>"Banter"</i></div>
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West Ham Fan TV have 13,000 Twitter followers, 43,000 YouTube subscribers and 16.5m views of their videos.<br />
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***</div>
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<i>"Well a lot of people guess, </i></div>
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<i>Some say no and some say yes"</i></div>
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<i>- </i>Billy Bragg and Wilco,<i> "Airline to Heaven"</i></div>
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I want you to know that I appreciate very few people come to the 12th most popular West Ham blog on the web to get their fix of political commentary. But I'd ask you to bear with me briefly while I talk about Brexit. There will, I promise, be a point to it.<br />
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I live in Romford where we are, to coin a phrase, well Brexit. We are, in fact, so Brexit that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/28/brexit-heartlands-pro-leave-havering-essex-photo-essay">The Guardian</a>, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/14/uk/romford-brexit-theresa-may-vote-gbr-intl/index.html">CNN</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/23/in-this-london-borough-brexit-was-decided-in-january/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.08203194950e">The Washington Post</a> and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-one-year-essex-brexiteers-romford-leave-voters-economy-eu-immigration-a8276156.html">The Independent</a> have all been to have a chat. As a Remainer, I feel I know how easy it is to label my neighbours as racists and fascists and I confess that there are times when I think my wife and I were the only two people in the whole town to have voted to Remain.<br />
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But here's the thing. Those of us who live here have seen great change in the last decade. Our schools are under horrendous budgetary pressure, the roads are overcrowded and poorly maintained, the train service to London is so packed that the new trains ordered for Crossrail actually have fewer seats in them to allow for more standing space, the local hospital had to take a £15m loan and be put into financial special measures, it's not terribly safe and the standard of our public services is dire. People had, and still have, good reason to be pissed off.<br />
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<i>A picture taken at the Armed Forces Parade in Romford, 2016</i></div>
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And then arrived a referendum, like a gift wrapped rocket launcher which voters could turn in one particular direction and fire with gleeful abandon as a way of venting their frustration at the people responsible.<br />
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To me, it seemed fairly logical that after years of austerity and slashing budgets that the people of Romford might point that rocket launcher back at David Cameron and the Tory party who had inflicted that hardship upon them. But at this point, our old friend cognitive dissonance stepped forward. Since 1974, apart from a brief four year hiatus in 1997 under Blair, Romford has been staunchly Conservative, to the extent that you could put a dustbin named <i>"Blue Passports" </i>on the ballot and it would pick up 30,000 votes here.<br />
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And thus, the referendum asked a hugely complicated question in a ludicrously simple way. And when the voters of Romford looked round for an answer as to why things had got so bad they unsurprisingly chose not to blame the people they had been voting for. Who, after all, wants to accept they might be complicit in their own unhappiness?<br />
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So the people who voted for austerity, and then got it and then hated it, needed somewhere else to place the blame. And into that light stepped mendacious grifters like Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, none of whom care one bit about the people of Romford, but were perfectly happy to give them an easy answer: The EU.<br />
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The Remain camp bear a huge responsibility too, as they ought to have been able to craft a response to this by simply pointing at a picture Cameron and mouthing <i>"it's his fault"</i>. Instead, Corbyn went on holiday like the useless sixth form politician he is, Nick Clegg was a busted flush after the University fee shambles and nobody in England pays any attention to Nicola Sturgeon or Leanne Wood because they don't care about Scotland or Wales.<br />
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And so it came to pass that Leave won, and while I accept that all racists will have voted for Brexit, I don't accept that all Leave voters were racist. It just isn't that straightforward, and until the Remain camp understand that, they will continue to be perplexed about why people would willingly vote for something that seems so obviously harmful.<br />
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And why do I give these opinions and make these points on an article that is seemingly about West Ham? For a couple of reasons; firstly, to illustrate that no point of political contention is ever straightforward or without nuance. These issues are complex in their origin, and the positions that people have arrived at are being informed by all sorts of competing factors. I don't agree with Brexiteers, but I have tried hard to understand why people may have voted the way they have.<br />
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Additionally, because the entirety of British life at present is dominated by Brexit, and the entirety of British political discussion is influenced by Brexit, the resulting issues that we see at West Ham are a fall out from this. West Ham currently has a problem with race and antisemitism and Islamophobia and homophobia for the simple reason that our society has a problem with all of these things.<br />
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<i>"Tryin' to be like no-ones ever been</i><br />
<i>You try so hard, you get it wrong"</i><br />
<i>- </i>Embrace<i>, "You're Not Alone"</i><br />
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But there is another reason I say all this. I want to demonstrate that I am perfectly prepared to sit down and consider both sides of an argument. You may disagree with my conclusions - I'm guessing around 52% of you probably do - but I'm not into blanket condemnation of people, just because we don't share the same political real estate. Nor am I permanently and dogmatically wedded to my own political views; Labour will never again get my vote while anti Semites run the party, because I've got to be able to look my Jewish friends in the eye. </div>
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But I struggle with the DFLA. I've tried. I've read their Facebook pages, listened to those of you who have contacted me with their side of things, and read their policy demands. And I'm afraid that I get nothing from it apart from Far Right dog whistling. They are on police extremist watch lists for a reason, which is pretty damning considering that's what they purport to oppose. I've read the news reports and I've seen the images of Nazi salutes, and while I'm perfectly prepared to accept that the majority of people on that march would disown those views, I'm afraid <i>"Just because I'm marching with Nazis doesn't make me a Nazi"</i> isn't an argument that has improved with time. There are better ways to oppose extremism. </div>
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And the problem with Mark Phillips, and now Greg Smith, is that they have attached our club to that organisation with a degree of formality. My issue with Phillips attending the march wasn't that I felt he was a racist or a fascist because I don't know him (or indeed Smith), and indeed I am very uncomfortable with the idea that people be punished for their political views. His misstep, however, was to tweet out something to the effect of "<i>great to see so many West Ham fans here, always the biggest group</i>". And the problem with that, from a member of staff with access to our players, is that it suggests that West Ham are connected to the DFLA.</div>
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But what about those of us who don't espouse the views of the DFLA? What about those who think that the group are marching under an Islamophobic banner and think that our Muslim fans deserve better than to see their club crest being carried in support of those views? Why is it that Karren Brady will smugly tell small businesses that they cannot use the West Ham crest to sell badges and scarves, but is seemingly willing to see it carried on a march like this, and doesn't see it as a barrier to somebody serving on her OSB?</div>
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I'm well aware that some of you may have gone on that march, and some will be DFLA members and that's your prerogative, of course. But you don't speak for me, and whether Mark Phillips intended to or not, he did try and speak for me by tweeting his views and attaching my club to his march. And while I am sympathetic to any club employee who wonders why they seem to be held to a higher standard of behaviour than certain Board members, I still think there is a significant problem with him doing this.</div>
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And as I watch all of this unfolding once again, as if scheduled into some sort of annual timeline of fuck ups which the club adhere to religiously, I keep wondering...what exactly is it that West Ham United stand for these days?</div>
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<i>"The world is overrun with the wealthy and the wicked"</i></div>
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<i>- </i>Mos Def,<i> "Fear Not of Man"</i></div>
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So, where now?<br />
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The last week has been a depressing time to be a West Ham fan. Steinberg has been shot for delivering a message that a lot of people seemingly didn't want to hear. First he highlighted the posts from Tucker, then retweeted the video clip of someone at the London Stadium calling Mo Salah a "Muslim c*nt", and then shared the various threatening Tweets he received. By any stretch of the imagination these were newsworthy stories, and yet the defensive refrains have been familiar:<br />
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<i>"It's just one guy out of 60,000 so stop tarring us all...it's just banter and you're a grass...it's filmed by a Liverpool fan - let's focus on THAT!....you just want to hurt the club...journo scum...what about other clubs...I don't see any threats of physical violence, actually..."</i> and so on until he eventually locked his Twitter account to escape the abuse.<br />
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We've even seen some of the fabled victim blaming that Twitter ought to really market as it's USP, whereby people are suggesting that if Steinberg doesn't want to hear anti-Semitic remarks then perhaps he should just stop being a Jew on Twitter. As though he is a diver in a well known hotspot for Great White Sharks and should really just get out of their territory.<br />
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And of course, the appropriate response to all of those points is a simple one, namely how many antiSemites, homophobes, racists, sexists or Islamophobes is an acceptable number in our stadium? And if the answer is zero then what is the problem, and if the answer is higher than zero then why do we care more about away fans in the home end than we do about this? Why should we report away fans and keep quiet about racist chants?<br />
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And while we're on the topic, how about some West Ham fans grow up a little bit around this topic? Just because @Tonythespur087654 with three followers and a "proud Dad" bio called West Ham a racist cesspit doesn't actually mean anything, because we are all grown adults here and not twelve year old's trying to win a schoolboy argument.<br />
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<i>I wonder if I can "Well, Actually" antisemitism out of existence?</i></div>
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When I talk about shades of grey and political nuance, I am talking about the wider issues that cause people to take the view they do. But in this area, there is only right and wrong. Either you are against people being antisemitic and homophobic and racist and Islamophobic or you are not. There are no caveats, or whatabouts or conditions upon that. Pick a side. Stand with gay people and Muslims and Jews, and yes, stand with Mo Salah even if there seems to be a pretty decent chance that he'd fall over the minute you put your arm around him.<br />
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What's really noticeable about this is how many folks don't view things as a problem unless it affects them. Away fans in home ends wind them up so it's a big problem that must be addressed. Muslim footballers being abused doesn't touch them so everyone ought to lighten up a bit. Well that's cowardly and remarkably dumb. It's not just Mo Salah who gets abused when that happens, it's every Muslim West Ham (or Liverpool) fan in the stadium too. And when you decry it as meaningless you are invalidating their experiences and feelings, and telling them it doesn't matter.<br />
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And so it goes. When you turn a blind eye to the hissing at Spurs games, or the chants of <i>"I'd rather be a Paki than a yid"</i>, or <i>"Does your boyfriend know you're here?" </i>then you allow it to be normalised. Fans need to do better. When we see or hear this stuff we have to take action. Speak up if you think it's safe to do so, but alternatively just don't give those people oxygen. Block their social media accounts, unfollow them, and don't click on their links or engage with them. This doesn't have to be the identity of our club.<br />
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And this is where West Ham the entity needs to step up too.<br />
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There should be a well advertised hotline where these things can be reported, and a campaign fronted by first team players aimed at educating our fans on what really constitutes abuse. At least part of the problem with our fanbase is that large numbers of them seem completely incapable of determining what is antisemitic abuse and what is an acceptable song to sing at people because they support Spurs. We long ago blurred the line to the point where the two are now one and the same. I can accept that Tucker genuinely didn't think he was being antisemitic by posting the images he did, but that's the point - we've lost touch with reality and rather than face that inconvenient truth, lots of West Ham fans would apparently rather pretend this is all overblown and not a problem.<br />
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And so Steinberg finds himself fighting the great War of <i>You Can't Say Anything Anymore Can You?</i>, in the Battle of <i>Actually Muslims Aren't A Race So It Can't Be Racism</i>, against the 5th Armoured Dickhead Division of the <i>Whatboutery</i> army.<br />
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We ought not to leave him alone to do so.<br />
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<i>"You say you lost your faith, </i><br />
<i>But that's not where it's at"</i><br />
<i>- </i>Bob Dylan<i>, "Positively 4th Street"</i></div>
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I have no doubt that many of you will find elements of this article disagreeable. That's ok, it's how free society works. I can write it, and you call me names.<br />
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To the extent that you feel you'd like to tell me I'm wrong and have a civil chat about things, you can do so at an upcoming WHUISA event. I am part of a panel that is discussing "The Identity and Culture of WHUFC in 2019". Also there will be noted author Rob Banks, KUMB editor Graeme Howlett and Dave Evans of the Recorder group, and while I can sense the eye rolling from here, I think it will be an interesting chance to talk about what we really want from our football club.<br />
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You can get tickets <a href="https://www.seetickets.com/event/the-identity-and-culture-of-whufc-in-2019/east-ham-working-mens-club/1309399">here</a> for a fiver, with proceeds going to the Dylan Tombides Foundation. I hope you can make it.<br />
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<i>(*) This article originally stated that the tweets in question were made by the West Ham Fan TV account, but were in fact posted by Nicky Hawkins, the founder, owner and content creator of West Ham Fan TV. He has asked me to correct this. </i></div>
HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-67471550295556517612019-01-01T17:52:00.000+00:002019-01-01T17:52:11.247+00:00West Ham, Women and What We Do In The Shadows<i>(Longread - allow 10-12 minutes)</i><br />
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I often wonder what is wrong with me.<br />
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When I log on to the Internet, I have the entirety of human creative and cultural output at my fingertips, and I could look at all manner of incredible things. The writing of Shakespeare, the paintings of Constable, the "films" of Guy Ritchie. Almost all the touch points of human evolution are within my grasp and yet still I am drawn inexorably, magnetically, towards reading about and watching sport.<br />
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So rather than being elevated by the beauty of <i>"The Hay Wain" </i>or a bare knuckle boxing version of Sherlock Holmes<i>, </i>I instead find myself slowly descending into the depths of the human psyche. Because nothing seems to bring out the worst in people like the ability to write something anonymously about sport on the internet - he says, as Irony starts gasping for breath - and nothing seems to bring out worse people than the ability to comment anonymously about women's sport.<br />
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<i>First the vote, and now this.</i></div>
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When I first considered writing about the West Ham women's team, it was around this time last year. I spoke to a number of female fans and started researching the history of the game on these shores. And then #MeToo broke, and I decided that the last thing anyone needed was a middle aged white guy weighing in on a topic he didn't remotely understand. </div>
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But since then West Ham have begun to take women's football seriously, indeed one might argue it is the only progressive part of the club at all, and what I have observed is that the conversation on this point among our supporters is rather dominated by middle aged white guys who don't understand the topic. In those far corners of the internet, in the shadows underneath progressive, supportive articles there lie great swathes of people who seem to absolutely detest the idea of women playing football, representing their teams, being pundits on the TV or just playing sport at all. And so here we are, in a world where the current fad is to find short clips of women playing football, find something funny and post it on Twitter with the comment <i>"and they want equal pay!! (emoji, emoji, megabantz)". </i><br />
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Watching the evident delight with which male fans responded to Toni Duggan and Lucy Bronze (World Cup footballers from Barcelona and Lyon respectively) shanking a couple of shots on Soccer AM was depressing and predictable.<br />
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Because, of course, it's impossible to find clips of male footballers doing embarrassing things, even when they're not even wearing flip flops.<br />
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Welbeck runs Welbeck shots it’s UNBELIEVABLE !! <a href="https://t.co/2fPQlkKWPa">pic.twitter.com/2fPQlkKWPa</a></div>
— 🇵🇹 (@Ronaldo7RMFC) <a href="https://twitter.com/Ronaldo7RMFC/status/971856020757721088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Twitter, of course, is both a cesspit and a poor indicator of how normal people act whilst also being a weirdly accurate barometer for society. It is also manna from heaven for those men who like to actively set the cause of women's sports back whilst simultaneously wanting to be able to send those same women unsolicited pictures of their genitals. Beat that Facebook.<br />
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To talk properly about women's football, I think we must first understand some very specific things, namely the long and meaningful history of women playing football in this country, and also the role of privilege in our society. The former is important because so much of the criticism of women's football can be understood by learning about the way in which the game was deliberately held back by the FA in this country in 1921, and the latter explains why they were ever able to do that at all. </div>
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<b><u><i>The History</i></u></b><br />
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As with men's football, the women's game began to slowly take root in Britain in the late 19th century. There are records of English women touring Scotland, a preeminent footballing hotspot of the time. The most noteworthy point about these games was that they had to be abandoned due to men in the crowd rioting due to the "unseemly" nature of women doing something so strange as playing football, when they could have been off bearing children or washing something.<br />
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No such restrictions existed around tennis, by the way, as this was actually seen as an allowable form of courting in the Victorian era, and history has told us that if men can get laid at the end of something then they have generally always been supportive. And lo and behold if - after a century of support, finance and growth - tennis isn't just about the most financially rewarding sport a woman can play nowadays.</div>
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<i>The North London Women's Team, 1895: I think they've had more than enough of your shit</i></div>
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While male society still refused to countenance the unfathomable idea of women playing football, this didn't stop pioneering feminists such as Nettie Honeyball, Florence Dixie and Helen Matthews from setting up their own teams and continuing to try and grow women's football. Unsurprisingly, they had to play using pseudonyms but still continued to be dogged by men who refused to allow them to play and several more games were abandoned due to crowd trouble. It's almost as though men didn't want women to get good at something. </div>
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What was particularly ironic about all of this, was that during the 1880's some English clubs hit upon the idea of allowing women to attend matches for free as their presence was thought to curb the unruly behaviour of the men in the crowd. This was so successful, and women came in such huge numbers, that the scheme was discontinued before the turn of the century due to the money being lost in gate receipts. The idea that women have never been interested in football, so often put forward as an excuse for unequal treatment, is bullshit.</div>
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Despite the fact that women's games were attracting decent crowds, sometimes larger than the men, it took the First World War to really progress the growth of the sport. With so many men away at the front, women were pressed into service at munitions factories up and down the country, and from there came the idea of those factories having their own teams. These <i>Munitionette</i> teams began to participate in matches across the country, and from around 1916 there were organised competitions in place, and large amounts of sums were raised for charity through the staging of these matches. The most famous of these sides was the strangely named Dick, Kerr Ladies of Preston who famously raised huge amounts of money for injured soldiers and the various hospitals treating them. There is a movie waiting to be made about their adventures.<br />
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What was notable about these teams was that their popularity continued after the finish of the war, with the Dick, Kerr Ladies playing to huge crowds both here and in France. This reached a peak when they played St Helen's Ladies at Goodison Park on Boxing Day, 1920 in front of 53,000 people, while a further 14,000 were locked out. These were amateur footballers and working women who played in their spare time to raise funds, on that occasion for the Unemployed Ex Servicemens Distress Fund, bringing in a sum worth around £650,000 in modern value that day alone.<br />
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The following year the Dick, Kerr team would play in front of nearly a million spectators and continue their valuable fundraising. They were filled to the brim with the best players of the era, having taking a Manchester City style approach to recruitment, albeit without the morally dubious Middle Eastern owners. Foremost among them was chain smoking, openly gay inside forward Lily Parr, who was renowned throughout the game for her brilliance, and would still be one of the most famous people in the country today were it not for the overt sexism of the era in which she played.<br />
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By now the Football Association had begun to take note. Not only were these women challenging the popularity of men's teams but they were using their fundraising for other causes. The women were now playing matches in support of striking miners in the North, and the FA saw this as an unacceptably political position and the chance they had been waiting for to stop the growth of the women's game.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzcSoP7UE0tCNSk67o-GuL1loywYu1Rih351XWahHCMQZjnLENmr4xTRBYJKz8xrhJZ2W9u4agomRpYVK-zyJrlT4TIpsCYktI5bmLMuWmP5JFRo_dwtDXXpCRCqRY78Ewae0p/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="483" data-original-width="302" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzcSoP7UE0tCNSk67o-GuL1loywYu1Rih351XWahHCMQZjnLENmr4xTRBYJKz8xrhJZ2W9u4agomRpYVK-zyJrlT4TIpsCYktI5bmLMuWmP5JFRo_dwtDXXpCRCqRY78Ewae0p/s320/Capture.PNG" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>An FA propaganda card from the 1920's. These people ran the game.</i></div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The FA thus launched a successful propaganda campaign against women playing, using cards like those above as well as finding sympathetic doctors to say that the game was unhealthy for women. Nobody knows what a woman should be doing with her body quite like a man, after all.<br />
<br />
Their main tactic, however, was to slander the Dick, Kerr Ladies and claim that some of the money raised for charity had gone missing and alleging financial impropriety. Whilst the claims were false, they garnered enough popular support that the FA were able to successfully ban all women from playing on their grounds in late 1921. With no FA members able to host matches, coach women or officiate in their games, the sport effectively died.<br />
<br />
The FA would eventually reverse this ban in the 1970's - only under pressure from UEFA - but that fifty year gap is the single most important reason as to why women's football is where it is today, and why so many men feel able to hide in the shadows and continue to mock and deride female players. It is against this backdrop that women's football must be viewed.<br />
<br />
And what does this have to do with West Ham? Maybe nothing, and maybe everything.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<br />
<b><u>The Privilege</u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
By banning the game, and forcing women's clubs out of existence, the FA did more than just keep women down - they elevated men. And that is the crux of all of this. In the course of those fifty years, the roots of what we now see were put down. Football was established as a game for boys, with girls quite literally banned from playing. This had an effect in obvious ways, as all of the money from sponsors and supporters was diverted to men, and culturally football was allowed to take its place as a male activity.<br />
<br />
While men were allowed to be professional, women were kept at a level below that of even non-league football. There was no funding for girls, but also no infrastructure for them anyway. No access to high class coaching, facilities or medical care. It's easy to scoff at a perceived lack of athleticism until you realise that until very recently female players were having to pay for their own operations and healthcare. This would bankrupt Andy Carroll.<br />
<br />
Because of all that, there was no publicity for their endeavours and thus no heroes for young girls to emulate. When I took my daughters to see West Ham women for the first time, it really stuck with me that they told me their favourite player was Rosie Kmita because <i>"she wears her hair like us". </i>It hadn't ever really occurred to me that this might be important because, as a guy, I've never had to look far to find a hero in any field who looked exactly like me.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOTrEEGPH9fEDLo80m84HGYEdFr68410FxKTePAdy_qEJ9c4-Bt1ATubrr-6EgKTeLRUHh5paK0CKVByzI2_FWC0yFGM1HZZ3mWksv0wMkMXC5nDhlrO-PUByXFcShXHFOl2UC/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="248" data-original-width="429" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOTrEEGPH9fEDLo80m84HGYEdFr68410FxKTePAdy_qEJ9c4-Bt1ATubrr-6EgKTeLRUHh5paK0CKVByzI2_FWC0yFGM1HZZ3mWksv0wMkMXC5nDhlrO-PUByXFcShXHFOl2UC/s320/Capture.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Rosie Kmita - icons come in all shapes and sizes</i></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
Never underestimate the power of heroes - no white boy in this country has ever had to wonder if anyone like him could ever become a footballer. And the problem is that those boys then grow up in the shadows, never understanding the privilege that allowed them the freedom to play football and which they so easily take for granted.<br />
<br />
And what was also missing was the cultural framework that exists for men. The wisdom passed down by the generations of fathers and grandfathers didn't exist in the same way for girls because their female relations weren't allowed to play. There were no magazines or comics with female footballers, no highlights of women's games, kit sizes were in "Boys" and if you wanted to offer football as a club to young girls in the last century, you needed to be prepared to travel a very long way to get fixtures.<br />
<br />
Essentially every possible barrier was put in place to prevent girls from playing the game. And still men sneer at the standard of women's football, as though it would be any different if the gender roles had been reversed and men had been playing the game professionally for just a decade or so.<br />
<br />
But that is the problem with privilege. As Hollywood executive Franklin Leonard said <i>"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression". </i>We are a very long way from equality in football, and yet men have been conditioned to feel that they own football, and that the participation of women somehow requires them to give something up. It is this curious thinking that drives so much of how some men view women and football.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<b><u><i>The Rebuttals</i></u></b><br />
<br />
So, in reading up about this piece I started looking at what West Ham fans have been saying about our new team. The club, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/why-im-accusing-west-ham-united-of-sexism/">who were shamed into supporting their women's team</a>, went from distinctly amateur to professional in a short space of time. High class players like Gilly Flaherty and Claire Rafferty arrived, the club started to spend some money on the team, and slowly the women started to occupy a slightly less tiny portion of the West Ham world.<br />
<br />
This reached a peak when a documentary about the women's team was filmed by the BBC and began broadcasting last month, primarily showcasing the club's decision to allow teenager Jack Sullivan to run the women's team, but also doing a nice job of highlighting the journey of the group. I went to watch it through my fingers and came out liking everyone involved a lot more. What they are trying to achieve, after all, is remarkable.<br />
<br />
So, this piece isn't really about West Ham, and certainly not about West Ham fans, a large section of whom are embracing their women's team without descending to misogyny.<br />
<br />
And yet most of what I could find online was largely demeaning and unhelpful. This is not unique to West Ham fans, of course, and as a season ticket holder for the women's team I can attest that there is a nicely growing group of fans who watch the side each week. But everywhere you look, online chatter about women's football seems to be dominated by men telling us how poor it is, to the extent that the Guardian now pre-moderate all comments on the topic. Start a thread on your forum about your clubs youth team and you'll never get anybody popping up to tell you that youth football is a waste of time because it can't compare to the Champions League. Do the same for your women's team and it will happen in a matter of minutes.<br />
<br />
I have no doubt that most football fans are behind their women's teams, or at worst ambivalent, but there is a decent number who just seem to be actively opposed to the concept. The comments on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2018/oct/10/fifa-womens-world-cup-final-copa-america-concacaf-gold-cup?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Fiver+2016&utm_term=287467&subid=18235533&CMP=EMCFTBEML853">this Marina Hyde piece</a> about FIFA's scheduling of the Women's World Cup Final are instructive.<br />
<br />
You'll be familiar with the lingo by now, I'm sure:<br />
<br />
<i>"Women players aren't as good as men"</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Ah yes. The binary choice. Women aren't as good as men and therefore the sport they play is crap. Serena Williams couldn't beat the world's number 600 guy so it renders her achievements obsolete.<br />
<br />
The really interesting piece about this argument is that men never apply it to men. So they can parse the fact that Floyd Mayweather couldn't beat Anthony Joshua, or that Usain Bolt couldn't hang with Mo Farah over 10,000 metres, or that Chris Hoy wouldn't last a day on the Tour de France with Geraint Thomas.<br />
<br />
In those cases, the nuance is fine and can be processed. It is irrelevant how those men compare because they'll never have to face each other. Fran Kirby, however, isn't as good as Messi and therefore we won't watch her play.<br />
<br />
OK then.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>"Women need to get there on their own. If the product is good enough they'll get crowds and TV money and sponsorship, Until then - I just feel like it's being forced on me"</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Another favourite. The Mobius strip of internet arguments where people say they won't give their money over until something is good, but that thing can't get good until you hand your money over. Wonderful.<br />
<br />
The only real way to test this of course is to ban men's football for fifty years, and direct all available resources into the women's game. Then the men can work their way back up and show us how it's done. Assuming that won't happen, then perhaps we could all acknowledge that having suppressed and ignored women's football for generations, then the least we can do now is give it even a sliver of support.<br />
<br />
I also have no idea how a sport is supposed to grow without funding and exposure. The British cycling team didn't become the best in the world by working full time and training in the evening. Instead we just accepted that pumping money into a sport can help and we gave them National Lottery funding. And Nicole Cooke, Victoria Pendleton and Laura Trott seem to evidence that women can become elite when supported by a professional framework.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>"Having female pundits is just tokenism"</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Off the beaten track perhaps, but this is almost the prime example of where men seem to retreat most quickly to the shadows and fire off abuse from the safety of the darkness. What is clear from reading around this is that a lot of men feel that the job of talking about football belongs to men. And therefore "giving" the role to women involves taking a job that belongs to a man and presenting it to an undeserving woman. And by extension, if we tell ourselves that women get to places in life through tokenism, then we can be comfortable that men are getting there deservedly. And by the way, that is a pretty helpful starting point for any men who feel the need to assess the trajectory of their own careers.<br />
<br />
I mean, fancy listening to Eni Aluko and Robbie Savage and somehow deciding that Aluko got her job for reasons other than her ability, and not drawing the same conclusion about Savage. For what it's worth I think pretty much all punditry is tired, cliched drivel and I hardly listen to it. And indeed, I concede that not all women pundits are to my taste, much in the same way as their male brethren.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXl2awpAjDKb7do1GPgnEvLX-HvQM5XXOm9FaDQaicAGKiswu1Rsz6GiOJEdmFi0XHILE5vv4UkjKAH4dGQlDopM3PNbrb8xEFFbkNOlHSywixzTGZ7LmtotNRxy8LsseRCpYL/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="395" data-original-width="573" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXl2awpAjDKb7do1GPgnEvLX-HvQM5XXOm9FaDQaicAGKiswu1Rsz6GiOJEdmFi0XHILE5vv4UkjKAH4dGQlDopM3PNbrb8xEFFbkNOlHSywixzTGZ7LmtotNRxy8LsseRCpYL/s320/Capture.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Can we please stop having inarticulate pundits who only care about their appearance?</i></div>
<br />
But that's just a personal take on what I do and don't want to listen to, and the idea that women simply don't possess the ability to be broadcasters - in an area of stunningly low quality already - sounds a little bit <i>"-ist"</i> to me. We have heard these arguments before through human history and those presenting them have invariably been found to have been on the wrong side of that history. <br />
<br />
Even more remarkable is the fact that fans are still spouting this nonsense in an era when it's really not hard to find incredibly accomplished women like Kelly Cates and Gabby Logan fronting football shows with all the practiced ease of someone like Gary Lineker, except that they didn't get the two year grace period that he got to learn the job while being terrible.<br />
<br />
All of this boils down to personal preference, of course, and I accept the difference in role between a presenter and pundit but for all that, let's not make out that every man on screen is great at this. You all remember Gazza as a pundit, right?<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>"I'm not sexist, I have a daughter"</i><br />
<br />
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward then, brother, that person is a piece of shit" - Rust Cohle, True Detective.<br />
<br />
In Rust we trust. This, but about women instead of religion.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>"Why is men's football subsidising the women's game?"</i><br />
<i><br /></i>It's not. Women subsidised men for fifty years while the Football Association that was supposed to represent them took their half share and gave it entirely to men. We should be thankful they aren't asking for reparations and charging interest.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><u><i>The Context</i></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
And so we come to it at last. The great elephant in the article. The reason this matters.<br />
<br />
With every muttered aside at the dinner table, every snide comment on Facebook, every derogatory comment on the train and each <i>"I'm sorry but.....", </i>men chip away at what women are trying to achieve. It doesn't seem like much, of course, because none of the people who say these things have had to work as hard as women just to play the game and be taken seriously while doing it.<br />
<br />
I spend my weekends coaching my daughters under 11's team and I love it, truly. It is a life affirming thing for me, even when we have to stop a particularly engrossing discussion on Expected Goals because someone is doing the Floss. And those girls are every bit as talented as their brothers and male classmates, with the only difference being that they have to listen to grown men tell them that the game they play, and the women they look up to, are "<i>shit</i>". And it wasn't lost on me that when I asked Amber Stobbs (formerly of West Ham, and now running Equal Focus Football) to take a session for me, the girls were energised by this in a completely different way, to the extent they queued for her autograph after. Representation matters. Heroes matter.<br />
<br />
And this is the bit I don't understand. Even if men do think the women's game is useless, and the standard of goalkeeping is hopeless and the only reason to watch female athletes is because they want to have sex with some of them, I still don't understand the need to constantly denigrate it. I think watching <i>Top Gear </i>is one step removed from introducing yourself at work meetings as The Archbishop of Banterbury but I don't feel the need to go on websites devoted to the show and tell people it is shit. Likewise, deep down I suspect that men who wear shoes with no socks are all probably aliens who have misunderstood how humans dress, but I don't take pictures of them and post it on social media when I see teenagers doing it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiUAqoDBRK7pkQPfUhIha49FuNpR3u0uGooLCkMm7T3aIYLIUE-t2eKsHt5l6g1t6HQvm44jp48-7Lw5WXxFDpZdLcH5jQSD7QeUt_lML6DX1XPFgSEgodwoaGyhA7tAPbOC66/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-10-16+at+00.20.33.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="581" data-original-width="958" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiUAqoDBRK7pkQPfUhIha49FuNpR3u0uGooLCkMm7T3aIYLIUE-t2eKsHt5l6g1t6HQvm44jp48-7Lw5WXxFDpZdLcH5jQSD7QeUt_lML6DX1XPFgSEgodwoaGyhA7tAPbOC66/s320/Screen+Shot+2018-10-16+at+00.20.33.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Yes, just like a regular human - they won't notice a thing"</i></div>
<br />
In researching this article I started to ask various my closest female friends whether they had ever suffered sexual harassment. The answers I received depressed me so much that I just stopped asking and pretended I'd never peeked under that rock. From the woman who had a guy get on the Tube and start masturbating in front of her, to my friend who had to pick up her dog and run 400 yards to her car because a man had followed her for a mile, to the one I can hardly bear to type, of the girl whose sister was followed into a park and stabbed to death. By the end one of my close friends told me I'd be better off just assuming that every woman has suffered this to some degree, unless they explicitly tell you differently, and to stop being so naive. While we bleat about <i>"not all men"</i>, I think we might have missed the point that it does rather seem to be <i>"all women"</i>.<br />
<br />
And maybe that doesn't have anything to do with football or West Ham, but it all exists in the same universe. The world's most famous footballer has been creditably accused of rape and the world's media appears to have developed a sudden and dramatic case of myopia. Marlon King played Championship football after serving a prison sentence for sexual assault. Richard Keys and Andy Gray still have jobs, which is mystifying on several levels. I can't write a word about Ched Evans without unleashing the hounds of hell. Women are still not allowed to attend matches or play the game in certain countries. I'm afraid the fact that Alex Scott covers the odd England game doesn't really mean that feminism has taken over football completely.<br />
<br />
We're deep in the shadows now, and a long way from the simple act of posting that you think women's football is a waste of time, or that you can't understand why a woman is commentating on a game. But like it or not, these are all a part of the same dark shadows that women spend their lives literally crossing the road to avoid in a way that men would never consider.<br />
<br />
I'm not asking you to care about the West Ham women's team (or whatever team you support) if you can't bring yourself to do so, but I am asking you to acknowledge the reality of what led us to this point. To understand the disparity in how football as a sport has treated men and women, and recognise the debt that has to be repaid. West Ham women deserve our support just as much as anyone who pulls on the claret and blue, and it would be amazing if they could start to attract bigger crowds and garner wider attention. Imagine if we could be leaders for women's football in the same way that we were once were for black players. That didn't weaken the club - it made us stronger. It gave us Clyde Best, Leroy Rosenior, the Charles boys, Rio Ferdinand, Jermain Defoe and now Grady Diangana and gave black West Ham supporters some heroes that looked like them.<br />
<br />
We could do the same for the women of West Ham. Let's get out of the shadows.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>For further reading on this topic, I highly recommend <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/Fwomen.htm">this wonderful piece</a> by John Simkin at Spartacus Educational or the book <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/League-Their-Own-Ladies-1917-1965/dp/1782225633/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1782225633&pd_rd_r=39ae43e3-0de3-11e9-a0b0-5bcd51e3c4a4&pd_rd_w=KvOoV&pd_rd_wg=9uKoE&pf_rd_p=1e3b4162-429b-4ea8-80b8-75d978d3d89e&pf_rd_r=831WY4AKYEDMKZQ316PQ&psc=1&refRID=831WY4AKYEDMKZQ316PQ">"In A League of Their Own"</a> by Gail Newsham. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I am a long way from being an expert in this topic and am indebted to Emily Pulham, Bianca Westwood, Sue Watson and Amanda Jacks for their help with this article. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Despite the assistance of those people and resources, any mistakes in this article are entirely mine and I would be happy to address any historical inaccuracies. </i></div>
HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-20596760095028922582018-10-24T03:04:00.001+01:002018-10-24T03:04:38.450+01:00And Into The Fire<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Out of the blue and into the black</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>They give you this, but you pay for that"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>Neil Young,<i> "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)</i></div>
<br />
Well, that didn't last long.<br />
<br />
When last you were here, we were basking in the warm glow of a nascent unbeaten run and an emphatic thumping of Manchester United. Since then we've lost to Brighton and Spurs, found ourselves in the middle of a national discussion around employment rights and freedom of speech and a new signing has picked up a season ending injury because traditions must be upheld, goddamnit.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFPxesVcJh3QJupkNUCCrKWCkg-efFTFkBvWKy9fpKvLUyMGqc-vVFJi8HwbAjAUwT8FQ63y5RzRjH_Vd9KOLugYEMcJ5nYv68njtVQaJ330YOONqnl3IyPB3hUnrlusRhc3X5/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-10-21+at+22.16.23.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="579" data-original-width="816" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFPxesVcJh3QJupkNUCCrKWCkg-efFTFkBvWKy9fpKvLUyMGqc-vVFJi8HwbAjAUwT8FQ63y5RzRjH_Vd9KOLugYEMcJ5nYv68njtVQaJ330YOONqnl3IyPB3hUnrlusRhc3X5/s320/Screen+Shot+2018-10-21+at+22.16.23.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I'll see you soon - save me a bed on the ward</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><b><u>Brighton 1 - 0 West Ham </u></b></i></div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Our trip to Brighton could almost have been directed by Guy Ritchie, so predictable was the outcome, as we followed up a rousing victory over Mourinho by going very quietly into the night. Such swings of form and fortune are the hallmark of supporting a lower half team, but it's still a thudding punch when it happens.<br />
<br />
The most frustrating element of this game was that we had so much of the play. After a fairly non descript opening, our defence went full Moses and the Red Sea as Beram Kayal set up Glen Murray in the 25th minute. This marked the sixth time Murray has scored against us which officially means that he is now a <i>Nemesis,</i> which rather reminds me of the moment you find out that the bad guy in Lord of the Rings is an upset lighthouse keeper.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjC8VZItHwKwZYk-7AjGAABEEZ5xPuvTYEBjDc3aX1F4hpvWJz5BNGVzh9wB4geRlI-uWbhc9aKRlUYGOT8m8AkYf4z_9qfGLIBGRFAjXTQi3kj2-WK1jG5X20MHWiKF3wfw-3/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-10-23+at+21.22.16.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="545" data-original-width="642" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjC8VZItHwKwZYk-7AjGAABEEZ5xPuvTYEBjDc3aX1F4hpvWJz5BNGVzh9wB4geRlI-uWbhc9aKRlUYGOT8m8AkYf4z_9qfGLIBGRFAjXTQi3kj2-WK1jG5X20MHWiKF3wfw-3/s320/Screen+Shot+2018-10-23+at+21.22.16.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And Glen Murray did appear</i></div>
<i><br /></i>
Thereafter we pressed and harried for an hour, and ended up fielding a thoroughly playground 4-1-5 formation as Manuel Pellegrini asked the outstanding Declan Rice to do everyone's defending and shovelled attackers on ahead of him. For all that, our best chance fell to Fabian Balbuena who headed inexplicably wide, unmarked from a Felipe Anderson corner. This upset the Brazilian so much that he has apparently refused to ever take a decent corner again.<br />
<i><br /></i>
Marko Arnautovic also had some presentable chances, including a last minute opportunity created by Robert Snodgrass and Lucas Perez that he skied over the bar. In such moments it's possible to see why he plays for us and not for a bigger club. That inconsistency probably says a lot less about him than it does about the remarkable continued excellence displayed by the likes of Kane and Aguero.<br />
<br />
And thus we left the South Coast with a curious mixture of feelings. In isolation it was hard to criticise the performance given that we had dominated the ball and had the better chances, but there remains an itch that can't be scratched about defeats such as these. It's not that I think we ought to always beat teams such as Brighton - we have, after all, not ever actually done so in the Premier League - but more a sense that such erratic failure remains hard coded into our DNA.<br />
<i><br /></i>
We did enough here to win, would have grumbled but accepted a point and yet somehow went home with our pockets empty. Plus ca change. Perhaps one ought to acknowledge the difficulty of getting a team up and running in just eight games. Pellegrini has endured a difficult start after all, with no team in the league having a tougher opening nine games than us, but I'm still waiting to see something click into gear, a penny drop or a corner turned. We remain a footballing roulette wheel.<br />
<br />
<i><br /></i>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>***</i></div>
<i><br /></i>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"No I do not feel that good</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>When I see the heartbreaks you embrace"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>Bob Dylan<i>, "Positively 4th Street"</i></div>
<i><br /></i>
And so to Spurs. It doesn't make much sense, but in recent years this has been a fixture to rejuvenate us from cold spells. Whether it was Ravel Morrison crowning Sam Allardyce's tactical masterclass at White Hart Lane (and convincing Big Sam to play unsuccessfully without a striker for two more months), the highlight of Andre Ayew's Hammers career at Wembley, or the Friday night title charge ending winner from Lanzini, we have done well against Spurs of late. Indeed, going into this game we had actually won this fixture more times than them in the preceding eight years, despite that being arguably the best period of their modern history.<br />
<br />
It was a shame then to see us fritter that away with a subdued performance of questionable intent. Andriy Yarmolenko started diffidently and ended up being stretchered off with an Achilles tear. His season is over, and the wisdom of David Sullivan's long held policy of buying players who are either old or have poor injury records continues to look like a folly. A reminder too that the glibly promised new scouting and analytics department has yet to be seen. Perhaps it's part of a package deal with the London Stadium WiFi.<br />
<br />
Anyway, Yarmolenko joins Carlos Sanchez, Jack Wilshere, Winston Reid and Lanzini on the Andy Carroll Memorial wing, and we are now just a couple of weeks away from the Pellegrini rite of passage press conference where he tells us he's never seen an injury crisis like it.<br />
<br />
I have no sympathy - when you buy with no regard to player fitness being a skill and don't invest in training or medical facilities then this is what happens. Topping the injury charts stops being unfortunate when it happens every single year. So off went Yarmolenko and on came Grady Diangana, which tells us quite a bit about how well Michail Antonio must be doing in training.<br />
<br />
We were also missing Pedro Obiang, which was a shame as central midfield has long been the weak link in the Spurs chain. With the Spaniard missing, Harry Winks was the best player on the pitch in the first half, which was even more impressive as he was playing alongside Easter Island statue Eric Dier and "bring your best mate to work day" winner Moussa Sissoko. In the second half that accolade belonged to Declan Rice, in supreme form again, and it wasn't hard to see that we might be witnessing an England midfield pairing of the near future there.<br />
<br />
I thought Spurs were the better side in the first half as they pushed Kieran Trippier way up the pitch to take advantage of our defensively weak left side, and used some clever movement from Erik Lamela and Lucas Moura to trouble our back four. We held firm as the visitors nice play rarely resulted in attempts on goal - they mustered just two all day - until Sissoko took advantage of Anderson and crossed for Lamela to flick in a header. They could have scored again soon after but for a marvellous save from Lukasz Fabianski, and at half time I wasn't all that confident.<br />
<br />
We looked especially vulnerable from our own corners as Anderson was taking them with all the skill of a man whose eyes were sewn shut, and our two deepest lying defenders were Pablo Zabaleta and Mark Noble which is akin to leaving two guys in a canoe to keep out a submarine. We survived, although I refuse to accept this as evidence that this plan is a good idea.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;">
<i>No problem lads, Zaba and Nobes are there</i></div>
<div style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The second half was much better, as we pushed higher and played all the game in the Spurs half. In the end, we failed to get anything largely due to the excellence of Hugo Lloris who made four fine stops. Tactically I still struggle to see exactly what Pellegrini is attempting to achieve, although he wasn't helped here by the performance of Anderson, who was resolutely dreadful until he was mercifully hooked off. Worryingly, our best performances this season have come when we've been able to counter attack against stronger teams and thus we have been heavily reliant upon the trio of Yarmolenko, Arnautovic, and Anderson. The first is done for the season, the second is operating on one knee and the last made me pine for Sofiane Feghouli here. With softer fixtures finally around the corner, Pellegrini is going to need to find a way for us to play on the front foot. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
It would also be remiss of me if I were not mention the outstanding performance of our centre halves, Balbuena and Issa Diop. While they probably get altogether too many opportunities to demonstrate their excellence, it has been reassuring to see them settling into something approaching a solid partnership. Coming into this season it seemed impossible for us not to play with three at the back simply due to the limitations of our personnel, but Diop alone has been so good that those fears have faded away. With the brilliant Fabianski behind them there is cause for optimism as we face weaker opposition, even if our general approach to full backs seems to be to pick two people at random and then reach for the rosary beads. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Midfield remains our main area of concern, primarily because most of them are injured. A central trio of Noble, Obiang and Rice offers a nice balance, but we finished this game with a four of Diangana, Rice, Snodgrass and Antonio and a sudden surge of affection for Cheikhou Kouyate. It is slightly disconcerting that if Rice were to suffer an injury, it feels like it would curtail the entire season. Perhaps we ought to stop <a href="https://www.claretandhugh.info/declan-rice-46000-offer-explained/">leaking details of his contract demands to friendly websites</a> and instead concentrate on actually advancing his career.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>***</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Get out your mat and pray to the West</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I'll get out mine and pray for myself" - </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The Jam<i>, "Eton Rifles"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But matters on the pitch are only ever the hors d'oeuvres when you're dining at <i>Chez Titanic</i>. <br />
<br />
And so perhaps the most controversial element of the last month has revolved around our Under 18 youth team coach, Mark Phillips, who sprang into the public consciousness after writing a number of tweets where he stated that he had attended a march by the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) in London, and explicitly praising West Ham fans for being the largest segment of the marchers. For those of you unfamiliar with the DFLA, they are a self styled anti-extremism group who splintered from the Football Lads Alliance (FLA), who were themselves an offshoot from the English Defence League (EDL), and I'm now wondering if their main plan for defeating extremism is through the medium of acronyms. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/oct/16/west-ham-coach-democratic-football-lads-alliance-march-mark-phillips">Phillips was suspended by West Ham</a>, and our fan base was cleaved down the middle by the issue. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
The DFLA pronounce themselves to be a non-political, anti extremist group and they appear to have garnered a lot of support from West Ham fans. From the state of my timeline on Twitter after this story broke, I would hazard a guess that some H List readers were on the march and in that sense I feel duty bound to examine the organisation properly. Members are adamant that the group opposes all forms of terrorism as well as holding other disparate positions such as demanding better treatment for military veterans, objecting to paedophile grooming gangs and wanting action on "missing" immigrants. Noted right wing agitator Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has also previously attended a march under his more commonly used moniker, Tommy Robinson.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIlS7x-ZQj748kNEALzcud5xR4knDgZDW5Xhj1X5rNbhXYzPEsXMXfuOeb4AuGruVlgtjNTy_rDz7mBcp3J450jsSHXgxlxv47wI1VMzR8lCzHvHeioUv1HOYnJ86Y41aKBjmZ/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="696" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIlS7x-ZQj748kNEALzcud5xR4knDgZDW5Xhj1X5rNbhXYzPEsXMXfuOeb4AuGruVlgtjNTy_rDz7mBcp3J450jsSHXgxlxv47wI1VMzR8lCzHvHeioUv1HOYnJ86Y41aKBjmZ/s320/Capture.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Flowers for Al-Jazeera</i></div>
<br />
Quite what any of this has to do with football is beyond me, and while the marchers may feel their stance is apolitical, a letter was handed in at Downing Street by the organisers demanding changes to government policy, which seems to me to render that argument redundant. Thus people carrying our club crest on this march are making a political affiliation of their cause to West Ham whether they accept it or not.<br />
<br />
But one also has to acknowledge that the march was legally organised, did not contravene hate speech laws and thus was lawful. Therefore, the question of whether Mark Phillips was within his rights to legally attend seems clear to me - he was.<br />
<br />
But freedom of speech and thought and expression are not the same thing as freedom from consequence. Glen Hoddle was within his rights to say that he thought disabled people were being punished for sins of a former life, and the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sport/football/270194.stm">FA were within their rights to decide that was unacceptable and fire him.</a> Thus, Phillips was perfectly at liberty to attend this march, and tweet in support of it - his sister was caught up in the London Bridge terror attacks - but one also has to acknowledge that the DFLA have been described as Far Right by the Police, Anti Fascist groups and the Premier League and appear on several watch lists due to anti Islamic posts on their Facebook page.<br />
<br />
It probably didn't help Phillips that his Twitter timeline was later examined and it was found that he had liked a post from Katie Hopkins suggesting that Viktor Orban would <i>"defend Christian culture in Europe"</i>, and another comparing Jeremy Corbyn to Hitler. Friends say he is a great guy and a good coach, but people who don't know him have no personal interactions to go on and can only therefore judge him on his actions. It isn't surprising that people have concerns.<br />
<br />
While several members dispute that the DFLA position is Islamaphobic, I would suggest checking your back door for Labradors if you read their site because there is an awful lot of dog whistling going on. And this, I think, is the key point that seems to be missed by so many in this debate, and it's something I have said about West Ham previously;<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>You don't get to tell other people how they feel. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
So yes, Phillips was entitled to attend the march, and others are just as entitled to decide that the intent of that march was Islamaphobic. That same freedom of speech that protects him also protects them.<br />
<br />
And if Muslim Hammers supporters say that this is an issue, and that they would be less likely to take their child to our Academy, or even to games, then DFLA members don't get to tell them they are wrong. That's just not how society works, and anyone truly believing in free speech wouldn't pretend otherwise.<br />
<br />
And no doubt there are some who feel that their support of the DFLA has been misrepresented and that they genuinely are just taking a position against terrorism. Well, that's reasonable enough and we all ought to be grown up enough to accept that there is nuance in everything and that no one group of people ever think homogeneously about anything. I, after all, consider myself a Labour supporter but have little time for Jeremy Corbyn or the anti-Semitism that seems to stick to the party like glue. I understand the shades of grey.<br />
<br />
But any DFLA member wishing to apply that logic, and wishing to be distinguished from those who marched with them and threw Nazi salutes, might want to ponder the irony of asking not to be judged by the actions of a few individuals - <i>whilst marching against Islamic extremism</i>. If the DFLA wants to get off Far Right watch lists and be seen as the peaceful non political group they wish to portray, then they need to do an awful lot more to disentangle themselves from those who clearly have no issue with those labels.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"You do it to yourself, you do</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And that's what really hurts"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>Radiohead<i>, "Just"</i></div>
<br />
But back to West Ham. My overriding feeling about Phillips is that I am angry with him for dragging the club into this. It is bad enough that fans choose to march in this way with our club crest so prominent, and claim to represent the rest of us, but for an employee of the club to do it is naive at best. And lest we forget, he has done this just a few months after Tony Henry was fired for referring to African players as causing "mayhem".<br />
<br />
But then I find myself asking the same question over and again. What exactly does it say about the culture of our club that these things continue to happen?<br />
<br />
For an answer to this I think you first have to understand Sullivanism. How no stone shall ever be overturned, no edge shall be sought, and how others do the leading and we follow on later when it is more expensive. Tomorrow never matters, only today, which is currently a catastrophe because we didn't do what we were supposed to do yesterday. Sullivanism is a lifelong devotion to bailing water out of a sinking ship and never addressing the hole in the boat. This is how you spend more on your squad than all but fifteen other European teams and still end up being worse than Bournemouth.<br />
<br />
And what this culture of being substandard does is bleed and seep everywhere. If the training ground isn't up to scratch and the Baroness is encouraging people to watch her new TV show rather than the first team match being broadcast at the same time, then why the hell should anybody else care about the way the club is projected? What exactly does working for West Ham mean, and what exactly does our club stand for? Truthfully, I think what these repeated episodes tell us is that the answer is.....nothing. The club stands for nothing.<br />
<br />
And when you have no moral core, no vision, no structure and no plan and you stand for nothing, then this is what happens. People lose sight of the success of the club being meaningful. From the outside it looks to me like there is a huge vacuum where there ought to be leadership. Sullivan is holed up in Theydon Bois on the phone to agents, Brady is part time and Pellegrini disappears back to Chile whenever there is a break in fixtures. Who, I wonder, is there to shape the club and establish the values that employees ought to be adhering to?<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>That West Ham leadership structure in full</i></div>
<br />
I don't know Mark Phillips, and I have no idea what his past performance or conduct has been like, or the terms of his employment contract, and therefore it would be entirely inappropriate for me to comment on what should happen to him. Very specifically, I have no idea if his views have ever impeded the development of kids from ethnic minorities because until a month ago we had never developed any kids from any background at all.<br />
<br />
I will say this though - this sort of thing happens too often for me to think it is a series of random events. Employees are operating with no regard for the club's reputation either because they have no regard for the club's reputation or it has never been made clear to them that they need to be more professional in their conduct. And that comes from the culture within West Ham. It comes from leadership, or more relevantly, the absence of it and it comes from the acceptance that West Ham is not a high performance work environment.<br />
<br />
So, when youth coaches feel they can tweet from Far Right marches, and when high profile players go out boozing while injured, and when nepotism is rife, and the Vice Chairman refuses to give up a pointless and unhelpful <i>Sun </i>column lest it detract from her personal brand, then what does that tell us? What do these repeated demonstrations of valueless behaviour really mean?<br />
<br />
I think it is clear: the club is rotting from the inside out. Mark Phillips is just a symptom - the disease is elsewhere. </div>
HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-23169113732828115142018-10-03T13:20:00.000+01:002018-10-03T13:20:44.549+01:00The Week of Waking Up<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"My mind is open wide</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And now I'm ready to start"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>Arcade Fire<i>, "Ready to Start"</i></div>
<br />
<b><i><u>Act One - Zabaleta Earns Hazard Pay : West Ham 0 - 0 Chelsea</u></i></b><br />
<br />
I don't know about you guys, but I'm quite enjoying this good start to the season that we have made, whereby one must discount the actual beginning to the season and instead pretend it all kicked off last week.<br />
<br />
Chelsea were the first to arrive, kickstarting our week of waking up by strolling into the Kitten's Den with a 100% record and leaving with just a point, and a great deal of appreciation for Andriy Yarmolenko's aerial ability. Our first home point of the season was hard fought and well earned, and a generally optimistic glimpse at a slightly brighter future.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Worst game of "Simon Says" ever</i></div>
<br />
That said, I think we have to be realistic about what this point says about us, and what it says about the wider landscape of the Premier League. This was a counterpunching performance, whereby we allowed Chelsea's dreamy midfield to dominate possession, relied upon channeling their most dangerous players into places we could deal with them and then looked to our counter attacking ability to create chances.<br />
<br />
Such a strategy is perfectly in line with where we are as a team, with where Chelsea are under Maurizio Sarri, and also with the ever widening gulf between the Big Six<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">™</span></span> and the rest of us. While we may wish for something more offensive, the truth seems to be that opening up against these sorts of teams rarely works well for middling types such as ourselves. So Manuel Pellegrini kept the structure tight, and watched as we bundled Chelsea up quite nicely in a shrewdly put together defensive blanket.<br />
<br />
Key to all this was the midfield trio of Declan Rice, Mark Noble and Pedro Obiang, who ceded possession to the fabulous Jorginho - Mateo Kovacic axis in the middle of the park, but brilliantly blocked off passing lanes and made important tackles and interceptions when needed. Because of the way Chelsea play, their midfielder with the most licence to roam is N'Golo Kante, of all people, and we were probably fortunate that two of their better chances fell to him. He popped up in our box with all the confidence of your parents trying to cope with series linking a recording on Sky Q, and duly deleted all your stored episodes of <i>Band of Brothers, </i>blazing over both times<i>. </i><br />
<br />
Interestingly, Eden Hazard was kept largely under wraps by the outstanding Pablo Zabaleta - with some help from Fabian Balbuena and Rice - and even though the FA Level 1 coach in me was purring at his ability to "<i>hide, manouevre and reveal</i>" the ball - he had little impact until late on when he switched sides and started getting in behind Arthur Masuaku. As it was, the best chance of the game for the visitors fell to Alvaro Morata who capitalised on a piece of defending from Yarmolenko that can charitably be described as "<i>worse than Farage turning up for dinner</i>", only for Lukasz Fabianski to rush off his line and save with his face. I should note that Morata was so impressive when he came on that it took me four days to realise it was him and not Giroud who missed the chance. Sixty million quid. Modern football.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, our first half counterattacks were working now and again, and a lovely piece of skill from Felipe Anderson set Michail Antonio away, only for him to blaze wide. Shortly after, Rice and Yarmolenko combined to get him much closer to goal, but Kepa blocked his shot, and his afternoon was best summed up by him being substituted just as he was starting to physically dominate David Luiz. Those chances remained the sum of our threat until substitute Robert Snodgrass picked out Yarmolenko late on with a sublime cross that found the Ukrainian totally unmarked at the back post. With the goal at his mercy, he somehow achieved the impossible by heading wide and actually making me yearn for Andy Carroll.<br />
<br />
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<br />
This weeks xG map from <a href="https://twitter.com/Caley_graphics/status/1043870848799657984">Caley Graphics</a> does a good job of showing that while we certainly <i>could </i>have won, it's not entirely accurate to say we <i>should </i>have done. Chelsea had lots of shots from good locations and on another day might have sneaked one in. Let's, gulp, respect the point.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"He knows so much about these things"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>The Smiths<i>, "This Charming Man"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Perhaps the most encouraging thing about this performance was the overwhelming feeling that Manuel Pellegrini had finally hit upon a tactical system that made sense in the context of the match. At Liverpool it seemed be the case that he wasn't budging from a flat back four playing high, and we were duly treated to an afternoon of chasing after disappearing Scousers. This time, he took a more pragmatic approach and cut his cloth according to the situation. Thus we restricted the attacking excesses of Masuaku, and focused our midfield efforts on stopping Hazard.<br />
<br />
Is it entirely inaccurate to suggest that this was the kind of performance one might have expected if we were still managed by a furiously masticating Brummie, swigging from a pint of wine on the touchline? Maybe not, but we set up to stifle Chelsea and stayed in the game with the intention of hitting them on the break. It wasn't quite the cavalier attacking we were promised during the glorious summer, but then again, those statements are a lot easier to make when the whole season is pregnant with possibility. When you've lost four of your first five games, however, and a winter relegation battle is beckoning then pragmatism is a much more comfortable bedfellow. And fair play to Pellegrini for finally compromising when it was needed.<br />
<br />
Further abroad, Antonio was deployed up front in the absence of Marko Arnautovic, and struggled along manfully. I didn't think he did as badly as some people felt, but I also remain unconvinced that he is fully recovered from his hamstring injuries. As a player he rather resembles a toy electric car, wound up and left to ping explosively about the place, crashing in to things and generally causing havoc. On days such as this, we missed the slightly cooler thinking Arnautovic.<br />
<br />
And imagine how panicky you have to be if you're considered less clear headed than a 29 year old man who dyed his hair peroxide blonde.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Cause I ain't gonna be made to look a fool no more, </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>You done it once too often, what do you take me for?"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>Chas n' Dave,<i> "Ain't No Pleasing You"</i></div>
<br />
I should admit that I am often wrong about things. I write down my thoughts after each game, committing them to cyber stone, and thus they can be thrown back at me when they later prove incorrect. And this happens frequently. And it has happened again.<br />
<br />
I've written about the mixed bag of a summer that I felt we had. Issa Diop and Ryan Fredericks are my favourite signings, and I hated the decision to take on Jack Wilshere. The others all lay on a line somewhere between those two points, including Lukasz Fabianski. about whom I was largely ambivalent. And I was wrong. Totally.<br />
<br />
Adrian, a man who plays as if permanently chasing after an imaginary raccoon, is someone who I love like a brother, or a friendly newsagent, but whose time has sadly come. Fabianski exudes calmness. Indeed, such is the feeling of serenity that he engenders that I found myself watching this game and thinking fondly of the Seinfeld episode where all the characters yell <i>"serenity now!" </i>when they get angry, and then slowly go crazy through repression.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Serenity now! Insanity later!</i></div>
<div>
<br />
As it is, Fabianski simply radiates a feeling of security through the team that even seeps all the way to the crowd. For all Chelsea's late pressure I don't ever recall thinking that they were remotely close to scoring, such is the confidence I had in the big Pole. Barring peak Robert Green or Ludo, I can't really remember feeling like that for an awfully long time.<br />
<br />
So, a point gained. Traction. A foot on the ladder at home, and a journey begun. I'll take it.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Dream it while you can, </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Maybe some day I'll make you understand"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>Oasis<i>, "Fade Away"</i></div>
<br />
<b><u><i>Act Two - Not Shrewsbury : West Ham 8 - 0 Macclesfield</i></u></b><br />
<br />
As I get older, I like to think that I've grown as a person. I no longer see opposition fans in the same way as I did when I was a kid, as enemy combatants to be taken on and somehow beaten. Now I just see other people exactly like me, who happened to be born elsewhere. In other words, I am no longer thirteen.<br />
<br />
And so as we smashed eight goals past Macclesfield I began to feel rather sorry for their supporters. Bottom of the league or not, they still would have harboured hopes for this game. It is the trick we all pull on ourselves as football fans - to conjure belief where none really ought to exist. And thank goodness we do, because a lot of stadiums would be empty if we didn't. So we can all sympathise with their predicament here, as they would have spent the day finding a way to view this game through a prism of optimism, only to have that view shattered by three first half goals.<br />
<br />
From our perspective, the joy in this game came more from the unexpected nature of it all, as we eschewed our usual policy of not scoring against lower league teams until extra time and instead starting smashing goals in from the start. While we have generally stopped our habit of losing to smaller clubs, we have instead tended to make interminably heavy weather of it, even managing to go two nil down to Spurs at one point, before managing a second half revival at Wembley last year.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Nobody has ever looked this happy to score against Macclesfield</i></div>
<br />
In truth, just about the only way for a game like this to mean anything for a Premier League team is if this happens. Winning 8-0 is almost pointless, but it is infinitely preferable to sneaking past in extra time as we recently did against Accrington Stanley and Shrewsbury. Worse still was that we turned in those awful, laboured performances with players like Payet, Lanzini and Arnautovic on the pitch. Those games tended to shine a light on our glaring inadequacies, rather than allow us to build any confidence.<br />
<br />
This time around, we played the guys who needed minutes and not only did they sweep Macclesfield away as one might expect, but everyone who needed the confidence boost of a goal got one. Michail Antonio, Lucas Perez, Angelo Ogbonna, Ryan Fredericks and Robert Snodgrass all scored, with the latter managing a particularly joyous double. Better still, perhaps, was the debut of Grady Diangana, who played out wide and linked up with fellow youth team new boy Joe Powell rather well. Both looked as though they have enough in their games to play at this level, although the question remains as to whether beating a team who would rather have been at the dentists is much of a barometer.<br />
<br />
My favourite moment amid the carnage was the sheer joy shown by Snodgrass at scoring his first West Ham goals. It's easy to be snide and condescending about goals against Macclesfield, and players signed from Hull, but isn't Snodgrass everything that we want in a player? He cares, he tries, he wants to be here and he takes joy in our successes. A player like that in a squad can be invaluable, especially when he is prepared to bide his time as a substitute. His brief cameo against Manchester United roused the entire ground as he chased fruitlessly after the ball for a full minute before needlessly fouling someone. And how the supporters seemed to be galvanised by this. If the divergent careers of John Moncur and Freddie Kanoute taught me anything, it's that you need to look like you're showing effort, irrespective of what you're actually doing. Snoddy has this nailed, and I rather like him for it.<br />
<br />
Elsewhere, there was a pleasant hue to the evening as Powell, Diangana, Declan Rice and Conor Coventry all finished the game, giving us the merest hint that maybe our decrepit Academy might be about to splutter into life once more. Our reward for this jolly run out is a home tie with Spurs, just as their fixtures take a turn for the brutal. What's past is prologue, dear friends - history awaits us.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Whenever I'm asked who makes my dreams real</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I say that you do"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>The Temptations<i>, "Get Ready"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><i><u>Act Three - The Pay Off : West Ham 3 - 1 Manchester United </u></i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Isn't this the point of it all? Isn't this why we go? Why we moved ground? Why we pay over the same money to watch our team as Manchester United fans, even though they're the casino and we're the idiot pensioner about to blow our savings on the roulette wheel? This is it, friends, and I'd advise you never to look past such moments. Savour them. Revel in them. Drink them in. This is why we do this. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I enjoyed this</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Things started well, as the marvellous Zabaleta took a pass from the equally marvellous Noble on five minutes, drove in behind Luke Shaw and crossed for Anderson to flick brilliantly past David De Gea. After that start, we continued to push the visitors back, as their play was as weak as their godawful salmon pink strip, and we duly scored a second when Yarmolenko's shot took a heavy deflection off Victor Lindelof just before half time. I googled it and Lindelof is actually a professional footballer, as opposed to a competition winner, by the way.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
What was interesting was that this was another game against a decent side, where we showed we actually had the ability to throw a couple of punches back in their direction. Whether it was Arnautovic bullying their many and varied centre backs, Anderson and Yarmolenko getting in down the sides, or Mark Noble reinventing himself as a central playmaker, we continued to pose problems all game and were well worthy of the 3-1 scoreline, earned against a team full of players who are hugely pricey and used to be good when they played for other teams. Tellingly, our own version of that player - Jack Wilshere - has missed all three of these games. One wonders where he will fit in when he returns.<br />
<br />
Once more our tactical setup was both thoughtful and successful. The visitors played with three at the back, and consequently were able to create lots of crossing opportunities for Ashley Young wide on the right. He drifted in behind Anderson frequently, and with Masuaku engaged in the inside right channel by either Fellaini or Martial, this looked to be their best hope of scoring. This in itself was odd given that Romelu Lukaku was playing, and he scores a goal a game against us, but such was the excellence of Issa Diop that he was almost invisible. Ironically, Mourinho congratulated <i>"the scouts who found Diop" </i>after the game, which means we are about two weeks away from David Sullivan claiming credit for his signing.<br />
<br />
However, for all those moments of success for the visitors out wide it amounted to little and our midfield trio were once more excellent in controlling the centre of the park, with Noble repeatedly finding himself alone in acres of real estate. He responded by creating the first and then picking out Arnautovic for the third, when the Austrian calmly drew De Gea before sliding it past him with ease. Whisper it quietly, but that front three is starting to look the part, as well they might for the £80m they cost us.<br />
<br />
What Anderson's failure to track back also did, was give him a head start on Young whenever we broke, and it was noticeable in the second half how frequently he got the ball in advanced areas and just failed to pick out a pass. On other days, in colder climes, we might find ourselves getting a lot of joy from such swift counter attacks. If the manager was to blame for the underwhelming start to the season then he ought to get credit for things like that. I loved the way we played in the second half here.<br />
<br />
To wit: I saw something today that I hadn't seen yet this season - the sense of a beginning - and Pellegrini deserves credit for that. I was fuming after the Wolves debacle, but this was clear progress even allowing for the woeful way in which Manchester United played. We have seen plenty of underpowered visitors waltz off with the points from our new home, so what a distinct joy it was to see this bunch of expensively assembled charlatans sent back empty handed. And all the while, there was Jose Mourinho, weeping, moaning and dissembling, desperately trying to get fired so he can move out of his Manchester Travel Tavern and get back to his hobby of shouting at the weather. What a lovely day it was, and what a fine week for us to have woken up. Lovely football, a stadium with a pulse, the hints of promise as new players settle down. Savour this. Revel in this. Drink this in. It's why we do this.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"You can't play it safe</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And still go down in history"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>Emmylou Harris<i>, "Belle Starr"</i></div>
<br />
The three men that Manchester United took off cost them a cool £180m, and serve as a gentle reminder that sides such as these have privileges and head starts that we can only dream of. It is also why a result such as this is always presented as a Manchester United defeat and never as a West Ham victory. Don't get upset about it - instead, savour the moment we gave a bloody nose to the elite and won a hand even though the deck was stacked.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Hazard doesn't play for United yet as he's still good. Give it five years.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But we shouldn't get too carried away in lauding our attackers, when the base for all of this came from our increasingly decent looking defence. We shouldn't ignore the early season fragility, as there was a reason for that, but a couple of recent fixes have certainly helped an awful lot. Fabianski is wonderful, of course, and his save here from Fellaini was the equal of anything we will see from De Gea all year. But Zabaleta has returned on the right hand side and although he still plays as though he is twenty three and at Manchester City, he has added some undeniable zest to that side of the pitch. I don't think it's a coincidence that Noble has drifted wider and is playing so well in the space being created inside by the Argentines <i>"Han Solo chasing after stormtroopers"</i> style overlaps. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Cover me Andriy!</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Inside him Fabian Balbuena has really settled in, and has given us the kind of solidity that we might have got from Jose Fonte had we bought him before he became a cast member of <i>New Tricks</i>. The Paraguayan has brought some physicality to our back four that has been needed, and has slightly more recovery speed than the likes of James Collins or Ogbonna, which has proved useful when he's been needed to cover Zabaleta's Death Star frolics. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
His partner, Diop, has been equally good and his sixty yard accidental burst forward with the ball at his feet here was my moment of the match. It's been a long time since we had a central defender who could carry the ball in any meaningful way. The fact he looked terrified for most of his run shall not deter me. I want to see more. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Perhaps the only concern is the way in which Arthur Masuaku has curtailed his forward surges to take a more conservative left back role. While that is probably a good thing for us defensively it does rather beg the question of why we would have him in the side, given that Aaron Cresswell is a better defender but doesn't offer the same threat going forward. Masuaku, we should remember, was quite literally one of the most successful dribblers in Europe last season. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Perhaps the answer lies in who we have been playing, and we might get the more adventurous Arthur back once we start playing sides at a similar level to ourselves. For now, I shall take a watching brief - without that attacking threat, I am not sure I value Masuaku highly enough to play him over Cresswell. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And in front of them is the glue that binds the whole thing together. Declan Rice, at the tender age of nineteen, already looks like he might be the most important player in our side. Certainly Arnautovic and Anderson are more eye catching, but each have understudies with some degree of competence. If Rice gets injured we will be reduced to stabbing voodoo dolls of opposition number tens, as the only way to stop them. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
His assurance on the ball is spectacular, and his new found ability to play passes off both feet is really the thing that has elevated him to another level. His ability to read the game is good, but with that range of passing he is no longer an attacking black hole, and indeed has started a decent number of counter attacks, simply by getting rid of the ball quickly and efficiently. I'm fairly ambivalent about the contractual impasse that we find ourselves in with him, reasoning that both sides are probably leaking equally, and that this is simply the culture of West Ham at present. I highly doubt that his contract negotiation is all that different to any other player, but for all of that, the club desperately need to make sure he sticks around. He is fast becoming indispensable. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Every minute, from this minute now</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>We can do what we like anywhere"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>Snow Patrol,<i> "Open Your Eyes"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And there we have it. The week of waking up. The week when things came together and the fruits of that summer labour were finally borne. Perhaps that much lauded promise of playing attacking football was actually a distraction for a manager and a team who were getting to know each other, and couldn't realistically be expected to get into high gear without first turning on the engine. Perhaps we just needed to play bigger teams so that we might get into that counterpunching mode, and take our first baby steps that way. Perhaps I just need some new metaphors. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
In the end, I am just relieved that we are off and running. The very notion of taking seven points from fixtures against Everton, Chelsea and Manchester United seemed crazy just ten days ago, but there we have it. Picking up unlikely points was what propelled us up the league in 2015/16, and dropping them where we shouldn't was what curtailed our Champions League hopes. Maybe more consistency lies ahead, or maybe we'll just continue to be totally unpredictable. For all the joyousness of the last week, I still think a top ten finish would be a significant achievement for Pellegrini.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Worth more of your time</i></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
A word too, for West Ham women, who picked up their first win of the season with a 2-1 win over Yeovil, to complete a fine weekend for the club. It is a strange situation that the women are in, having come up two divisions into the Women's Super League, and having to build a squad from scratch. Given that, they have recruited unusually well for a West Ham side, and presumably the teenage Managing Director Jack Sullivan deserves some credit for that. Players like Claire Rafferty and Gilly Flaherty are outstanding signings for the team, although it was rather fitting that it was Rosie Kmita who scored the winner, as she is one of the only players held over from last season. In true West Ham fashion we missed about five outstanding chances in the first half alone, which suggests that the new girls are settling in to the West Ham Way quite nicely.<br />
<br />
I will be writing more extensively on the women's team now that I have my season tickets sorted out to go and see them. They deserve a bit more support than they seem to be getting from the West Ham fanbase. Perhaps we've all still got some waking up to do.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"You'll never know just what you wanna do</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Or where you wanna go, I think it's time"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>The Stone Roses<i>, "What The World Is Waiting For"</i></div>
<br />
<b><i><u>Epilogue: The H List, An Announcement</u></i></b><br />
<b><i><u><br /></u></i></b>
As you may have noticed, this article is late and free wheeling and not at all what any of us are used to. It is those final weird series of <i>Scrubs </i>when everything was the same, but not really the same, and none of the jokes were funny.<br />
<br />
This is partly because I've been ill this week, but also because finding the time to write so frequently about the club is proving difficult. My children are getting older and are demanding more of my time, and indeed my daughters Year 8 homework now includes quadratic equations, and that alone took care of me writing anything after Chelsea.<br />
<br />
So The H List can't continue to be the weekly match report that it has been recently. Instead, I'll move to a less regular opinion piece, where I talk more generally about the club and less about specific matches. That will take some of the pressure off me to produce something each Monday after we have played, and also expose you to fewer articles that might well be reasonable but totally depress you on your way to work.<br />
<br />
It will also allow me some more time to research a book that I have been thinking of writing for some time. I have finally decided to dip my toe into that murky stream, not allowing myself to be put off by my lack of experience, publishing deal or literary agent. If it's good enough for best selling author Katie Price, it's good enough for me.<br />
<br />
I hope you'll all still keep reading.</div>
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HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-6562445807629191362018-09-19T14:11:00.001+01:002018-09-19T14:11:05.277+01:00Everton 1 - 3 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Throw those curtains wide!</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">One day like this a year would see me right"</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>- </i>Elbow<i>, "One Day Like This"</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><u>Act 1 - Rarely Seen Moments of Joy</u></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;">Frantically googling synonyms for "happy". Frantically trying to remember what time Match of the Day 2 is on. Our season starts today, folks!</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><i>The most coordinated we have looked all year</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">***</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">"Don't get sentimental, it always ends in drivel"</span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><i>- </i>Radiohead,<i> "Let Down"</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Oh, but what a day, What a reward for the hardy madmen and women who ventured to Liverpool on a Sunday when just about anything else would have been more appealing. Fancy going to watch West Ham at Everton. That's like going to the Colosseum to cheer on the Christians for their difficult away fixture with the lions. </span></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7_f5IbAOonRfVzo6an6ggIeQ7IA_UzcyZINK8SbvkldgoVkbL2mJrfyxx2SaPt3HoIY13Hrl5yIrjuc2z_NDeVtmOJRY89M_JYjTTLAvWzrn-0LXDVJAV3d8RZa0EcAHdM7Dt/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="310" data-original-width="627" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7_f5IbAOonRfVzo6an6ggIeQ7IA_UzcyZINK8SbvkldgoVkbL2mJrfyxx2SaPt3HoIY13Hrl5yIrjuc2z_NDeVtmOJRY89M_JYjTTLAvWzrn-0LXDVJAV3d8RZa0EcAHdM7Dt/s320/Capture.PNG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><i>Not the best starting position I've ever seen defensively</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">But I suppose that these are the slings and arrows that keep us coming back. Without hope where would we be, after all? Well, Stoke is where we would be, but you get my point. For those fans who travel to Everton on days like these, there can be no sweeter or more deserved feeling than this. From the moment that Andriy Yarmolenko loped into the box and fired us into the lead, we never looked in danger of losing this match. The eternal pessimist in every West Ham supporter might well have said "<i>we can get a point here</i>" when Arnautovic made it 3-1, but in truth we were always oddly comfortable even though the home side did create some good chances. Perhaps the reality is that they were so visibly lacking in confidence that it was just impossible to imagine a player like Cenk Tosun taking the chances that came his way. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Everton were shocking then, but such qualifiers don't matter much when you have lost your opening four matches and looked bad doing it. We needed this win, and we got it through an excellent team display. What was interesting was that we seemed to abandon the wider, more expansive game that was allegedly being tried in the previous games and reverted to a more compact shape, better suited to exploiting the high raiding Everton full backs. And it worked a treat.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Declan Rice returned in the holding midfield role and was the best player on the pitch. He is the epitome of keeping things simple, but as my good friend The Boleyn Beluga once said to me - <i>"simplicity is deceptively complicated". </i>The skill required to take up the positions he did, and the technique required to take the touches he did should not be underestimated. He was superb in that role and outshone his competition. Beside him Pedro Obiang was released further forward and was impressive too, playing a major part in the first and third goals, and generally looking like Cheikhou Kouyate but with an end product. The third Musketeer was Mark Noble, who <a href="https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2018/september/14-september/noble-we-need-grind-out-victory-everton">yelled at the foreign lads last week </a>, and justified his return to the side with a performance that showcased his worth. We know that central midfield is a problem, and that on tougher days against better teams it probably still will be, but this looked like the beginning of a solution. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Ahead of them Marko Arnautovic was outstanding, and every bulldozing run through the centre should be a fond reminder that David Moyes made some changes in his time here that will long outlast his shortened tenure. Yarmolenko too was very good, sweeping in the first after Arnautovic broke on to Obiang's pass and unselfishly squared it to him, with just nine minutes gone. He doubled the lead before half time when cutting in from the right and curling a beautiful finish into the top corner. It was a lovely finish but scandalously bad defending against a player so obviously one footed. Still, the Ukrainian has always been a goalscorer wherever he has played, and a threat from somewhere other than Arnautovic is going to be vital, especially with Manuel Lanzini currently laid up on the Andy Carroll Memorial Wing. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">We still look shaky at the back sometimes, although perhaps that is to be expected when the defensive set up changes every week. I still feel we have the defensive players best suited to a back five and the attackers for a back four and that mismatch is partially why we have looked so disjointed prior to this game. That said, for today this group held firm, despite the frankly terrifying sight of various Everton youngsters running past Pablo Zabaleta like they were playing in the park with a well meaning but disastrously unfit Uncle. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">I still like the look of Issa Diop in the middle, even if he broke the defensive line to free up the space from where Gylfi Siggurdsson headed Everton's goal in first half stoppage time. But he is mobile and composed and very much worth persevering with. I had initially thought that he might take a year to settle in, and so Balbuena would play alongside Ogbonna until the Frenchman was ready. As things have transpired, it's the Paraguayan who has looked a bit temperamental, but he was good here too and it was his quick thinking challenge that won back possession for Obiang to create our opener. Alongside them Arthur Masuaku was the name thrown up by the Pellegrini magic eight ball to play at left back, and he did an impressively physical job on Theo Walcott - so much so that he was probably lucky to get away with a head high attempt to control the ball that caught his opponent in the face. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">And the calming influence on all of this was Lukasz Fabianksi, who was once again faultless and continues to make a mockery of my suggestion that his purchase was a waste of time and money. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">We won't meet teams this compliant every week, but we won't meet teams as good as Liverpool and Arsenal either. It's a shame that the fixture list continues to laugh in our face by giving us Manchester United, Chelsea and Spurs in three of our next four games but there you go. Perhaps with some confidence and self belief hewn from this result, we can eke out one of those famous home wins that used to seem so frequent but probably never were. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">***</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><i>"So take a good look at my face</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><i>You'll see my smile looks out of place"</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><i>- </i>Smokey Robinson and The Miracles,<i> "Tracks of My Tears"</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">So what should we make of this in the grand scheme of things? We win at Everton less frequently than <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5254610/">David Sullivan pipes insane films into my TV</a>, and yet I'm still a bit unsure. It is early, and there are qualifiers to our poor start, for certain. The fixtures we have faced have been difficult, and by the time we hit nine games we will have played five of the inevitable top six. That is brutal. One also has to allow for the cultural change that is happening, as Pellegrini tries to shift us away from the chaos that remains after a stolid Sam Allardyce team was left rudderless by Slaven Bilic's lack of a plan, and then moulded into something more necessarily functional by David Moyes. When you view it like that, we can't be too surprised when the players seem slow to adapt to whatever new ideas the Chilean has brought with him. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">I will admit that I had hoped for a greater consistency of selection at this point. I'm bemused by why Ryan Fredericks keeps appearing then being dropped from the squad altogether, unless Pellegrini really is going to rotate his fullbacks every week. Fredericks and Diop are my two favourite signings of the summer because I like their speed, and both are young enough to actually command a transfer fee in the future. That is actually a genuine step forward for us in terms of acquiring players.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">I was nonplussed about Fabianski, reasoning that his marginal upgrade over Adrian wasn't going to be worth many points to us and, in fairness, after four games I was right - we literally couldn't have been any lower in the league if the Spaniard had been playing. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><i>Making me look stupid - not hard, admittedly</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">But Fabianski is more than a marginal upgrade, I think. Adrian has had to fight for his place under four consecutive managers and the fact that none have truly committed to him as a number one does suggest that there is something there that I am not seeing. Fabianski has shown an ability to make excellent saves, and generally exudes an air of calmness that you don't tend to get from Adrian, who frequently resembles a puppy going mad in a hall of mirrors. I wouldn't have signed the Pole, and I would have been wrong. Score one for David Sullivan. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">But you can immediately deduct that good mark for the signing of Jack Wilshere. Leaving aside concerns about his ability - and again, to be fair, this was the formation in which he should have been playing all season - he has now had a thoroughly predictable surgery and will be absent for six to twelve weeks. It's as tedious for me to say this as it is for you to read it every week, but our transfer policy is just Brexitly stupid. Signing a player with a long history of ankle injuries and hoping that he will be magically cured by the healing gale force winds of Rush Green is insane. Giving him a three year contract is just full on Caligula. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Elsewhere, I felt Anderson was at least the right profile of player, even if he seemed extraordinarily expensive. He was decent in this game, offering a constant outlet on the left, and generally looking like a highly dangerous prong of our attacking trident. On the other side was Yarmolenko, who has a touch of Chris Waddle about him with his languid gait, 80's haircut and lovely left foot, and he finally looked a bit fitter here, although he does appear to be one of those guys for whom the very act of existing seems to be exhausting. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">He is also bordering 29, and thus won't have long with us before the legs go, and thus needs to make an instant impact. At £22m he has a lot of work to do before he has repaid that fee, but two goals at Goodison is a very nice down payment. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But drip feeding all of these new players into the team is no easy task, and while I think there might be some doubts about Pellegrini's hunger - do elite managers really just pack up and head for China mid career? - he has a big job on his hands here. I'm nervous, because there is much at stake and trusting that Sullivan has done his due diligence is probably not a good idea, but there can be no argument about his pedigree. I would like to see this shape and formation given a chance now. We need some stability and a pattern of play, and perhaps this is the blueprint to giving us a nice peaceful rest of the season. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><u>Act Two - Standard Misery Addendum, Because West Ham</u></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">"So before you take this song as truth, you should wonder what I'm taking from you</span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">How I benefit from you being here"</span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><i>- </i>Villagers,<i> "Becoming A Jackal"</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">But there can be no peace, not really. If you're in London you're always five feet from a rat, and if you're a West Ham fan you're always two days from a crisis. And so, before this game <i>The Times </i>ran a piece about Manuel Pellegrini being unhappy about the culture of leaks that surrounds the club. It wasn't attributed to Pellegrini, and he later denied it was true, meaning that it was a leak about leaks. Get the fuck outta here Newcastle, the professionals are in town. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">The focus of the story was well known Twitterer <a href="https://twitter.com/ExWHUemployee">@ExWHUEmployee</a> who, the article claimed, had revealed the team early on his account for sixty successive games. Ex denies this element of the story, but there can be little argument that his is the account to follow if you want the inside track on what is happening at the club. Although I have never met Ex, we have swapped messages in the past, and I have urged him to put less information in the public domain. His response was that he feels he has a right to publish his information as would any other journalist utilising his sources, and furthermore that he does actively filter out stories that he believes are damaging to the club. I take him at his word in that regard, and I also cannot deny the truth of what he says. If I have a right to post these articles every week, then he has every right to post his. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">I should also add that Ex and his site, The West Ham Way, have done sterling work in raising significant funds for Isla's Fight, host a popular Pre Match Event and radio show and generally are representative of the views of an awful lot of West Ham fans. That matters because it adds the context that most of what I am about to say has already been rejected as irrelevant by a lot of supporters. Additionally, none of this is a personal attack, but I feel I can't leave it unaddressed if The H List does indeed purport to be an accurate journal of what it is to be a West Ham fan. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">All of this led to a bit of a shitstorm where Ex ended up on various radio shows defending his position, and then social media went wild as lots of people jumped to Ex's defence, pointing out that leaking a team an hour before it goes public really doesn't make much difference as the opposition is already prepared. And in that very strict context, I agree. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">Now, in the interests of balance I ought to say that I think Ex used to leak the team or suggest possible changes quite a bit earlier than that, until fan pressure got him to do it a lot closer to kick off. Still, while I agree that naming a team on a Saturday really doesn't make much difference to a game, I think it's also fair to say that there is literally nothing positive that can come out of it for West Ham. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">As part of his defence, Ex conducted a <a href="https://twitter.com/talkSPORT/status/1040565149239791616">Talksport interview</a> that bordered on the farcical, where he claimed that he wasn't a leak and that he actually just guessed the team. Sixty times in a row. I'm a bit disappointed that he took that route as I don't think you can spend years on Twitter demanding acknowledgment for your inside man status, and then suddenly pretend that you've just been cleverly guessing all along. It takes us for fools. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">But for all of that, the broader point is being missed here. None of this is about the leaking of the team, or indeed about Ex, because he is far from the only person on the web with seemingly inside information coming from high places within the club. No, the broader point is that information is being leaked at all. Why do we know that the chairman offered Jack Wilshere a one year deal and was overruled by the manager, just four games into his West Ham career? Why do we know the details of what Declan Rice wants in his new contract? </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">This. Is. Not. Normal. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">Properly run football clubs do not leak like this. Properly run football clubs do not have family members placed into positions of authority with no qualifications for the role. Properly run football clubs do not have every aspect of their transfer business widely published before it happens. Properly run football clubs do not release</span></span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"> emails detailing their transfer business in order to refute accusations from other clubs that they have lied. Properly run football clubs don't entertain allowing large, undemocratic supporter groups to have back channel </span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">access</span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> to the chairman. </span>Properly run football clubs don't allow managers to hire their own boss. Properly run football clubs don't canvas the </span></span><span style="color: #333333;">opinion of fans about managers and players. Properly run clubs don't have their own <a href="http://www.tribalfootball.com/articles/west-ham-axe-controversial-insider-column-4163051">Insider column on their website to discuss gossip and leak their own transfer plans</a>. Those are things you expect from despotic third world regimes, not Premier League heavyweights. </span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGkrbtb_qqF0GU7i4O5uWAvmNg2jsgug6SoS8MbCcTwKAG5ckoFjSDvetjvDdmQEBUjWgh9slWYlXh7W7A0yb_NAaqCQp7UphoDwA_T5AwLSPe1UlL_6QbHdZx6g_mOlc06mtW/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="614" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGkrbtb_qqF0GU7i4O5uWAvmNg2jsgug6SoS8MbCcTwKAG5ckoFjSDvetjvDdmQEBUjWgh9slWYlXh7W7A0yb_NAaqCQp7UphoDwA_T5AwLSPe1UlL_6QbHdZx6g_mOlc06mtW/s320/Capture.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;"><i>And that's where Pellegrini sat when he signed his contract</i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333;">But all of this speaks to the totally unprofessional culture round West Ham. The shitty training ground, the malfunctioning Academy and the fact that managers are routinely bemused by the way that private details of the club keep ending up in print are all sides of the same coin. And while I don't doubt that Ex and others like him have kept a lid on certain unsavoury stories <i>(and just imagine how mental they must be when you consider what is in the public domain) </i>that isn't reassuring to me. Ex, as he says in his Talksport interview, isn't a journalist and that matters. He has no editorial policy or requirement to provide counterbalance in his reporting. He may try, indeed I'm sure he does, but what if this information ends up with the hands of someone who isn't putting the clubs best wishes first? Ultimately the Board are standing by while fans exercise their own discretion and put this information out there against their manager's wishes and they do nothing to <span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">stop it. Why is that? I mean, really, why is that?</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Ultimately the only conclusion to be drawn is that either they don't think it matters or they are aware of, and approve the leaking. Marvellous. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Because here is what all of this stuff does. It degrades the culture and reputation of your club. It allows your stewards and your office staff and your youth team players and your ground staff to know that this isn't an elite professional working environment. And gradually that becomes baked into the skin of your club and doing things "not quite right" becomes good enough. And then eventually "good enough" degrades to "it'll do", and then suddenly you are Blackpool or Coventry. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;">And our managers know this and hate it. Two have had this to say on the matter:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">Sam Allardyce:<i> “You pull your hair out
at the beginning and in the end you have to accept it for what it is and move
on and accept that it is going to happen.”</i></span><span style="color: #333333;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">David Moyes:<i> “It makes it very difficult. There are so many things
at football clubs that can happen daily, whether it be transfers, dealing with
players or team selections, and you hope you get a bit of trust.</i></span></span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">I’m sure every manager who has come in has tried to change
it.”</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">And I return to
something I said last week. What has been the constant during this last seven
or eight years when the club has gradually slipped into this state of
disrepair? Hint; it ain't the managers or the players.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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So really, none of this is about Ex or Sean Whetstone or Hugh Southton or any
of the others who get regularly accused of being stooges for the Board. It
isn't about team leaks or the fact that managers have to give the team to the
chairmen before the players. It is all of that and none of it. It is about the
culture of West Ham United.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrh64E77NRfu4VAbsAEXUisY-n_ireME5apS5gbPs5HNnGRzswlx0Q31gs1IEOTtvwtL_Nlt2ie2d4YpXQBQzxmZ4GuHMIi5DZh0tN6YPR88XkmZgyjkFC26E8Y2c6lpMTCoj-/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-09-17+at+22.42.26.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="426" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrh64E77NRfu4VAbsAEXUisY-n_ireME5apS5gbPs5HNnGRzswlx0Q31gs1IEOTtvwtL_Nlt2ie2d4YpXQBQzxmZ4GuHMIi5DZh0tN6YPR88XkmZgyjkFC26E8Y2c6lpMTCoj-/s320/Screen+Shot+2018-09-17+at+22.42.26.png" width="235" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><i>Not sure we'll see his like again</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">I leave you with this. Imagine you are a professional footballer, and an agent
acting on behalf of West Ham approaches your agent. You think that is a bit
weird because usually that would be a club representative, but they are
offering a massive wage increase so you agree to hear them out. You ask your
current manager about the move and he tells you that he interviewed for the
West Ham job previously and the owners teenage son was in the meeting, and that
was a bit weird too but, still, big money. So you move forward and in the end
your agent hammers out a deal and you sit down to discuss it over. But
something is nagging at you - maybe you are gay. Or maybe you have an
illegitimate child your wife is unaware of. Or a huge gambling debt. Or you are
concerned about your wages being made public because of societal pressures in
your home country. Or maybe you have none of those issues but you are just a
regular person who is bemused at why so much of the club's business is public
knowledge.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><br />
Ask yourself this - would you move to West Ham in those circumstances? The club
that can't keep it's team secret? The team where any wage negotiation is public
knowledge? The club that resides permanently on back pages for everything other
than footballing reasons? The club where managers leave and smile ruefully when
asked what it was like?</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><br />
Clubs with this type of unprofessional culture either don't get very good
players, or they pay through the nose to get them. And at this point I feel I
should remind you that we pay our squad more than Roma and Dortmund.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><br />
Now, I am not suggesting that any of those people I listed above would out a
gay footballer, but that's not the point - it's illustrative. The point is that
it shouldn't really be in their power to even consider it. And yet it would be,
and that is the problem. And. It. Is. Not. Normal.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The Board could end this right now if they wanted. They know who Ex is, as Jack
and David Sullivan Junior have been guests on his radio show and his Twitter
account. Sean Whetstone sat on the Supporters Advisory Board, and indeed took
over leaking the team on Sunday from Ex - something that concerns me greatly
given that he now sits on the board of WHUISA and he really is accountable to a
code of conduct.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Let's wrap this up - it's had more false endings than Lord of the Rings so far.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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This is a long, rambling set of thoughts, but it comes down to a simple point.
I follow Ex on Twitter, I pore over his articles like anyone else, and for that
I guess I am a hypocrite. But I also want to see this stop because of what it
says about the club. I want West Ham to be better, to be ultra professional and
a football club that other teams aspire to emulate. That is absolutely,
definitively not the case right now.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Be better, West Ham.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i>Because of the nature of this piece, I felt it only fair to allow Ex to have
a right of reply. His response was this:</i></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">***</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><b><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">ExWHUEmployee - </span></i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">"Firstly, I would like to clarify some of the things
that I said in the TalkSport interview here and dispute the fact that they are
farcical. When I said I guess the starting 11 it is obviously meant
as educated guessing which I did try to explain in the interview. The
way my information works is that I hear different bits of news which I then
piece together to “predict the team”. For example you hear of
injuries/illnesses, you hear of how the team sets up in training, you hear of certain
players being told they are starting and certain things make sense as fans as
to who would be playing. Geo Mackie of Hammers Chat would often send
me his “predicted team” which he based with less inside hints then I would get
and most weeks he would be right or out by one player which proves it can be
done. It is very rare anyone of any note will message me and say
this is the team from 1-11. When it comes to things like transfers I
am not predicting because I am told directly things from scouts, agents,
players, people in the media but again it is a case of putting it all together
and working out what is accurate and what isn’t and this is where my comments
about not being a journalist but being better than most comes from. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">A lot more work
goes into doing what I do than people will credit especially those that wrongly
assume I have a direct line to David Sullivan. As I have maintained
I only put out stories that I believe to have no harm to the team and have
helped the club many a time to quash stories that I have heard of before that
reach the mainstream. Whilst I admit it is pleasing to get stories
right if what I did was solely based on ego I would also put the negative
stories out because those are the ones that get the most attention too but I
don’t because I am a massive fan and want the best for this club. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">This article says
that it is only West Ham that have these social media leaks and that is quite
simply not true. Newcastle recently commentated on having leaks
and I am in a few Twitter groups where myself and other people in the know from
other clubs swap information and then you can piece a story
together. An example of this was our possible signings of Fabianski
and Mawson where most of the information that I got on the deals came from the
Swansea end of things rather that West Ham. The difference between
it is that as West Ham fans we do not search for other clubs’ news so we are
not aware that it also happens and is an indication of the social media age
that we live in. Even when I was growing up there was the pay per
minute service TeamTalk that operated for every club and charged you a fortune
to get the inside scoop from your club and they were a company with multi
million profits because fans like to hear the news from within the club and it
also explains why I have over 50k followers on Twitter, if the majority of
people didn’t like it these numbers wouldn’t be achieved. There are
thousands of transfer based social media accounts with millions of followers
who leak transfer news for all clubs and back up my point. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><br />
<!--[endif]--></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">The culture of
leaks within the club is not the case of it just being one mole or one high
profiled person leaking to me. My news often comes from third parties
from West Ham such as media outlets, friends of friends within the club and so
when people call for the mole to be outed and sacked it isn’t one person and
sometimes the person may not know they are even doing it. There is one
site in particular who has an open line to all of the board members and are
told things to publish and this site is not mine. If all board members
are prepared to tell people things then you can understand why others within
the club may not see it as a huge issue. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">I understand why
some people do not like what I do but the ironic thing about this is those that
are most vocal against it are two well known forum based West Ham sites of
which I used to read to get inside information and team selections which is
fine for them to do but not for others. This links to my point that
if my account didn’t exist many other would and still do now. Every
transfer window new “transfer accounts” occur and there are other West Ham
accounts who do put the starting 11 out days in advance they are just not as
well known as mine. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">This story has been
blown massively out of proportion because Pellegrini has already stated that
firstly he wasn’t aware of the leaks and even if it is true he isn’t
bothered. If the manager of the club isn’t bothered about it then
why does it need this much attention which when you look at it was a poor
journalists attempt to make another negative story about west ham in a slow
news week. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Every newspaper
does a predicted team at the weekend for each club and does their best to get
any story on the club most of which are inaccurate. Look at how much
negativity has been put out recently even on Sunday when finally winning a game
Sky falsely claimed that Perez refused to warm up and within minutes most of
West Ham’s social media were calling for him to be sacked. I do the
same yet I put a positive slant on it and I am more accurate that is the only
difference. Whilst I do not wish to blow my own trumpet and has been
kindly pointed out by the author of this article I also use the account to
promote positive causes and raise money for a variety of charities as well,
whilst I am not using this to hide behind I do find it odd that some people
refuse to look at the good that can be achieved and will find anything to knock
the account, you would have to speak to them for the motives of it.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">I am old school and
I miss the old days where you would only hear news on deals in the paper the
next day but for good or for worse social media has changed the face of
football and whether you like it or not there will always be many ExWHUEmployee
equivalents".</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">***</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="background-color: white; float: none; font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And there you
have it - both sides of the argument, debated civilly on the internet. Who
knew. I'll let you decide which side of the fence you fall on. </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div>
HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-50989800475928401522018-09-03T04:34:00.002+01:002018-09-03T04:34:37.302+01:00West Ham 0 - 1 Wolves (And Other Ramblings)<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><b>WARNING: This is not going to cheer you up. </b></i></div>
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<i>"</i><i>I resist what I cannot change, and I wanna find what can't be found" </i></div>
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<i>- </i>The War on Drugs<i>, "Pain"</i></div>
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Friends, Romans, countrymen! I have left you alone for a few weeks and, er, what <i>exactly</i> did you do in my absence?</div>
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All was well when I left. We were being encouraged to thank the Board for providing us with the <i>"best transfer window ever", </i>and everybody was wondering whether it was too soon to start exchanging our money into Euros ahead of our inevitable European run next season. I return and this is what I find - the ghost of Jack Wilshere wandering aimlessly round our midfield. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhob9IuRxxWApZcj8bLY-gpAx8hEf0hqO7NWJFx7in-oG43trziFkjy8mUGpMEwo42_eHoEPwUBvaPfBScgeGxkhttpN19-dHothnNgjyawJ-CYAQ85M9ve32Dhdcy-bMg0QK1E/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-09-02+at+20.20.56.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="580" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhob9IuRxxWApZcj8bLY-gpAx8hEf0hqO7NWJFx7in-oG43trziFkjy8mUGpMEwo42_eHoEPwUBvaPfBScgeGxkhttpN19-dHothnNgjyawJ-CYAQ85M9ve32Dhdcy-bMg0QK1E/s320/Screen+Shot+2018-09-02+at+20.20.56.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>The pain of carrying this team since January</i></div>
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I kind of wondered if it might make sense to watch the new signings play before we declared the summer a success, but July is the time of endless possibilities and the realm of the dreamer. I suppose if you can't get excited then, you never will. And I'm prepared to accept I never will. </div>
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But here is a thing that I have been thinking a lot about this summer. David Sullivan promised us the following back in February, when he was rocking on his heels and the waves of fan protests were lapping at his feet:</div>
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<i style="caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"I'm going to delegate the whole thing to a huge analysis and scouting system with a new Head of Recruitment. We'll have a massive video analysis department, increase the scouting department, every player will be looked at five or six times, we won't be signing a player when the manager's never even seen him play. The manager's going to go and watch him play and we hope we'll spend our money better"</span></i></div>
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Remember that? Because I do, and I'm never going to let anyone forget it. </div>
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Where am I going with this? Well, as far as I can tell, none of that has been implemented. And so while fans were placated with the <i>amount </i>of money being spent, nobody apparently stopped to question <i>how </i>it was being spent. And this is my main problem with the activities of this summer, namely that the idea of spending £100m is great, but if you spend it in the same way that you wasted the previous £50m then all you're doing is pissing our money up the wall.</div>
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And let us be clear - this is our money. David Sullivan isn't spending his own money, he is spending the television money received by West Ham, which he chose not to spend in previous windows. And he charges substantial interest on the money he lends to the club so I think we can strike altruism off the CV. </div>
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So how many times do we reckon that Manuel Pellegrini went to watch Ryan Fredericks then? Because Pellegrini was in China and Fredericks was in the Championship, and I'm struggling to think that it was as many as five or six. With Pellegrini being unveiled on 22nd May and Fredericks being signed on 5th June it doesn't seem to leave a lot of time to get a complex deal like this done. Indeed, Fredericks himself has admitted the discussions around his move <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/969850/Ryan-Fredericks-West-Ham-transfer-news">were ongoing for a long time before he moved</a>, which leaves us with one of two scenarios:</div>
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a) David Sullivan, who was let down by Rafa Benitez hours before his unveiling, was negotiating with players on the say so of a manager he had yet to employ, or;</div>
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b) David Sullivan was negotiating with players that he intended to buy irrespective of who the manager was going to be. </div>
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I WONDER WHICH ONE IT COULD POSSIBLY BE?</div>
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It is the leadership style du jour, of course. If you present thunder and lightning as par for the course, then people will invariably be happy on the days when it simply rains. But we should put our hands behind our backs and not so readily break out into applause for these guys. Ignore their useful idiots who plague social media with this bizarrely passive approach to requesting anything concrete from the board, and demand a bit more. They don't get to tell us they've been a success before they've actually achieved anything. The best transfer window ever, and there is a very reasonable chance we will now lose our opening seven games? And we're supposed to be thankful to the Board for their work? Do me a favour. </div>
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Look, I know that the story goes that we tied the Pellegrini deal up in January, and he watched all of our games last season but I'm just going to tell you here and now that I don't think Sullivan is, in any way at all, stepping back from transfers. He just isn't. The video analysis team doesn't exist, the new scouting system is a fiction, we still use agents as a primary part of our recruitment function, and the Director of Football was hired by the fucking manager which is the wrong way round, and has a <a href="https://www.whufc.com/teams/staff/football-personnel/mario-husillos">job description on the official website </a>that literally led me to wonder what he does. </div>
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And so we get South Americans, a keeper we don't really need, an injury prone former star who was good in 2012 and is in decline, a soon-to-be 29 year old bought at the height of his value with zero chance he can be sold at a profit, and a load of deals brokered by Unique Sports Management. This Director of Football sure seems to think a lot like the last one. </div>
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But sitting in the Thunderdome on Saturday and watching the crushingly inevitable conclusion to this game, I couldn't help but notice something. </div>
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The scapegoats are gone. </div>
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There is no more Bilic, no Moyes, no Noble, no Adrian, no Zabaleta, no Tony Henry, and it has made absolutely no difference. There is only one constant that I can think of who has remained immovable for the duration of the last few years of torture. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7azxHGN5epQEJ8W2sdsCq5Iby9zUIbkArYGcVG97y5rH-glkqyMpgyRfB4E6U5Yf_Zn6rnM7cRPFX_dHFwB3LkZN5iwj1OBkj1vs4qwj8xwiTeQyakvN_cZTlacwC8ARjhdDU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-09-02+at+23.48.37.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="182" data-original-width="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7azxHGN5epQEJ8W2sdsCq5Iby9zUIbkArYGcVG97y5rH-glkqyMpgyRfB4E6U5Yf_Zn6rnM7cRPFX_dHFwB3LkZN5iwj1OBkj1vs4qwj8xwiTeQyakvN_cZTlacwC8ARjhdDU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-09-02+at+23.48.37.png" /></a></div>
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<i>Yes David - I mean you</i></div>
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Maybe you feel sorry for him because every decision he makes turns out to be wrong. Maybe you think the players and the manager ought to be bearing the brunt of this rant given that they are the ones who are currently setting fire to their own feet. Maybe you think this particular record needs to be changed. </div>
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Well, maybe. But here's the thing:</div>
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When all your decisions turn out wrong - stop making them and get someone more qualified to do it. When you hire the manager and buy the players and they consistently aren't very good - stop hiring the managers and stop buying the players, and get someone more qualified to do it.</div>
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And changing the record would be to let the Board off scot free. A friend said something to me this weekend and I agree with him. His thought is that Sullivan will ruin this club and we will have to rise again. And he is right. It doesn't matter how much money is spent while we are trapped in this cycle of spiralling incompetence. This is only heading one way, and while I have resigned myself to the fact we can't achieve anything while Sullivan is here, it is terrifying to think of West Ham in that stadium, in the lower leagues, with these owners. </div>
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And so we buy South Americans because they were the best players when David Sullivan formed all his opinions about football. We continue to present this image of the manager being omnipotent at the club because that was the model when David Sullivan formed all his opinions about football. And we continue to be caught and passed by smaller clubs with less money and fewer resources because they have more qualified, more intelligent people making the decisions that matter. And eventually the larger, better financed clubs will catch on as well, and that will be a dark day for us because then our extra commercial revenue won't save us. </div>
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I promise you that I thought all of this before I went on holiday. I had a entire season preview drafted which I was going to post on the day of the Liverpool game but then I had no WiFi when I got to the Dordogne, and I was fairly glad of that fact as I followed along on the radio. By the time I got back we had lost three in a row and it just felt very much like posting it would have been me being wise after the event. I can say now that my feeling was that a top ten finish would have been a remarkable achievement for Pellegrini, and I have already adjusted that to simply staying up. </div>
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Another year of treading water then. Another year of fixing our gaze on the stars and dreaming on a spaceship. Another year of fucking mediocrity while our owner plays Fantasy Football with our very real football club. </div>
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It is September. </div>
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***</div>
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<i>"Get out your white suit, your tap shoes and tails</i></div>
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<i>Let's go backward when forward fails"</i></div>
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<i>- </i>Peter Allen<i>, "Everything Old is New Again"</i></div>
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This was my first chance to see the new version of West Ham and to be honest, the main question it raised in my mind was whether anyone had bothered to check whether the reason Pellegrini looks so craggy is because he is really Slaven Bilic wearing an ill fitting Mission Impossible mask?</div>
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In fact, this was an absolutely Bilician event from start to finish. The three defeats preceding it adding a frisson of tension to the air before a ball was kicked, the near total lack of an attacking plan, players strolling around as if convalescing, and the strangely inevitable feeling that it was bound to end 1-0. All Pellegrini needed to do was bend over and grab his knees and I swear we could have gone back in time. Sadly, the idea of playing like a Bilic team without either Dimitri Payet or Manuel Lanzini isn't very sustainable and we duly coughed up the late goal we had deserved to concede all day. All of which was made worse by the fact that Wolves comfortably outplayed us without actually playing especially well. </div>
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The <a href="https://twitter.com/11tegen11/status/1035922038928670720">11tegen11</a> Expected Goals map highlights nicely the dominance of the visitors, and if their centre forward Raul Jimenez wasn't playing in some kind of dream like state we'd have been well beaten long before Carlos Sanchez lost all cortical function and let Joao Moutinho rob him in our half as Adama Traore sprinted past a superbly half arsed Aaron Cresswell to slot in the winner. Traore is a kind of mythical figure among football analysts as he is almost without equal in European dribbling stats but is totally unable to produce any kind of end product. West Ham - still good for what ails you. </div>
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The entire day was a disappointment as almost every aspect of the team looked confused. Pellegrini still claims to be unsure of his best team - despite watching all our games from last season and buying all his own players apparently - and that is cripplingly obvious on the field. </div>
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I actually thought the back four didn't look too terrible, as Issa Diop was very good, and crucially demonstrated the kind of recovery speed that might allow a team to play such a high defensive line as we are apparently going to do. Diop and Fredericks are actually the two signings I like most from the summer, despite being the two who were first in the door, meaning they were most likely Sullivan signings. Both are mobile, and young enough to develop and improve. That said, Fredericks was pretty poor here and didn't utilise his outstanding pace particularly well when going forward. </div>
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He wasn't helped by the dire performance of Michail Antonio in front of him, who was so bad that I am beginning to wonder if someone has inserted two bowling balls into his knees. We had a strangely fluid attacking line up of Anderson, Snodgrass and Antonio who switched positions a lot and as a result spread their uselessness all over the field nicely. Snodgrass was sacrificed at half time - not literally, although the way things are going we shouldn't immediately rule it out - for Yarmolenko who came on and immediately looked exhausted. I'm beginning to long for the days of that 96 year old fitness coach that Bilic used to have. </div>
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After Anderson was pretty effective last week at Arsenal in a central role, he was shunted out to the left where he summarily failed to do anything. Ahead of him Marko Arnautovic had our only real chance very late on, when he got free in the inside right channel and only an excellent, but fortuitous, save from Rui Patricio denied us a thoroughly undeserved win. </div>
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<i>"Oh but I can hear you, loud in the centre</i></div>
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<i>Aren't we made to be crowded together, like leaves?"</i></div>
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<i>- </i>Fleet Foxes<i>, "Third of May/Odaigahara"</i></div>
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Perhaps the biggest problem, however, is the same one we have had for three years. We have nothing in central midfield. </div>
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Wilshere's ghost was nominally in there for the first hour but he has neither the mobility nor the defensive attitude to play in such a role. I would never have signed Wilshere simply because of his injury record, but there looks to me to be a real risk that the cumulative injuries have caused quite a dramatic physical decline. It's early and maybe he's still searching for fitness - no rush, lads, it's only September - but I've been shocked at how limited he has looked. He looks like a number ten or nothing, at this point. And we already have about twenty seven ineffective ones. </div>
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Alongside him Sanchez was passable, but is similarly limited, meaning that in the most crucial area of the pitch we are likely to be inferior to every team we meet. And it should be pointed out that this was a new central midfield, so this was actually the attempt to fix this situation. Jack Wilshere and Carlos Sanchez. Where the fuck was Pellegrini watching our games - in an opium den?</div>
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<i>Should I not have given it away there?</i></div>
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Things improved marginally when Pedro Obiang came on, as he came actually defend and attack and run and respirate, but we are woefully short in that area. We sold Cheikhou Kouyate for £9.5m to Crystal Palace - which is a mere £3m less than Liverpool got from Leicester for their third choice goalkeeper - meaning we simply have no mobility in the middle of the park. For a manager who wants to pay a variation on 4-4-2, it boggles the mind that he can be happy with the options he has available. </div>
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At the heart of the problem is the mismarriage of tactics and personnel. Fans are obsessed with high pressing these days, but that isn't feasible for us because we don't buy any attacking players with the ability to do it. So Javier Hernandez comes on to great cheers, and then floats around the pitch as if determined to prove the Hare and the Tortoise is a relatable story. He was hardly alone though as we put no pressure on the ball anywhere, and our failure to do so was so uniform that it actually seemed possible that this was by design. But if that was the case then one would have expected to us to have dropped much deeper and invited Wolves on to smother them with a low block. We didn't do that either. </div>
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So, I don't really think Pellegrini is implementing a high press. I see no evidence of that in our play, but instead I see fairly rigid lines which should, in theory invite opponents on and into the teeth of a well organised and compact side. I am guessing that the high line should compress space and allow us to deny space to the opposition, meaning we recover the ball further up the pitch with greater opportunities to attack. But if that is your plan, you need some central midfielders who can harry the opposition, and then launch quick counterattacks. And we don't have any of those. </div>
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I also think you need at least one natural wide midfielder, rather than a winger, but we don't have any of those either. The nearest is Snodgrass, who is always the first sacrificed when the tide turns and seems a bit lost in this systemless system. It is almost as though having two ex Aston Villa players in the heart of the side isn't actually a good thing. </div>
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I just don't really understand any of it really. Is this really the system which Pellegrini wants to play, and if so why didn't we buy players who better suit it? Rome wasn't built in a day, and all that, but it is also fair to say that they had achieved <i>something</i> at the end of that day. We've gone backwards. David Moyes built a small little Etruscan villa and we've knocked it down. This team is less organised, less fit and less coherent than anything put together by Moyes, and while I wouldn't sack Pellegrini even if he loses all the next three games <i>(who are we going to hire - Allardyce?) </i>I still want to see some evidence of progress. </div>
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<i>"I'll brace myself for the loneliness</i></div>
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<i>Say hello to feelings that I detest"</i></div>
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<i>- </i>Camera Obscura<i>, "My Maudlin Career"</i></div>
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I hate this. </div>
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I spent my holiday with my head buried in old history books about West Ham, and rediscovering my love for my club. Such affection seeped away last year, like angry fans streaming out of a half empty stadium, and it was enervating to reconnect again. So I fell in love with Graham Paddon and George Foreman and Johny Byrne and spent hours writing about those who I considered <a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers.html">West Ham's Fifty Greatest Players.</a> </div>
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And now this. One fucking game and I'm back in mid season form, raging at Sullivan and the dying of the light, and trying desperately to convince myself that there is hope in the chaos. But I think this is a compound effect of near relentless gloom for the last twenty four months. We haven't had a good transfer window for years, and the jury should still be out on this one. It's entirely possible that things will come good, of course, and Pellegrini will bring his undeniable pedigree to bear and straighten it all out but that still wouldn't lift my mood all that much. I have now reached the point where all I see is incompetence at West Ham. If Pellegrini does turn this round, you can't help shake the feeling that he will do so in spite of our Board rather than because of anything they will have done. </div>
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The decision making processes - David Sullivan ringing up an agent, usually - are a nonsense and apparently not up for review. And so we bob along, floating from one typhoon to another, crashing on every possible rock on the way and shredding the nerves of all aboard. I don't actually know if can write about another season of this fucking madness. </div>
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I took my youngest daughter on Saturday for her first ever game. And like her two older sisters she saw a dismal performance that ended with us losing in the last minute. Worse still was the ennui. I couldn't get her to care one way or another. Nothing about that place grabs children because it isn't designed to. And so she sat up in the high altitude seats, wondering why grown men behind her continued to swear loudly and angrily even with children in front of them, and when I asked up if she would like to come back she said answered with an emphatic "<i>God, no</i>".</div>
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You might roll your eyes when I talk of Sullivan ruining the club, but these are the little ripple effects. No Upton Park to carry her home on a wave of atmosphere and uniqueness, no decent team to electrify the pulse and capture her heart. Just a relentless succession of dreary, lifeless home performances every other Saturday, miles from the pitch and made worse by the knowledge that nothing better is round the corner. The only thing that impressed my daughter on Saturday was the neon blue Slushie she got from the kiosk. My cousin's son has been going for two years and still hasn't seen us win at home. I know I'm not alone - I've spoken to other parents who have the same problems. </div>
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And as we left, on the long grey trek back to the station I had a pang for Upton Park that I haven't felt before. I felt we needed to leave to move forward, but now it's becoming clear that only one side of that bargain is being adhered to, I couldn't help but kick the ground in frustration. These fuckers had no right to move us when they didn't have the ability to keep their side of the deal. The best transfer window in our history will be the one that sees these owners leave. </div>
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Anyway, welcome back - I hope you all had a nice summer holiday. </div>
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On a more positive note, check out the <a href="http://hammerschat.com/Shop/en/13-making-memories">Making Memories</a> initiative from the lads at Hammers Chat, which is aimed at giving Hammers fans in need of help some assistance. It's a good idea, particularly if we're going to spend the year playing like this. </div>
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HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-79755067000854755642018-08-31T14:35:00.004+01:002018-08-31T18:05:44.844+01:00In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 10 to 1And so we come to it. The ten greatest players to have played for West Ham United, and I strongly suspect that you could name most of them off the top of your head.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">10. <b><i>Johnny Byrne</i></b> (1962 - 1967)</span><br />
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Appearances: 206 Goals: 108 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (9) WHUFC (26) WHTID (17)<br />
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The absolute worst ranking in the clubs list as they somehow put "Budgie" at 26, despite him being arguably the most complete striker in our history. Part of the issue is presumably that he didn't play for as long as others, but few have scored with the frequency he did and with such all round excellence. Byrne was already an established international when he signed from Crystal Palace, and his influence was soon felt as he won Hammer of the Year in 1964, scoring 33 goals and leading us to the FA Cup Final.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF_rT8Jtmd0y8rHCPpoL-dfiAiO4k7gyB1juklp24Ve6FQdcWF-e0Dg9KiJ1b7pJpQxmH7Xfu8JoDTEd3qb-7Aru59o2BJbbX-IFMtnFU3DYMUuaWa-lV9vJmMzai86Ky3nENK/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="657" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF_rT8Jtmd0y8rHCPpoL-dfiAiO4k7gyB1juklp24Ve6FQdcWF-e0Dg9KiJ1b7pJpQxmH7Xfu8JoDTEd3qb-7Aru59o2BJbbX-IFMtnFU3DYMUuaWa-lV9vJmMzai86Ky3nENK/s320/Capture.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>This looks promising</i></div>
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When I mentioned this project to my old coach, <a href="https://thehlist.blogspot.com/2017/02/football-family-and-link-to-lincoln.html">Steve Cowley</a>, he told me that Byrne was his favourite player growing up not just because of his ability, but also due to the impact he had on Geoff Hurst. As usual, Steve was right. Byrne showed Hurst how to be an all round forward capable of both scoring and providing, with the irony being that Hurst ended up taking the spot in England's 1966 World Cup squad that would probably otherwise have gone to Byrne. In retrospect it seems bizarre that the latter didn't make it having scored a hat trick in 1964 against Eusebio and Portugal, but he suffered a knee injury immediately before the 1965 European Cup Winners Cup Final which seems to have curtailed his season.<br />
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A larger than life character off the pitch, Byrne returned to Crystal Palace in 1967 without too much joy, as injuries and a life well lived took their toll. Footage of him is hard to find but it shows an outstanding finisher with either foot or head, and a clever link man with his team mates, which led Ron Greenwood to call him "<i>the English Di Stefano</i>". Google it, kids.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">9. <b><i>Jimmy Ruffell</i></b> (1921 - 1937)</span><br />
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Appearances: 548 Goals: 166 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (36) WHUFC (21) WHTID (N/A)<br />
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Splendid left winger who remains fourth on our all time goalscoring list today, and sixth in the list of appearances in all competitions. Signed from the Ilford Electricity Board, Ruffell was part of a new wave of players like Vic Watson and Billy Moore who would take the club to Division 1 and also to the famous White Horse FA Cup Final of 1923.<br />
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The uneven spread of talent in those days meant that exceptional players could often be found in lower league teams, and West Ham were no different as several England internationals would appear at this time. Ruffell joined the list in 1926, although he had the misfortune to play in the same era as the great Cliff Bastin and thus was limited to just six appearances.<br />
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Nonetheless the goals kept coming and Ruffell eventually scored an astonishing 166 from his wide berth, and became our all time leading appearance maker until he was surpassed by Bobby Moore. Comparing across eras is obviously hard and fraught with danger, but I find it strange that a player this good for this long is not remembered with greater affection by the Club.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">8. <b><i>Phil Parkes</i></b> (1979 - 1990)</span><br />
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Appearances: 440 Clean Sheets: 146 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (8) WHUFC (10) WHTID (10)<br />
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Of all the players listed here, I found Parkes the most difficult to write about. I saw him at the tail end of his career, when his knees were gone and his mobility lost, and it seemed hard to imagine that this player could once have commanded a world record fee for a goalkeeper. His last game was the dismal 6-0 League Cup Semi Final defeat to Oldham on Valentines Day 1990, and Parkes left for Ipswich thereafter.<br />
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However, such a final act was unfitting for a player of his stature. Remarkably, Parkes was already 28 when he signed for us and still racked up over 400 appearances. An enormous man, he combined surprising agility with fearlessness and a near faultless positional sense. He is widely regarded to have been good enough to have played for England regularly, but was kept out by the Clemence/Shilton duo who hoovered up all the available caps at the time.<br />
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Parkes was instrumental in the 1980 Cup winning run, and kept a remarkable 22 clean sheets in the promotion campaign of he following year. Even at the age of 36 and with his knees failing, Parkes was an integral part of the 1985/86 team, as his solidity kept us in the hunt all season. He was also unquestionably beloved by his team mates.<br />
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Despite the excellent claims of Ted Hufton, few would argue that Parkes was anything other than our greatest ever keeper.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">7. <b><i>Alan Devonshire</i></b> (1976 - 1990)</span><br />
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Appearances: 448 Goals: 32 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (7) WHUFC (5) WHTID (7)<br />
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The winger who could run through a puddle and not leave a ripple. It is hard to imagine that the club have ever spent a better £5,000 than that which was laid out to bring Devonshire to East London from Southall in 1976.<br />
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The skinny, quicksilver winger would go on to man the left side of our midfield for the next fifteen years and do it so well that there will undeniably be some of you who think he could be even higher on this list. Devonshire won the Hammer of the Year in 1979 and the first of eight England caps the following year. He probably should have won more.<br />
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Never a great goalscorer, he took over a year to bag his first goal, but the genius of Devonshire was more in his ability to create for others. It is amazing to see how many goals of that era began with a jinking Devonshire run on the left flank, and there are probably none more famous than the 1980 cup final winning goal as an example.<br />
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Despite knee injuries in the two years prior, Devonshire was back in full flow in 1985/86 and was the main creative drive behind our title push, capped with a virtuoso performance and goal in the 4-0 win at Chelsea. Sadly he was never fully fit again after that and eventually moved to Watford in 1990 shortly before retirement. As naturally talented a player as there has ever been at West Ham.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">6. <b><i>Martin Peters</i></b> (1962 - 1970)</span><br />
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Appearances: 364 Goals: 100 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (6) WHUFC (6) WHTID (8)<br />
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The junior partner of our iconic World Cup winning trio, although there are plenty around who felt that the excellent Peters was every bit as worthy of acclaim as the Moore and Hurst.<br />
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Versatile enough to have played every position for the first team, Peters eventually nailed down a midfield role that would showcase his intelligent runs and perceptive passing. By the time he moved to Spurs in 1970 he was one of the best in the world in his position, and would win over sixty caps for England.<br />
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<i>Top ten player, bottom ten hair</i></div>
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Peters was famously dropped for the 1964 FA Cup Final, but recovered to play in the European Cup Winners Cup Final the following year, and then forced his way into the World Cup squad for 1966. As a goalscoring midfielder he was pre-eminent, and scored 75 goals in the four seasons between 1965 and 1969. In joining Spurs he became the first British player to ever be valued at over £200,000, and Peters should probably be included in the best all time English XI.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">5. <b><i>Geoff Hurst</i></b> (1958 - 1972)</span><br />
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Appearances: 503 Goals: 249 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (5) WHUFC (4) WHTID (4)<br />
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Remarkably, Geoff Hurst began life as a midfielder and was very nearly the bait in the deal which brought Johnny Byrne to Upton Park. As it was, Hurst was pushed further forward to partner with and learn from Byrne and eventually became West Ham's greatest post war goalscorer.<br />
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After just one goal in his first 39 games, his break through season came in 1963/64 when he scored 26 goals, including one in the FA Cup Final. He maintained that prolific rate of scoring throughout the decade, with a brief detour as he became the first man to score a hat trick in a World Cup Final. As I feel like I have written about so many players on this list, he was equally adept with his head or feet, and scored all manner of goals on his way to second on our all time list behind Vic Watson.<br />
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Hurst moved to Stoke in 1972, and as with others there is a palpable sense of "what if" when I look at his career. Quite how Greenwood never engineered a better league campaign out of these players is a bit of a mystery.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">4. <b><i>Vic Watson</i></b> (1920 - 1935)</span><br />
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Appearances: 505 Goals: 326 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (4) WHUFC (7) WHTID (N/A)<br />
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A goalscorer of mythic proportions, Watson's record is unlikely to ever be surpassed for the simple reason that anyone scoring goals so prolifically in this era would be gone before you could say the word "<i>Galactico</i>".<br />
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Arriving in the Second Division team of the early Twenties, Watson soon fired West Ham into the top flight, where he continued scoring goals at an absurd rate for years. His bravura year came in 1929/1930 when he scored 50 goals in all competitions and Watson smashed four hat tricks. At this stage Watson was essentially playing FIFA in cheat mode.<br />
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Remarkably he was only capped five times for England, scoring four goals, as he had to play second fiddle to the brilliant Everton striker Dixie Dean. Watson scored a remarkable twenty two goals against Leeds in his career, including six in an 8-2 win over them in 1929. Just to highlight that old football was mad, we lost the return fixture 4-1.<br />
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Watson remained with West Ham until 1935 when he moved to Southampton. It is very hard to imagine we will ever see his like again.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">3. <b><i>Billy Bonds</i></b> (1967 - 1988)</span><br />
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Appearances: 799 Goals: 61 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (1) WHUFC (2) WHTID (5)<br />
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For many this will be sacrilege as, for them, Billy Bonds <i>is</i> West Ham, but I feel I must point out that we have reached a point in proceedings where the difference between the players is negligible.<br />
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A man of endless running and relentless determination, Bonds played until the age of 41 and forged a legacy that will echo around the club for decades to come. It would be a very unworldly West Ham youngster that didn't know who "<i>six foot two, eyes of blue</i>" was sung about.<br />
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He signed originally from Charlton, and would be so good that he won his first Hammer of the Year award in 1971 and his fourth in 1987. Looking back, the one great sadness is that he missed the entirety of the 1985/86 season with injury. One wonders how much his legendary fitness and will to win would have helped in that late season fixture pile up that denied us the title, even allowing for the fact that Bonds had officially retired by then.<br />
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Bonds began life as a right back, before moving infield to partner Trevor Brooking in midfield. The idea that he just kicked people and just did Brooking's running is a myth, as Bonds used his physicality and underrated passing to become a highly regarded player in his own right. The midfield trio that he formed with Brooking and Graham Paddon strikes me as being among the best the club have ever had.<br />
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Later in his career, Bonds also played at centre half and it is a testament to his brilliance that he could fit into an all time West Ham XI playing in any of his three positions.<br />
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Criminally overlooked at international level, he was an unused substitute for a game against Italy in 1977, and missed a full debut in 1981 when he broke two ribs and had to withdraw from the team to play Brazil. He remains one of the best uncapped Englishmen ever.<br />
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Bonds returned to the club as manager in 1990, beginning a four year stint of mixed success that ended with a Borgia-like turn of events that saw his <i>not-for-much-longer</i> best mate, Harry Redknapp, end up with the job. It was a shabby end for a man who remains revered by West Ham fans.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">2. <b><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Trevor Brooking</span></i></b> (1967 - 1984)</span><br />
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Appearances: 643 Goals: 102 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (3) WHUFC (3) WHTID (2)<br />
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By choosing Brooking over Bonds, I suppose I reveal my preference for the cavalier over the roundhead. It should be acknowledged that Brooking could not have done the things he did without Bonds there to give him the licence, but let us all also acknowledge the remarkable things he did.<br />
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I think Brooking was a wondrous player. He was deceptively big, but what stands out is his grace and composure amid the helter skelter madness that was football in the Seventies, where pitches were terrible and tackling was fine so long as you left the limb attached.<br />
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Brooking was a beautiful passer with either foot, and as well as being a great goal scorer he was a scorer of great goals. One need only look at the second leg of the 1976 European Cup Winners Cup semi final at home to Eintracht Frankfurt for a demonstration of his poise and high class finishing.<br />
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As with so many others listed here, he demonstrated admirable longevity in playing for as long as he did, before retiring in 1984 when it seemed like he could have easily gone on. For the aesthete, Brooking was everything a footballer was supposed to be, and to watch him play in midfield was to see an artist stood before a blank canvas. That looked like Ypres.<br />
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If I could go back and watch just one player on this list who I never saw play in the flesh, at the peak of their powers, I would choose Brooking.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">1. </span><b><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Bobby Moore</span></i></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> (1958 - 1974)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 647 Goals: 27 International: England<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"></span><br />
Other Rankings: BB (2) WHUFC (1) WHTID (1)<br />
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The easiest decision of the lot, and the person who needs the fewest words written about him. While I understand the emotional pull of Bonds and Brooking, to my mind it's not even really a debate about who is our greatest ever player.<br />
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Of the thousand or so men to have played for our club, only one - Moore - could be reasonably considered in any discussion about the greatest ever player at his position in history. Whether he was better than Scirea, Beckenbauer, Maldini or Baresi is up for debate, but there is no doubt he belongs in that discussion. In that sense he is unique among West Ham, and indeed England, footballers.<br />
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Diverting slightly, I think there is a slightly odd, reverential tone that has sprung up around Moore at West Ham, primarily because the Club feel a sort of institutional guilt about how he was treated after he left. As such, he has now transcended being a mere player and at this point exists as a type of deity, whose name is invoked whenever the Club want to let us know they haven't forgotten the past. Unlike others on this list, I can't imagine Moore's legend ever fading away.<br />
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The sad thing is, they never put a decent team around him when they had the chance, and as such he was denied the league honours he deserved. Despite that, there is nothing much more to be said that hasn't already been said a million times elsewhere.<br />
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The greatest.<br />
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And there you have it. That's my list, or at least it is for today. Please feel free to tell where I have got it wrong, and who I have missed out. I am sure there are plenty. For ease of reference and abuse, here it is in full:<br />
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<table class="tableizer-table">
<thead>
<tr class="tableizer-firstrow"><th></th><th>The H List</th></tr>
</thead><tbody>
<tr><td>1</td><td>Bobby Moore</td></tr>
<tr><td>2</td><td>Trevor Brooking</td></tr>
<tr><td>3</td><td>Billy Bonds</td></tr>
<tr><td>4</td><td>Vic Watson</td></tr>
<tr><td>5</td><td>Geoff Hurst</td></tr>
<tr><td>6</td><td>Martin Peters</td></tr>
<tr><td>7</td><td>Alan Devonshire</td></tr>
<tr><td>8</td><td>Phil Parkes</td></tr>
<tr><td>9</td><td>Jimmy Ruffell</td></tr>
<tr><td>10</td><td>Johnny Byrne</td></tr>
<tr><td>11</td><td>Frank Lampard Sr</td></tr>
<tr><td>12</td><td>Tony Cottee</td></tr>
<tr><td>13</td><td>Syd Puddefoot</td></tr>
<tr><td>14</td><td>Alvin Martin</td></tr>
<tr><td>15</td><td>Steve Potts</td></tr>
<tr><td>16</td><td>Julian Dicks</td></tr>
<tr><td>17</td><td>Ronnie Boyce</td></tr>
<tr><td>18</td><td>Len Goulden</td></tr>
<tr><td>19</td><td>Scott Parker</td></tr>
<tr><td>20</td><td>Ted Hufton</td></tr>
<tr><td>21</td><td>Paolo Di Canio</td></tr>
<tr><td>22</td><td>Mark Noble</td></tr>
<tr><td>23</td><td>Trevor Sinclair</td></tr>
<tr><td>24</td><td>Ray Stewart</td></tr>
<tr><td>25</td><td>Clyde Best</td></tr>
<tr><td>26</td><td>Ian Bishop</td></tr>
<tr><td>27</td><td>Bryan Robson</td></tr>
<tr><td>28</td><td>Ken Brown</td></tr>
<tr><td>29</td><td>Ludek Miklosko</td></tr>
<tr><td>30</td><td>Danny Shea</td></tr>
<tr><td>31</td><td>Joe Cole</td></tr>
<tr><td>32</td><td>Graham Paddon</td></tr>
<tr><td>33</td><td>Geoff Pike</td></tr>
<tr><td>34</td><td>John Dick</td></tr>
<tr><td>35</td><td>Pat Holland</td></tr>
<tr><td>36</td><td>Ernie Gregory</td></tr>
<tr><td>37</td><td>Rio Ferdinand</td></tr>
<tr><td>38</td><td>Noel Cantwell</td></tr>
<tr><td>39</td><td>Jim Barrett Sr</td></tr>
<tr><td>40</td><td>John Bond</td></tr>
<tr><td>41</td><td>David Cross</td></tr>
<tr><td>42</td><td>Malcolm Musgrove</td></tr>
<tr><td>43</td><td>Tony Gale</td></tr>
<tr><td>44</td><td>George Foreman</td></tr>
<tr><td>45</td><td>Frank McAvennie</td></tr>
<tr><td>46</td><td>Eyal Berkovic</td></tr>
<tr><td>47</td><td>Frank Lampard Jr</td></tr>
<tr><td>48</td><td>Jack Tresadern</td></tr>
<tr><td>49</td><td>Dimitri Payet</td></tr>
<tr><td>50</td><td>Vic Keeble</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-50-to-41.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 50 to 41</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-40-to-31.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 40 to 31</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-30-to-21.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 30 to 21</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-20-to-11.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 20 to 11</a>HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-36846422949645151472018-08-31T14:35:00.003+01:002018-08-31T14:41:14.829+01:00In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 20 to 11<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">20. <b><i>Ted Hufton</i></b> (1915 - 1932)</span><br />
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Appearances: 456 Clean Sheets: 113 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (29) WHUFC (49) WHTID (N/A)<br />
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Brilliant goalkeeper from between the wars who actually ended up here as a result of being injured during World War 1 and then guesting for the club while convalescing. This eventually led to him transferring from Sheffield United for the hefty sum of £350.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Sports casual</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
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Hufton soon emerged as one of the best keepers in the country, despite playing for a Second Division side. He also attained a reputation as a penalty expert by saving eleven of the first eighteen he faced in his first two seasons. My immediate thought upon reading that was that our defenders apparently didn't take many prisoners back then. </div>
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By 1923 a fine team had been assembled and they were duly promoted to Division 1, as well as reaching the FA Cup Final. In front of Hufton were the excellent Jack Tresadern and George Kay, while the famous trio of Billy Moore, Vic Watson and Jimmy Ruffell scored 54 goals between them that year. Hufton was considered every bit as good, and was eventually rewarded with an England cap in 1924 after missing out the previous season through injury. Because West Ham. </div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Thereafter he remained an integral part of that excellent side, who retained their top flight status all the way through the decade, before eventually moving on in 1932. Impossible as it is to compare across eras, Hufton should absolutely be in any discussion about West Ham's greatest ever keeper. </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">19. <b><i>Scott Parker</i></b> (2007 - 2012)</span><br />
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Appearances: 129 Goals: 12 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (28) WHUFC (41) WHTID (25)<br />
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I'm prepared for a bit of a fight here, primarily because Parker wasn't with us that long, but I haven't found many who were so continuously excellent during their time at the club. Joining during the Icelandic splurge of 2007, he initially suffered some injury problems before returning to win Hammer of the Year for the next three seasons. He then managed the unheard of feat of being voted Footballer of the Year by the Football Writers Association as a Hammer. Only Bobby Moore achieved this while a West Ham player, and Parker's was even more remarkable as he did it in a relegated team.<br />
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Sadly his spell coincided with a the banking recession and a prolonged period of asset stripping by the creditors of our former Icelandic owners. Only West Ham could have the best midfielder in the country and surround him with a cast of unknown signings from Italy, two blokes from the Red Lion and Benni McCarthy.<br />
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Parker joined Spurs after a few early season appearances in the Championship, which seems to have soured the memories that many fans have for him. I don't understand this - his was a brilliant West Ham career amid a slurry of dross. It was hardly his fault that the club was so fundamentally broken in his time here. His stellar form continued right the way through to the 2012 European Championship when he was a starter as England were knocked out by Andrea Pirlo and Italy.<br />
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As ever seems to be the case with West Ham, we had the right player but just at the wrong time.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">18. <b><i>Len Goulden</i></b> (1933 - 1945)</span><br />
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Appearances: 450 Goals: 130 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (24) WHTID (N/A)<br />
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If Graham Paddon was the best West Ham player that I'd never heard of, then I might wager that Len Goulden is the best West Ham player you've never heard of. Jack Helliar and Tony Hogg explicitly state in their Who's Who of West Ham that Goulden "<i>would inevitably figure highly</i>" on any list of this nature. And that's good enough for me.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>West Ham do Peaky Blinders</i></div>
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Goulden was a brilliant inside left who linked closely with Jimmy Ruffell to offer most of West Ham's creative threat during his time. Despite playing primarily in the Second Division he was good enough to play regularly for England, and was even a member of the famous 1938 team who ignominiously gave the Nazi salute before their match in Berlin.<br />
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He played regularly for the club during World War 2 but was chased by Chelsea after hostilities and was eventually allowed to leave to pursue his Division 1 ambitions for a fee of £5,000. Like Parker, Goulden would undeniably have had a better time with a better team to play in.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">17. <b><i>Ronnie Boyce</i></b> (1959 - 1973)</span><br />
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Appearances: 341 Goals: 29 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (12) WHUFC (23) WHTID (37)<br />
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A fine player from an era that produced many of them, Boyce was something of an unknown to me before this project, and indeed I remembered him more as a coach than a player. As with so many though, I discovered a very good player lurking behind the numbers.<br />
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Not as talented as his more illustrious team mates, he was nonetheless indispensable as a result of his prodigious work rate and willingness to run constantly. Famously scored a last minute winner in the 1964 FA Cup Final to give us a 3-2 win over Preston North End, after a typically lung busting back post run, having already scored twice to see off the Manchester United of Best, Law and Charlton in the semi final. Not bad for a local lad.<br />
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His career stretched on until the early 1970's, at which point he joined the coaching staff and even had a short stint as caretaker manager in 1990 before Billy Bonds took over.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">16. <b><i>Julian Dicks</i></b> (1988 - 1999)</span><br />
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Appearances: 326 Goals: 65 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (14) WHUFC (12) WHTID (9)<br />
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Most descriptions of Dicks would talk of a tough tackling left back, and while that is true it does rather underplay his considerable ability as a footballer. Quick and direct, he had a lovely left foot and was one of the rare players able to control a game from the full back position. His first stint with the club saw him sent off four times, before moving to Liverpool in exchange for David Burrows and Mike Marsh.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The greatest football photograph ever taken</i></div>
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He returned not long after, chastened and more mature after an unsuccessful stint at Anfield and soon established himself again as our best player. He would win Hammer of the Year on four occasions and legend has it he would have played for England if he'd only been prepared to grow his hair longer. Naturally.<br />
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Dicks established a connection with fans as a resulted of his thoroughly committed performances, brilliant left foot, uncanny eye for goal and a willingness to play on after serious knee injuries. There can have been few better strikers of the ball to have ever played for us. Sadly, the end of his career saw a swift demise as he could no longer run properly, and he moved on in 1999. He returned as Slaven Bilic's assistant in 2015, although it was hard to know exactly what his role was. Teenage me is distraught that he is not in the Top Ten.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">15. <b><i>Steve Potts </i></b>(1985 - 2001)</span><br />
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Appearances: 506 Goals: 1 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (22) WHUFC (32) WHTID (N/A)<br />
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If Dicks was thunder then Potts was serene sunshine. Small of stature he may have been, but Potts was West Ham's classiest defender since Tony Gale, and the backbone of the Nineties teams who eventually clawed their way to being an established Premier League side.<br />
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He started as a right back and struggled to cement a place in the side with Ray Stewart ahead of him. It wasn't until he moved inside to a centre back role that he truly found his groove, as his near total lack of attacking ability was rendered largely irrelevant by his supreme reading of the game. Potts played at a time when it was customary to have two strikers up front with one being a target man and the other a smaller, nippier finisher and he excelled in nullifying that role. As such, his partnerships with Marc Rieper and Slaven Bilic were the main strength of the mid Nineties West Ham sides and he was duly rewarded with two Hammer of the Year awards and two runner up trophies too.<br />
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Potts eventually lost his place to the emerging Rio Ferdinand, and played his final game in 2001. He sits seventh in the all time list of games played for the club, and isn't out of place amongst such legends. He remains at the Club in a coaching capacity, or at least that's what it says here - I'm not actually convinced there is anybody alive in our Academy.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">14. <b><i>Syd Puddefoot</i></b> (1913 - 1933)</span><br />
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Appearances: 308 Goals: 207 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (13) WHUFC (20) WHTID (N/A)<br />
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Another early legend, who again had a career disrupted by war but still scored at prodigious rate whenever called upon. He started initially in the Southern League and then continued scoring freely in the Wartime Combination leagues, including a Carlton Colesque 51 goals in his last 49 games.<br />
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West Ham then stepped up to Division 2 after the war and he continued his fine form, which saw him earn his first England call ups. With his star on the rise, Puddefoot was hugely sought after by the top clubs and so naturally joined Falkirk for a world record of £5,000. As weird a move as that might sound, Puddefoot had actually spent time in Scotland during his war service and as such was highly regarded there. It is also true that football north of the border was at least the equal of the top English leagues at the time.<br />
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In true West Ham fashion, Puddefoot returned in 1931 in a failed attempt to keep us in the top flight, before moving on at the end of the following season. He remains 8th in our list of all time top scorers, a mere 206 ahead of Steve Potts.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">13. <b><i>Alvin Martin</i></b> (1978 - 1996)</span><br />
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Appearances: 596 Goals: 34 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (11) WHUFC (8) WHTID (13)<br />
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Tremendous centre half who came through the youth system despite hailing from Liverpool. Martin was a physically imposing centre half who allied his aerial ability with an astute reading of the game and decent ball playing skills. He missed out on the 1982 World Cup through injury but made it into the Mexico '86 squad where he played in the Round of 16 game against Paraguay and then presumably thanked his lucky stars that he avoided Maradona in the next round.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>He's got no hair but we don't care - wait</i></div>
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Although a defender, Martin was good for a few goals a season, and once achieved the unlikely feat of scoring a hat trick past three different keepers, in an 8-1 win over Newcastle in 1986. He displayed remarkable longevity to play on until the 1996 season, where he actually featured alongside Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard Jr. By that stage his mobility was roughly on par with Nelson's Column but that shouldn't detract from the magnificence of his overall career.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">12. <b><i>Tony Cottee</i></b> (1983 - 1996)</span><br />
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Appearances: 336 Goals: 146 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (10) WHUFC (14) WHTID (11)<br />
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The best of the modern goalscorers. Cottee was a diminutive but lightning quick striker who had the priceless ability to score goals from nothing. In many ways he wasn't dissimilar to Gary Lineker in that he wasn't necessarily a truly all round player in the vein of Johnny Byrne or Geoff Hurst, but his ability to sniff out chances and finish them was invaluable, and a key part of the 1985/86 season.<br />
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His partnership that year with Frank McAvennie was electrifying, with the Scot playing a slightly withdrawn role and seemingly acting as a second striker in supply of Cottee. With his pace and movement, Cottee was difficult to mark, which in turn created space for oncoming runners such as McAvennie and Alan Devonshire to exploit. Considering the pitches and tackling of the era, it is testament to his toughness that he stayed largely fit through that period, and he ended up as Hammer of the Year and PFA Young Player of the Year.<br />
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Cottee eventually got a deserved England call up shortly before leaving to join Everton in 1988. In fairly typical fashion he returned to the club for a second stint years later, and bizarrely got himself sent off on debut at Liverpool. He redeemed himself the following week with a winner at home to Aston Villa, and his goals would be a crucial factor in keeping us up over the next two seasons. Although that lightning first step had long since gone, he was still a deadly finisher and remains 5th in the list of our all time scorers. Pleasingly, he still seems as in love with the club as the day he scored on debut against Spurs as a 17 year old.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">11. <b><i>Frank Lampard Sr</i></b> (1967 - 1985)</span><br />
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Appearances: 670 Goals: 22 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (16) WHUFC (9) WHTID (26)<br />
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Having watched several hours of YouTube clips in support of this piece I have decided to confess that I cannot tell whether Frank Lampard was left or right footed, such was his ability. From what I gather, he played primarily at left back and yet scored screamers with his right foot. I am going to go out on a limb and say that he was a pretty good player.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I'm dreaming of a Frank Lampard</i></div>
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The sheer length of Lampard's service is staggering and I was slightly surprised to find him second only to Billy Bonds in terms of appearances made. He was a regular from the 1969/70 season onwards and never played fewer than 30 games until the 1983/84 campaign. During that time he picked up two England caps, seven years apart, as well as two FA Cup winners medals and a runner up trophy from the 1976 European Cup Winners Cup Final defeat to Anderlecht. In that game he made a rare error to gift the Belgians an equaliser, and let them back into the game. He also somehow injured himself in the process, which really is top class West Hamming.<br />
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He redeemed himself five years later with his iconic FA Cup semi final goal against Everton at Elland Road, and his general calling card was one of extreme reliability and high octane full back play. After retiring, Lampard joined his brother in law Harry Redknapp as coach of the first team, and he helped to bring through Rio Ferdinand and his son, Frank Jr. After the latter left Upton Park under a cloud, Lampard Sr pretty much turned his back on the club in disgust at the treatment his son received. So, well done everyone involved there.<br />
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<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-50-to-41.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 50 to 41</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-40-to-31.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 40 to 31</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-30-to-21.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 30 to 21</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-10-to-1.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 10 to 1</a>HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-33729404011217010392018-08-31T14:35:00.002+01:002018-09-04T18:07:44.759+01:00In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 30 to 21<span style="font-size: large;">30. <b><i>Danny Shea</i></b> (1907 - 1920)</span><br />
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Appearances: 217 Goals: 122 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (N/A) WHTID (N/A)<br />
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Another player whose career is hard to judge due to the disruption of war and the slightly odd nature of professional football in its nascent form. Shea was a local player who was discovered playing pub football and soon progressed to the first team where he was widely acknowledged as one of the finest inside forwards of his era.<br />
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A brilliant and regular goalscorer throughout his career, he was the Hammers main goal threat in the period after Harry Stapley finished his career and before the outstanding group of Syd Puddefoot, Vic Watson, Billy Moore and Jimmy Ruffell appeared. He was sold in 1913 to Blackburn for a record fee of £2,000 and was good enough to go on and win England caps after playing at the highest level. He then returned to West Ham as a wartime guest player when he was again prolific, before finally transferring back for a second, and largely unsuccessful stint with us in 1920. Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before.<br />
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In all of my research for this piece I determined that Shea might just be the least appreciated great player in our history.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">29. <b><i>Ludek Miklosko</i></b> (1990 - 1997)</span><br />
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Appearances: 373 Clean Sheets: 125 International: Czechoslovakia<br />
Other Rankings: BB (26) WHUFC (22) WHTID (14)<br />
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The bouncing Czech. It was no easy feat to replace the great Phil Parkes, but Ludek Miklosko was more than up to the task. A huge, wiry man he combined magnificent agility with no little bravery and a booming kick that regularly turned defence into something resembling attack.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Out of shot - Andy Cole, weeping</i></div>
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His form in the 1990/1991 promotion season was so good that he was a unanimous Hammer of the Year and was widely considered to be heading to Manchester United before they decided on Peter Schmeichel instead, with West Ham having been uncharacteristically reluctant to sell their star man. There was a sumptuous irony to this when, in 1995, Miklosko almost single handedly denied them the title on the last day of the season at Upton Park, with a string of fine saves.<br />
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His form waned towards the end of his time, and a couple of high profile mistakes meant he lost his place, but few players have retained as much affection in the hearts of long term supporters. His name is still sung at each game today, although I do question how close Moscow actually is to the Czech Republic. A player who transcended the team in which he played, and who would have graced any West Ham side in any era. At his best, he was that good.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">28.<b style="font-style: italic;"> Ken Brown Sr</b><i> </i>(1953 - 1967)</span><br />
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Appearances: 474 Goals: 4 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (23) WHUFC (18) WHTID (44)<br />
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Another astonishingly long serving defender from the Fifties, and also yet another plucked from the fertile feeding grounds of East London and Essex. I originally had him much lower before I realised just how good he was and for how long. Brown made his debut in 1953 and was talented enough to still be playing in a European Cup Winners Cup Final in 1965. That is some incredible longevity.<br />
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A rock solid centre half for the length of his career, Brown picked up a solitary England cap in 1959 against Northern Ireland, which was huge local news at the time as no Hammer had been capped since Len Goulden in 1939. So pleased were the club that the entire playing and ground staff went to watch him play. Later, his son Kenny also represented the club with some distinction in the Nineties.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">27. <b><i>Bryan Robson</i></b> (1971 - 1979)</span><br />
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Appearances: 255 Goals: 104 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (21) WHUFC (19) WHTID (21)<br />
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A little like David Cross, Bryan "Pop" Robson is a name you hear whispered on the breeze if you are of a certain age, and yet probably don't know why. The answer lies primarily in the 1972/73 season when Robson won the Division 1 Golden Boot with a 28 goal haul, and somehow still didn't get an England call up from Alf Ramsey. Upon reflection now, it seems impossible to understand how this could have happened, but that lack of wider recognition probably explains Robson's lower profile with younger fans. It is probably also relevant that he isn't even the most famous Bryan Robson to have played professional football.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Always nice to see cigarettes on the advertising hoardings</i></div>
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His career was oddly circuitous for such a prolific striker, but perhaps his diminutive stature played against him in that sense. With that being said, he was a phenomenal header of the ball, and a brilliantly instinctive finisher with either foot. His greatest gift seems to have been a magical ability to find space in the most crowded of areas.<br />
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As it was, he left for Sunderland in 1974 before returning for a second spell in 1976, meaning he missed the two cup finals in between - an unfortunate set of events. Unlike so many others, his return was pretty successful as he continued to score regularly right up until his departure at the end of the 1978/79 season. I have little doubt that some fans of a certain age will be aghast to see him outside of the top twenty on this list.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">26. <b><i>Ian Bishop</i></b> (1989 - 1998)</span><br />
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Appearances: 304 Goals: 17 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (46) WHTID (49)<br />
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If I have one quibble with the list produced by Blowing Bubbles, it is their failure to include Ian Bishop. I have written extensively about Bishop <a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2017/08/in-retro-ian-bishop.html">here </a> so I confess to some bias, but as a stylish, elegant central midfielder I can think of few better in my time watching the club.<br />
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With his long hair and tendency to overplay at times, Bishop was often mistaken for a soft touch, but anyone who watched him play in the Second Division and then in the Premier League will know that wasn't the case. At his best he was a classy, two footed passing midfielder who chipped in with the occasional spectacular goal and he was a worthy captain of the 1991 promoted side.<br />
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As my article above notes, Bishop was also subjected to a huge amount of innuendo and malicious rumour about his sexuality, which seemed largely to derive from his hair. He was and remains a hero of mine.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">25. <b><i>Clyde Best</i></b> (1969 - 1976)</span><br />
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Appearances: 221 Goals: 58 International: Bermuda<br />
Other Rankings: BB (31) WHUFC (47) WHTID (46)<br />
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If life was tough for Bishop then it must have been almost intolerable for Clyde Best. He arrived as an 17 year old from Bermuda and in true West Ham fashion, nobody was there to meet him. He would soon make his debut against Arsenal amid a backdrop of racism and physical threats, including one particularly awful promise to blind him with acid if he played the following day. It seems inconceivable now but what Best endured was horrific, constant and debilitating.<br />
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While some have suggested that he never fully realised his talents, it has to be put into the context of playing in such circumstances, at such a young age and in such alien conditions. A teenage Best is said to have been bemused the first time he ever saw English snow, for example. What helped him endure was a perfect temperament, remarkable physicality for his age and a supportive and progressive manager in Ron Greenwood. Fearsome in the air, and better with his feet than he was given credit for, Best would score 23 goals in the 1971/72 season to establish himself as an elite striker, outscoring both Geoff Hurst and Pop Robson.<br />
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But Best was a player of greatness in all sorts of ways, and paved the path for the numerous brilliant black footballers who followed him. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that without players like him we would never have had the pleasure of seeing the likes of Rio Ferdinand or Trevor Sinclair in claret and blue.<br />
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Significantly, he was also part of the West Ham team who beat Spurs on 1 April 1972 while fielding three black players - Ade Coker and Clive Charles also played. This was a first for an English club and yet somehow West Ham have allowed West Brom to garner the public acclaim for this, even though they did this later. While people argue over removing the World Cup statue from Green Street, I would much rather the club do something to immortalise that particular achievement.<br />
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My only hesitation in writing this piece was around John Charles, who was actually the first black player to play for us. Charles wasn't as high profile but was also an excellent full back and seems to me to have been just as culturally significant as Best. Perhaps some older readers can enlighten me as to why they have such a different profile.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">24. <b><i>Ray Stewart</i></b> (1979 - 1991)</span><br />
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Appearances: 432 Goals: 84 International: Scotland<br />
Other Rankings: BB (24) WHUFC (17) WHTID (22)<br />
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Yet another very good, long serving full back who arrived as Britain's most expensive teenager and departed a club legend. Stewart was signed by John Lyall for a record £430,000 but he would repay that in spades over a glittering career that would include the FA Cup Final of 1980, the League Cup Final of 1981 and the third place finish in 1985/86.<br />
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Along the way, Stewart would earn himself a reputation for fearsome ball striking and nerveless penalty taking. Among many famous efforts were the last minute winner in the FA Cup quarter final of 1980, and the added time Cup final penalty at Wembley to salvage a draw against Liverpool the following season. He also scored a very late twice taken penalty against Ipswich on my first trip to Upton Park, which moved us into second in 1986 and convinced us briefly that we were going to win the league.<br />
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Like so many, the end of his spell was marred by injury and anyone who saw him in the Nineties saw a pale shadow of the high tempo, defensively sound version he had previously been. He also earned several Scottish caps when they gave them to high class footballers and not just the first eleven blokes to turn up.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">23. <i><b>Trevor Sinclair</b></i> (1997 - 2003)</span><br />
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Appearances: 206 Goals: 38 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (48) WHTID (40)<br />
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Another player about whom <a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2017/08/in-retro-trevor-sinclair.html">I have written previously</a> and a key part of the excellent turn of the century side assembled by Harry Redknapp. Sinclair arrived from QPR in a wildly one sided swap deal that sent Iain Dowie and Keith Rowland the other way, and was soon banging in goals all over the place as he settled immediately. Over time he would eventually establish himself as a genuine winger, and even played as a wing back for a while when Redknapp eventually bought so many attacking players that he just started coming up with formations that included fewer defenders.<br />
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Sinclair was a great team man, and his versatility and unselfish attitude made him popular with team mates and fans. He also had an eye for the spectacular goal as evidenced by this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxe_fWXK5Cs">obscenely underrated effort against Derby</a>.<br />
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While Sinclair was held in high esteem locally, he struggled for a wider national appeal until he eventually forced his way into the England World Cup squad of 2002. For a man who managed just 12 caps, he couldn't have timed them much better and he duly played his part in a decent England run that ended in a quarter final defeat to Brazil. For his skill and athleticism, and a keen eye for goal, I rate Sinclair as one of our modern greats and a fine heir to Clyde Best in terms of black players to appear for the club. Another hero.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">22. <b><i>Mark Noble</i></b> (2004 - present)</span><br />
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Appearances: 437* Goals: 51* International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (20) WHUFC (15) WHTID (N/A)<br />
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From one to another. From his introduction as a fresh faced teenager under Alan Pardew, to his latest incarnation as an enduring veteran captain, Noble has been a steadfast presence in the centre of our midfield. In a world of ever changing landscapes, he has been a man of constant steadiness and remarkably similar haircuts.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Notice the lack of pitch invaders. All dealt with.</i></div>
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After becoming the youngest ever reserve team player at the age of 15, he played well for Pardew in the promotion season of 2005, but truly established himself as a first teamer during the Great Escape of 2007. This marked the first of a number of times when Noble would raise his game when surrounded by elite players. It isn't a coincidence to me that his best seasons have come when Carlos Tevez, Scott Parker and Dimitri Payet were around to help him.<br />
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As the years have rolled by his legs have slowed, but he has maintained a continued level of performance and has been continually picked by a succession of managers. He has probably suffered a little because he has never been a pure playmaker like Brooking or Bishop and never had a physical presence like Bonds. Instead he has been gradually converted to a deep lying midfielder charged with starting moves rather than shaping them, while continuing the club's tradition of having high quality penalty takers. He was Hammer of the Year in 2012 and 2014, and runner up in 2005 which is a testament to his longevity. He might have won a couple more too but for Scott Parker's incredible run of form before that.<br />
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It isn't easy to play for so long at the highest level and I've always wondered if part of the problem for Noble has been how heavily he is invested in West Ham. The kid who walked to games from his house in Beckton seems to have lived and died with the teams results in the same way as we all do. And as we can attest, it's exhausting. This came to a head last year when he ended up manhandling a pitch invader during the Burnley debacle, and seemed to be almost worn down by the continued drama that surrounds the club.<br />
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No matter what happens from here, and whether he survives the Pellegrini era, he has been a tremendous servant to the club and a much underrated player both by West Ham fans and the wider footballing public. He should change his hair.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">21. <b><i>Paolo di Canio</i></b> (1999 - 2003)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 141 Goals: 51 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (17) WHUFC (11) WHTID (3)<br />
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Gulp. I can see the pitchforks from here.<br />
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I should start by saying that Di Canio was a wonderful player. When he was in the mood he was a champagne footballer in a beer tavern. Not blessed with great pace or any particular physical attributes, he instead relied on incredible close control and dribbling ability and was our most consistent source of goals and assists for his five year stint with us.<br />
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He arrived in 1999 and galvanised Harry Redknapp's excellent team to a 5th place finish. Essentially replacing Ian Wright, he started up profitable partnerships with first Paolo Wanchope and then Frederic Kanoute, and enjoyed a particularly good link with Trevor Sinclair that saw the latter score plenty of goals as a late arriving winger.<br />
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But as Di Canio's influence grew so too did the team seem to wane around him. Redknapp essentially geared the side totally toward him, which would have been potentially fine but for his unfortunate habit of missing tricky away games that he didn't fancy. In his five seasons at West Ham, he made one away league appearance each at Manchester United, Liverpool and Leeds, and never played once at Newcastle. It is one thing to build your team around a player - it is another altogether if that player doesn't always want to be in the team. What most fans dismissed as Paolo being mad, mostly struck me as a self centred streak that damaged the team and impinged on the development of players like Joe Cole and Frank Lampard Jr.<br />
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For all that, when he was playing, we were generally free flowing and fun to watch. Di Canio scored famous wonder goals at Chelsea and at home to Arsenal, and scored one of the greatest goals in Premier League history with his scissor kick against Wimbledon. It remains the single best goal I have ever seen, and is a salutary reminder that he was a player who could lift you out of the gloom and into the night sky.<br />
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There is no denying that he was an iconic player and a huge fan favourite but I could not justify placing him any higher given that element of his play. The ironic thing is that he really suffers here as a result of me knowing so much about him. Had he played in 1930 he'd probably be in the top ten. Or quite possibly a Mussolini black shirt. It's hard to know.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-50-to-41.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 50 to 41</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-40-to-31.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 40 to 31</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-20-to-11.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 20 to 11</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-10-to-1.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 10 to 1</a>HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-26925163525777312582018-08-31T14:35:00.001+01:002018-09-04T18:04:19.845+01:00In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 40 to 31<span style="font-size: large;">40. <b><i>John Bond</i></b> (1952 - 1965)</span><br />
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Appearances: 449 Goals: 39 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (30) WHUFC (33) WHTID (N/A)<br />
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A high class full back whose partnership with Noel Cantwell was a mainstay of the Fifties side. Bond was good enough to continue playing right the way through until 1965, including an appearance in the victorious 1964 FA Cup Final side, and he racked up a decent number of goals as a result of his penalty and free kick taking prowess.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Nice action</i></div>
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Unusually he was able to play up front as well as in defence, and scored a hat trick against Chelsea in 1960. Something of a dead ball specialist he was apparently known as "Muffin" because of his ability to kick like a mule. No, me either.<br />
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Despite playing in the earlier rounds he missed out on the European Cup Winners Cup Final of 1965 and left shortly thereafter, before embarking on a successful managerial career.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">39. <i><b>Jim Barrett Sr</b> </i>(1925 - 1945)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 553 Goals: 70 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (31) WHTID (N/A)<br />
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A remarkable, iconic figure from the early days of the club and the next great to emerge after the 1923 Cup Final side. Barrett played in all manner of positions and scored a decent number of goals while doing so. Typically a defender, as one might have expected from a man who went by the nickname "Big Jim", he was dangerous from set pieces and in the air.<br />
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Barrett was capped by England in 1928 against Northern Ireland and promptly got injured after four minutes, making his the then shortest international career in history. If that isn't the most West Ham thing of all time then I don't know what is.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">38. <b><i>Noel Cantwell</i></b> (1952 - 1960)</span><br />
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Appearances: 278 Goals: 12 International: Ireland<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (40) WHTID (45)<br />
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Yet another high class defender from the Fifties, and the other half of the outstanding full back partnership with John Bond that characterised the era. Cantwell was one of a number of Irishmen who played at West Ham at the time, but he was unquestionably the best. Unusually attacking for the era, he was a key member of the promoted side of 1958 and once again after promotion.<br />
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After suffering an injury he would lose his place to a young fellow by the name of John Lyall and was sold shortly thereafter to Manchester United, with the fee being a record £29,500 for a full back. Cantwell went on to become an instrumental figure in rebuilding the Old Trafford side after the Munich air crash, and it's difficult not to think that he was allowed to leave Upton Park too soon.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">37. <b><i>Rio Ferdinand</i></b> (1995 - 2001)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 158 Goals: 2 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (34) WHUFC (27) WHTID (18)<br />
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And the stylish defenders just keep coming. Ferdinand was talked about around Upton Park long before he made his debut, as tales of his youthful excellence began to convince fans that the long dormant Academy might have actually been revived under Harry Redknapp and Tony Carr.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Neil Ruddock just out of shot</i></div>
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Although he made some early errors, Ferdinand soon established himself as an unusually accomplished ball player and was quickly the mainstay at the heart of the defence. Alongside him was a revolving door of centre halves as he played with Slaven Bilic, Marc Rieper, Neil Ruddock, Steve Potts, Igor Stimac and David Unsworth which would have exposed him to quite a few different styles of play, at least.<br />
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For all the talk of his development after leaving Upton Park, Ferdinand was Hammer of the Year in 1998, and was selected to go to the World Cup shortly after. He was an elite defender even then. Sadly, by 2001 the Club was once again in need of money and Redknapp had seemingly lost his way in the transfer market and off the field. Ferdinand was sold to Leeds, for £18m, which it turned out they were paying on credit card. It mattered not as they soon flogged him on to Manchester United for £30m. I am not bitter about this.<br />
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Redknapp, meanwhile, managed to waste every penny he was given, and the Club used the rest to rebuild the West Stand. Fans referred to it as the Rio Ferdistand, which was pretty funny, but the reality was that his departure precipitated the end of Redknapp's reign and eventually saw us relegated two years later.<br />
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When West Ham collapse, we do it in style.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">36. <b><i>Ernie Gregory</i></b> (1946 - 1959)</span><br />
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Appearances: 488 Clean Sheets: 89 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (15) WHUFC (25) WHTID (27)<br />
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Long serving goalkeeper whose connection with the Club far exceeds even his outstanding performances on the field. After his retirement in 1960, Gregory remained with the Club in various capacities, including coaching and administration which sadly ended with a slightly soured relationship at the end. By that point, Gregory had been with West Ham for over fifty years.<br />
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Aside from his longevity, Gregory was an excellent keeper although I have him below several others in this list purely because he spent much of his time playing in the Second Division and Wartime leagues. Gregory is perhaps the first player on this list who deserves the accolade 'great" because of the totality of his contribution to West Ham.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">35. <b><i>Pat Holland </i></b>(1969 - 1981)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 304 Goals: 32 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (37) WHTID (N/A)<br />
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Perhaps the first player on this list who I had heard of but never really considered as a great player in any sense at all. Unlike, say, Tresadern or Barrett, Pat Holland was a name I recognised but simply assumed was a bit part player from the Seventies. How wrong I was.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Goalscorers in European Finals. We haven't had many. </i></div>
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In keeping with my own misconceptions, Holland was probably an under appreciated part of the Seventies side, and it took him a number of years to firmly establish himself in the first team. He made his debut in 1969 but eventually cemented his place in the 1972/73 season. This meant he was a member of the FA Cup winning side of 1975 and the European Cup Winners Cup runners up the following year. Indeed, Holland scored the opening goal of that final, when it looked like we might actually beat the classy Anderlecht team.<br />
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Holland played on until 1981 but injured himself scoring a crucial goal at Notts County and never played again. He did, however, have the consolation of presenting me with a Player of the Year award a few years later at a Gidea Park Rangers presentation ceremony. He was introduced as a Spurs scout, which might have contributed to my misguided ideas about him.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">34. <b><i>John Dick</i></b> (1953 - 1962)</span><br />
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Appearances: 367 Goals: 177 International: Scotland<br />
Other Rankings: BB (35) WHUFC (13) WHTID (43)<br />
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A player who I think I might return to in a few years and feel that I short changed. Dick was a tall, highly skilled goalscoring inside left who drove West Ham to promotion in the late Fifties, and became the first Hammer to represent Scotland when he played against England at Wembley in 1959. He is only really rated this low because he spent as much time in Division 2 as he did in the top tier.<br />
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That said, Dick's partnership with Vic Keeble was tremendous as the two rattled in bagfuls of goals in both Division 1 and 2, with his probable highlight being a hat trick over then giants Wolves to take us top of the league in November 1959. We ended up 12th because West Ham.<br />
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He left the club for Brentford in 1962, with the brilliant Johnny Byrne and Geoff Hurst arriving to replace him and Keeble. It is slightly blowing my mind how many good players we had in this era and yet did nothing with. The publicans of East London have a lot to answer for.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">33. <b><i>Geoff Pike</i></b> (1976 - 1987)</span><br />
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Appearances: 368 Goals: 41 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (42) WHTID (N/A)<br />
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Greatness comes in all forms and Geoff Pike is a player who I think best epitomises quiet greatness. Whether he truly deserves to be above players like John Dick and Rio Ferdinand is for me to ponder, but his longevity in a hard working midfield role is notable and he was a key part of FA Cup winning side of 1980 and the promotion winning team of 1981.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Just give it to Brooking, Pikey</i></div>
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No less an authority than Trevor Brooking described Pike's all action style of play as integral to his own, because it allowed him the freedom to play his game. In such situations can greatness go unnoticed, but Pike wouldn't have played for as long as he did without being of real use to the team. He strikes me as being similar to Steve Lomas in that his unsung work did much to allow the artisans around him to flourish, but others have described him as closer to Michael Carrick due to the understated excellence of his passing,<br />
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Pike is also scorer of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU4BQFn9ogw">greatest headed goal of all time</a>. Don't message me. It's true.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">32. <b><i>Graham Paddon</i></b> (1973 - 1976)</span><br />
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Appearances: 152 Goals: 15 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (38) WHUFC (N/A) WHTID (48)<br />
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Perhaps the greatest joy of this exercise for me has been the discovery of players who I literally knew nothing about. In that sense, Graham Paddon might just be the best player that I never knew existed. Joining from Norwich in 1973 his career got off to the most West Ham start possible when, prior to the move, nobody remembered to go and meet him at Liverpool Street to negotiate his terms. Plus ca change, and all that.<br />
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He soon joined, and his silky left footed midfield play was an outstanding complement to Brooking. In a time of agricultural defending and pitches, he oozed class and always seemed to have time when others were frantic. Paddon was a symphony musician in a rock'n'roll world.<br />
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His highlight was probably the glorious thirty yard strike to open the scoring in the 1976 European Cup Winners Cup Semi Final against Eintracht Frankfurt. Indeed, as West Ham fans often whisper in hushed tones about the brilliance of the Anderlecht side who beat us in the final, I do wonder if there is a corner of some Frankfurt website where they speak reverentially of the graceful West Ham midfield of Brooking and Paddon. There should be.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">31. <b><i>Joe Cole</i></b> (1998 - 2014)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 187 Goals: 18 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (37) WHUFC (30) WHTID (19)<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Oh Joe. The one that got away. I could handle Ferdinand and Lampard, but I wasn't prepared to lose Joe Cole. He was the generational talent, and the player who I was convinced was going to take the team of the Noughties to the promised land. As it was he arrived in a blaze of unnecessary hype - mostly endorsed by the club - , and probably failed to live up to it, purely because of how ludicrous were the expectations upon his shoulders. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i>The dreaded second stint</i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It probably didn't help Cole that he had to break into a team dominated by the Italian Paolo di Canio, who was so central to the team and their style of play, that it left little room for the youngster. He eventually found a home in the centre of midfield where he was outstanding and where I thought he could have stayed. Sadly, this was in 2003 and West Ham were busy getting relegated with a team full of internationals. Cole deservedly won Hammer of the Year, but was never going to stick around and duly joined Chelsea where Jose Mourinho moulded him into a winger who tracked back. A sad waste, I thought. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As happened with so many others, Cole couldn't resist a return and duly came back in 2013. His second debut against Manchester United in the FA Cup was electrifying as he set up two goals, but the lightning soon escaped from the bottle and he left after just two seasons, stricken by injuries and without the spark of pace that had once made him so exciting. It's hard to call Joe Cole a wasted talent because he achieved so much, but he really did once seem like the kind of player who could have bent the game to his will. Of all our mistakes over the years, losing him to Chelsea is high upon the list. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span><a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-50-to-41.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 50 to 41</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-30-to-21.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 30 to 21</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-20-to-11.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 20 to 11</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-10-to-1.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 10 to 1</a>HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-27890057513673338362018-08-31T14:35:00.000+01:002018-08-31T14:38:05.257+01:00In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 50 to 41In narrowing down a list of over one thousand names to just fifty, it is inevitable that I will make some mistakes and certainly there is not a huge amount to choose between those in this section, and those who I have ranked immediately outside this list. In order to try and give some context, here are those players who just missed out:<br />
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<i>John Sissons (1963-1970), Andy Malcolm (1953-1961), Manuel Lanzini (2015 - present), Phil Woosnam (1958-1962), Michael Carrick (1999-2004), Harry Hooper (1951-1956), Dean Ashton (2006-2008), Peter Brabrook (1962-1968), Vivian Gibbins (1923-1932), Winston Reid (2010 - present), John Charles (1963-1969)</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">50. <b><i>Vic Keeble</i></b> (1957 - 1960)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 84 Goals: 51 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (29) WHTID (16)<br />
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Were it not for injury there is little doubt that Keeble would be higher on this list. Having signed from Newcastle in 1957 he immediately formed a lethal partnership with Johnny Dick, and fired the Irons to promotion as champions of Division 2. The pair were so good that they carried on in the same vein in Division 1, and we were briefly top of the league in September after a 3-2 win over Manchester United, before eventually finishing sixth. We also beat Spurs home and away in back to back games on Christmas and Boxing Day, in case you're wondering how mad football fixtures used to be. Keeble scored in both matches, naturally.<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Let's be honest - he wasn't saving that. Keeble secures promotion at Middlesbrough, 1958</i></div>
<br />
After a decade of toil for the Club in the second tier, Keeble was a huge part of promotion and the subsequent setting of foundations for the success of the Sixties, and deserves to be remembered fondly as a centre forward of some renown. He was sadly forced to retire in 1960.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">49. <b style="font-style: italic;">Dimitri Payet </b>(2015 - 2017)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 60 Goals: 15 International: France<br />
Other Rankings: BB (18) WHUFC (34) WHTID (N/A)<br />
<br />
A possibly controversial choice, or perhaps perfectly understandable now that the dust has settled. Arrived from Marseille in 2015 and was immediately sensational. Playing wide left for Slaven Bilic's band of disorganised lunatics, he was good enough to get us dreaming of a Champions League place, and but for some highly questionable refereeing he might indeed have got us there. Became famous for his wonderful free kicks, but he was also outrageously gifted on the ball and at the end of the 2015/16 season was one of the best players at that summer's European Championship. He also took home the Hammer of the Year award, which is probably more important.<br />
<br />
In hindsight we should have cashed in on him then and taken the rumoured £50m that Real Madrid were dangling. As it was, we kept him, he became disenchanted when the club returned to its usual state of chaos and incompetence and Payet eventually went on strike so he could be sold back to Marseille. As happens at all normal clubs.<br />
<br />
His star didn't burn for long, but few have ever shone brighter in Claret and Blue.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">48. <b><i>Jack Tresadern</i></b> (1914 - 1924)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 186 Goals: 6 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (N/A) WHTID (N/A)<br />
<br />
Oh, hello. Football hipster alert.<br />
<br />
Well, yes and no. Tresadern was in the side elected to the Football League in 1919, and was part of the team which reached the famous "White Horse" FA Cup Final in 1923. In fact, Tresadern was controversially caught up in the crowd after taking a throw in, which left a gap from which Bolton scored their opening goal in that Final, and now I am annoyed about a decision made in a game of football played nearly a century ago.<br />
<br />
Considered a fairly robust player, which by the standards of the time probably meant he carried a musket, Tresadern was widely admired as a pre-eminent left half, and was good enough to play for England despite spending most of his career in the Second Division. In the end, I decided that West Ham haven't had enough successful teams that I could leave out one of the best players from our earliest finalists.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">47. <b><i>Frank Lampard Jr</i></b> (1996 - 2001)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 187 Goals: 38 International: England<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (39) WHTID (N/A)<br />
<br />
Another who caused me to think long and hard, primarily because so much of his success came at Chelsea. But to ignore Lampard's formative years would be wrong, as he debuted in 1996 as a teenager and gradually imposed himself in the side before becoming a key part of the 1999 team who would finish fifth, win the Intertoto Cup and be first on Match of the Day every week because of their allergic reaction to defending. Lampard's defining moment at West Ham might even have come when he scored in that famous Intertoto win in Metz.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Worth it just for Metz</i></div>
<br />
There is a lot of water under the bridge here because of the way he left and his subsequent attitude towards the club, but Lampard was a fine goalscoring midfielder who was much better for us than many fans seem to remember and who suffered far less abuse than he seems to remember. If I could reset the clock on any one relationship between the supporters and a player, it would be him. He and his father should be feted as heroes at West Ham.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">46. <b><i>Eyal Berkovic </i></b>(1997 - 1999)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 79 Goals: 12 International: Israel<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (N/A) WHTID (28)<br />
<br />
Even as I write this, I am wondering how I could include a player who did nothing defensively and generally disappeared at the first hint of physicality. And yet Berkovic was the fulcrum of that bonkers 1999 team who finished fifth with a negative goal difference and generally were the maddest team around. Impossible to beat at home, and highly likely to concede four in the return game, Berkovic is probably the best epitome of the duality of that side.<br />
<br />
Harry Redknapp essentially set the team up around him and he responded by becoming the best playmaker seen at Upton Park for many years. He had no real pace and thought tackling was for others, but he was highly skilled, an underrated finisher and could pick a final pass like no other. He played for just two seasons, and eventually left after John Hartson literally tried to kick his head in during a training session. West Ham, ladies and gentlemen.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">45. <b><i>Frank McAvennie</i></b> (1985 - 1992)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances:190 Goals: 60 International: Scotland<br />
Other Rankings: BB (19) WHUFC (16) WHTID (15)<br />
<br />
I can hear the gasps from here. Frankie Mac, beloved wild man of the Boys of '86 has been a top twenty pick in every other poll, and remains a terrace hero even today when there are no terraces, only scaffold and popcorn.<br />
<br />
Signed from St Mirren in 1985, the Scotsman was originally a midfielder but was pushed up front by John Lyall and repaid him with 28 goals in that now legendary season, in which he also finished as runner up in the Hammer of the Year voting. Matching a prodigious work rate on the pitch with a Herculean appetite for debauchery off it, McAvennie was very much a man of his time. The problem is that as far as I recall, his best work was really restricted to that season. He would score just 11 the following campaign before moving to Celtic where he struggled to regain the form that had nearly carried us to a title.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>One Mac-ah-ven- EEEEE</i></div>
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McAvennie then followed the well worn path back to West Ham in 1989 - a distressingly high number of those on this list have had multiple stints with the club - where he managed just ten games before Chris Kamara attempted to amputate his leg in a game at Stoke. McAvennie was never the same after this and although he was an important squad player in the side which gained promotion under Billy Bonds in 1991, he gradually drifted away. He did, however, sign off in fine fashion with a marvellous second half hat trick against Forest in the last match of the 1991/92 season.<br />
<br />
This seemed a fitting farewell for a man who was always box office, and in his pomp felt like a lightning strike in human form, wearing the tightest shorts imaginable on a grown man.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">44. <b><i>George Foreman</i></b> (1939 - 1946)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 234 Goals: 188 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (N/A) WHTID (N/A)<br />
<br />
I strongly suspect that you have never heard of Alec George Foreman, and I don't blame you. His official playing record for West Ham lists him as having appeared in six games and scored just one goal. However, when I started looking into the wartime records for the club, Foreman immediately jumped out. In an admittedly jumbled set of competitions and amid a clearly diluted talent pool, Foreman scored a startling 188 goals at a rate of nearly one a game.<br />
<br />
We can quibble about the standard, for sure, but once I made the decision to take wartime football into account it was impossible to leave him out. He was the leading striker for the team who won the 1940 Wartime FA Cup, and scored no fewer than thirteen hat tricks during his time leading the line for the wartime Hammers.<br />
<br />
Curiously he left the club immediately after the war finished, which perhaps suggests that he wasn't up to playing at an elite level. He therefore joined Spurs.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">43. <b><i>Tony Gale</i></b> (1984 - 1994)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Appearances: 368 Goals: 7 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (33) WHUFC (35) WHTID (31)<br />
<br />
Another Boy of '86, although the reality is that most of that team make this list. Gale will be better known these days to younger readers as the jovial co-commentator on most illegal streams, but he was actually a very good centre half in his day. Arriving from Fulham in 1984 he soon settled in as a long term partner for Alvin Martin and continued a tradition of ball playing centre halves in Claret and Blue who should probably have got a look in for England but didn't.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The shorts though</i></div>
<br />
Whilst he earned a reputation as a stylish, footballing defender, Gale coped fairly well with the physical stuff, and indeed his most famous moment might have been the 1991 FA Cup Semi Final when he was ludicrously sent off by Keith Hackett for a "professional foul" when on the half way line. We would go on to lose 4-0 while Villa Park shook to the sustained strains of "<i>Billy Bonds Claret and Blue Army</i>" as our fans sang their way through more heartbreak. My dad maintains to this day that he has never heard anything like it.<br />
<br />
I always felt rather sorry for Gale that he should be remembered for that episode, when his brilliant curling free kick in the famous 4-1 1988 League Cup win over Liverpool seems far more fitting.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">42. <b><i>Malcolm Musgrove</i></b> (1954 - 1962)</span><br />
<br />
Appearances: 317 Goals: 98 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (N/A) WHTID (N/A)<br />
<br />
For most of the Fifties West Ham were a second tier side, and much of their threat came from men who don't get much airtime these days. John Dick, Malcolm Musgrove and Harry Hooper were a more than handy triumvirate, with the former two being a key part of the team who landed promotion in 1958. While Hooper was perhaps the most acclaimed of the two wingers, being named as a reserve for the England 1954 World Cup squad, it was Musgrove who stayed longer and left the deeper footprint.<br />
<br />
Second only to the astonishing Jimmy Ruffell in terms of goals scored by wingers, Musgrove was direct and physical and actually improved his output after promotion. He bagged 20 goals in the 1959/60 season and generally offered an unparalleled goal threat from wide areas. He was rewarded for his efforts with the 1960 Hammer of the Year award and a place in this list. He can't complain.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">41. <b><i>David Cross</i></b> (1977 - 1982)</span><br />
<br />
Appearances: 224 Goals: 97 International: N/A<br />
Other Rankings: BB (N/A) WHUFC (28) WHTID (33)<br />
<br />
I will confess that the initial appeal of David Cross wasn't obvious to me. Indeed I pondered whether he or Dean Ashton were worthy of this spot, before deciding that a man with his reputation deserved further investigation. Still, I had never seen him play, and at first glance his statistics don't make obviously great reading. He was clearly a fine player but his West Ham career was spent primarily in the Second Division. But not all of a footballer's gifts are revealed in spreadsheets or goal charts.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Four!</i></div>
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Cross, almost more than any other player, seems to inspire a reverence in West Ham fans of near mythic proportions. Perhaps it was the manic physicality that earned him the nickname <i>"Psycho" </i>or the <i>did-that-really-happen </i>feat of scoring all four goals in a 4-0 win at Spurs. Either way, he is a man who led the line fearlessly and despite being our then record buy when he arrived from West Bromwich Albion, remains one of the best purchases the Club have made.<br />
<br />
Older fans can no doubt fill me in, but it seems to me that here was a player who was lethal in the air and more than capable with the ball at his feet. Leading the line on his own in a time when defenders were still able to clatter forwards at will speaks to his physical courage and strength. I am converted. Psycho reigns.<br />
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<br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-40-to-31.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 40 to 31</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-30-to-21.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 30 to 21</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-20-to-11.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 20 to 11</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-10-to-1.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 10 to 1</a>HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-18435265066278322752018-08-31T14:34:00.001+01:002018-08-31T20:38:32.042+01:00In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Over the summer, the club ran an interesting series of
articles where they identified the “greatest” fifty players to have ever played
for West Ham. I will confess that I find this kind of thing much more
interesting than the general stuff that appears on the official site, which is
usually a rehash of the previous week’s “<i>the
season starts on Saturday</i>” article.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">They're in it</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So taken was I with the concept, and sitting on holiday with
only our customarily inept start to the season for company, I decided I would
have a crack at putting my own list together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I should start by saying that I didn’t have a huge issue
with the club list, as such an endeavour will always be subjective and indeed
the list I present to you here would be different if I were to undertake this
exercise again tomorrow. I have been tinkering with it for days, and have been
switching names in and out like Manuel Pellegrini trying to find a functioning
midfield.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The primary issue that one must address in trying to narrow
down a list of over a thousand names to just fifty is one that all historians
face - and yes, get me; two French beers and quick glance at Jimmy Ruffell’s
Wikipedia page and I’m a <i>historian</i> –
namely, how does one compare across eras? When the club was formed in 1895, the
laws of Association Football were noticeably different than they are now. As an
example, the rule change stating that goalkeepers could only handle the ball in
their own box was not implemented until 1912, seventeen years after the
inception of the club. How do we judge those who played under those conditions
and then compare them to, say, Mitchell Thomas – a man who <i>Fortunes Always Hiding </i>theorised had his own underground network of
tunnels at Upton Park, such was his proclivity for turning up in places he
wasn’t supposed to be?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Additionally, how does one allow for the changes in tactics,
conditioning, sports science, speed, equipment, medical treatment, money, professionalism and the
globalisation of the game? And how are we to judge those whose careers were interrupted by war? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">With great difficulty, is the correct answer to all of that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There is also the problem of adjusting for positional
differences. It is fairly easy to determine a champion goal scorer in any era,
but less easy to discern the classy full back or pivotal right half. I strongly
suspect that defensive players from the very early era of the club have been harshly
treated in these lists, because establishing their relative excellence is so
hard. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This brings me to the unique problem of assessing footballers who I never saw play. My first game was in 1984, which I don’t remember, and I didn’t start attending with any regularity until 1990. This causes me the dual problem of wondering whether I am overrating those I saw in the flesh or punishing them because I remember them both in and out of form. One truth I have learned in this exercise is that players I didn't see never had bad games. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And lastly, what do we mean when we talk about greatness?
Any true list of the greatest footballers to have ever played for West Ham
would certainly have to include Liam Brady, Francois van der Elst, Paolo Futre,
Javier Mascherano and Michael Carrick and yet none make my list. Being a great
footballer is surely not enough – they need to have been great <i>for West Ham</i>. Using that criteria it is important to note that this list doesn't attempt to rank the players in terms of ability, but more in the sense of how valuable they were for West Ham. Dimitri Payet was clearly a better player than Trevor Sinclair, but the latter delivered greater value over a longer period of time. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
So my approach was this:<br />
<br />
- players needed to have made at least fifty appearances to qualify. This eliminated some outstanding players such as post war goal scorer Tommy Dixon and modern day icons such as Carlos Tevez and Marko Arnautovic.<br />
<br />
- I tried, as best I could, to weigh up the level at which players were performing. In this scenario, early greats such as Harry Stapley and Frank Piercy were disadvantaged because they played in the Southern League, which was effectively the Third Division of English football at the time, largely as a result of professionalism having taken off in the North before the South of England. I also had to make a decision about what to do with wartime players and in the end I decided to include those appearances and players too.<br />
<br />
- I tried to give due weight to those who achieved international honours. It may not seem like it these days, with caps given away like confetti, but for West Ham players it has always been notoriously difficult to achieve international recognition. Consider that we live in a world where Billy Bonds never played for England and Phil Jones has played at two World Cup Finals.<br />
<br />
- I relied heavily upon contemporary notes and the recollections of those who have a passion for West Ham history. To that end I am indebted to the incredible work of Steve Marsh and Nigel Kahn at <a href="http://theyflysohigh.co.uk/whos-who/4552854944">They Fly So High</a>, the invaluable <a href="http://www.westhamstats.info/westham.php?west=0">West Ham Stats</a> from which all statistics are taken, and various wonderful books such as Jack Helliar and Tony Hogg's marvellous <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whos-Who-West-Ham-1900-1986/dp/B0011SY0KQ/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535498178&sr=1-4">"Who's Who of West Ham 1900 - 1986"</a>, and Tony McDonald's "<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Upton-Park-Memories-Tony-McDonald-ebook/dp/B073CMBW4Y/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535498359&sr=1-7&keywords=tony+mcdonald+west+ham">Upton Park Memories</a>", which I used as a sense check whenever I was concerned my own sentiments were drifting too far from reality.<br />
<br />
- I also relied on YouTube clips and compilations which have put together with such diligence by people like Rob Banks and Dan Coker. In saying that, I did try and bear in mind that YouTube compilations can make anyone look good. I remain convinced that this explains 60% of our transfers in the Sullivan era.<br />
<br />
- I compared my own list to that of the other definitive rankings that I could find. I located only three, although I would be delighted to find any others. They are reproduced below, for context. They are; this latest list from the Club which I would say is good but not great; an excellent 2016 effort by Blowing Bubbles magazine and; a, frankly, mad list from website West Ham Till I Die, from 2009. There won't be many lists that have Herita Ilunga above Ronnie Boyce, but fair play - those lads smoked some crack and came up with one.<br />
<br />
- I tried to apply the Tim Breacker test. He was a good, solid, dependable right back who played for most of the Nineties and did perfectly well. But I saw the majority of those games and know that Breacker wouldn't be anywhere near a list like this. Yet if you were to undertake this exercise in thirty years you might allow yourself to look at his appearances and generally good reviews and think that he might be worth a place. I have no doubt that I have done this with some of the players from before my time, although in my defence I think there is quite a bit of value in being good enough to hold down a starting spot in a top flight team for a long period.<br />
<br />
- Lastly, I allowed myself a liberal and malleable definition of the term "great". In the end I decided that greatness can come in many forms and thus I considered skill, longevity, fan feelings, statistics and the simple aesthetic joy of watching these players. As I said above, I would produce a different list if undertook this endeavour again, and before you have even finished reading it, I will have changed my mind and decided that someone is woefully wrong. Even allowing for the inherent flaws in my reasoning, what I have enjoyed in undertaking this exercise is simply learning more about my club.<br />
<br />
And perhaps someday someone can explain to me how that 1960's side didn't win the league.<br />
<br />
Alternate Rankings:<br />
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<tr class="tableizer-firstrow"><th></th><th>Blowing Bubbles Top 40</th><th>WHUFC</th><th>West Ham Till I Die</th></tr>
</thead><tbody>
<tr><td>1</td><td>Billy Bonds</td><td>Bobby Moore</td><td>Bobby Moore</td></tr>
<tr><td>2</td><td>Bobby Moore</td><td>Billy Bonds</td><td>Trevor Brooking</td></tr>
<tr><td>3</td><td>Trevor Brooking</td><td>Trevor Brooking</td><td>Paolo Di Canio</td></tr>
<tr><td>4</td><td>Vic Watson</td><td>Geoff Hurst</td><td>Geoff Hurst</td></tr>
<tr><td>5</td><td>Geoff Hurst</td><td>Alan Devonshire</td><td>Billy Bonds</td></tr>
<tr><td>6</td><td>Martin Peters</td><td>Martin Peters</td><td>Carlos Tevez</td></tr>
<tr><td>7</td><td>Alan Devonshire</td><td>Vic Watson</td><td>Alan Devonshire</td></tr>
<tr><td>8</td><td>Phil Parkes</td><td>Alvin Martin</td><td>Martin Peters</td></tr>
<tr><td>9</td><td>Johnny Byrne</td><td>Frank Lampard Sr</td><td>Julian Dicks</td></tr>
<tr><td>10</td><td>Tony Cottee</td><td>Phil Parkes</td><td>Phil Parkes</td></tr>
<tr><td>11</td><td>Alvin Martin</td><td>Paolo di Canio</td><td>Tony Cottee</td></tr>
<tr><td>12</td><td>Ronnie Boyce</td><td>Julian Dicks</td><td>Robert Green</td></tr>
<tr><td>13</td><td>Syd Puddefoot</td><td>John Dick</td><td>Alvin Martin</td></tr>
<tr><td>14</td><td>Julian Dicks</td><td>Tony Cottee</td><td>Ludek Miklosko</td></tr>
<tr><td>15</td><td>Ernie Gregory</td><td>Mark Noble</td><td>Frank McAvennie</td></tr>
<tr><td>16</td><td>Frank Lampard Sr</td><td>Frank McAvennie</td><td>Vic Keeble</td></tr>
<tr><td>17</td><td>Paolo di Canio</td><td>Ray Stewart</td><td>Johnny Byrne</td></tr>
<tr><td>18</td><td>Dimitri Payet</td><td>Ken Brown</td><td>Rio Ferdinand</td></tr>
<tr><td>19</td><td>Frank McAvennie</td><td>Bryan Robson</td><td>Joe Cole</td></tr>
<tr><td>20</td><td>Mark Noble</td><td>Syd Puddefoot</td><td>Slaven Bilic</td></tr>
<tr><td>21</td><td>Bryan Robson</td><td>Jimmy Ruffell</td><td>Bryan Robson</td></tr>
<tr><td>22</td><td>Steve Potts</td><td>Ludek Miklosko</td><td>Ray Stewart</td></tr>
<tr><td>23</td><td>Ken Brown</td><td>Ronnie Boyce</td><td>Matthew Upson</td></tr>
<tr><td>24</td><td>Ray Stewart</td><td>Len Goulden</td><td>Valon Behrami</td></tr>
<tr><td>25</td><td>Malcolm Allison</td><td>Ernie Gregory</td><td>Scott Parker</td></tr>
<tr><td>26</td><td>Ludek Miklosko</td><td>Johnny Byrne</td><td>Frank Lampard Sr</td></tr>
<tr><td>27</td><td>Carlos Tevez</td><td>Rio Ferdinand</td><td>Ernie Gregory</td></tr>
<tr><td>28</td><td>Scott Parker</td><td>David Cross</td><td>Eyal Berkovic</td></tr>
<tr><td>29</td><td>Ted Hufton</td><td>Vic Keeble</td><td>Michael Carrick</td></tr>
<tr><td>30</td><td>John Bond</td><td>Joe Cole</td><td>Malcolm Allison</td></tr>
<tr><td>31</td><td>Clyde Best</td><td>Jim Barrett</td><td>Tony Gale</td></tr>
<tr><td>32</td><td>Jim Barrett</td><td>Steve Potts</td><td>Andy Malcolm</td></tr>
<tr><td>33</td><td>Tony Gale</td><td>John Bond</td><td>David Cross</td></tr>
<tr><td>34</td><td>Rio Ferdinand</td><td>Dimitri Payet</td><td>Herita Ilunga</td></tr>
<tr><td>35</td><td>John Dick </td><td>Tony Gale</td><td>Yossi Benayoun</td></tr>
<tr><td>36</td><td>Jimmy Ruffell</td><td>Carlos Tevez</td><td>John Hartson</td></tr>
<tr><td>37</td><td>Joe Cole</td><td>Pat Holland</td><td>Ronnie Boyce</td></tr>
<tr><td>38</td><td>Graham Paddon</td><td>Alan Sealey</td><td>John Sissons</td></tr>
<tr><td>39</td><td>Paul Allen</td><td>Frank Lampard Jr</td><td>Liam Brady</td></tr>
<tr><td>40</td><td>Martin Allen</td><td>Noel Cantwell</td><td>Trevor Sinclair</td></tr>
<tr><td>41</td><td></td><td>Scott Parker</td><td>Jim Standen</td></tr>
<tr><td>42</td><td></td><td>Geoff Pike</td><td>Paul Goddard</td></tr>
<tr><td>43</td><td></td><td>Michael Carrick</td><td>John Dick</td></tr>
<tr><td>44</td><td></td><td>Steve Lomas</td><td>Ken Brown</td></tr>
<tr><td>45</td><td></td><td>Brian Dear</td><td>Noel Cantwell</td></tr>
<tr><td>46</td><td></td><td>Ian Bishop</td><td>Clyde Best</td></tr>
<tr><td>47</td><td></td><td>Clyde Best</td><td>James Collins</td></tr>
<tr><td>48</td><td></td><td>Trevor Sinclair</td><td>Graham Paddon</td></tr>
<tr><td>49</td><td></td><td>Ted Hufton</td><td>Ian Bishop</td></tr>
<tr><td>50</td><td></td><td>Bobby Zamora</td><td>Martin Allen</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Of these, I have ranked them in order of preference, with the Blowing Bubbles version doing the best job of looking across all eras, as befits the group of highly knowledgeable selectors they put together. I don't actually know who was responsible for the official ranking, and while I think it's largely decent it has a couple of nonsensical names in there from more recent times who shouldn't be anywhere near such a list.<br />
<br />
In defence of the West Ham Till I Die poll, this was done via a public vote and included only post war players. I suspect there is quite a lot of recency bias at play, and the results probably reflect a younger voting audience and also some fairly strong drug usage.<br />
<br />
As it is, my own list includes twenty nine players who I never saw in the flesh. For those of us under forty, the reality seems to be that there were a lot of very good players in Claret and Blue before our time, although a proper examination of our history reveals an awful lot of underachievement. The 1960's alone featured an incredible amount of talent, and yet absolutely no threat to the league title at all. For a fan reviewing that era now, it is perplexing to see how little was achieved with so much.<br />
<br />
And with that, the list:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-50-to-41.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 50 to 41</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-40-to-31.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 40 to 31</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-30-to-21.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 30 to 21</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-20-to-11.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 20 to 11</a><br />
<a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-retro-fifty-greatest-hammers-10-to-1.html">The H List - In Retro - The Fifty Greatest Hammers - 10 to 1</a><br />
<br />HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-79032959724478553362018-07-20T13:08:00.001+01:002018-07-20T13:29:22.902+01:00Let's Fix Modern Football - Pipe Dreams Edition<div style="text-align: center;">
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Imagine writing a long article highlighting <a href="http://thehlist.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-questions-they-dont-want-you-to-ask.html" target="_blank">the ludicrous, self serving, avaricious attempt by England's self styled biggest football clubs to murder the game</a>, and then casually chucking in there that you had some plans to address those same imbalances. </div>
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Imagine no more. I did it. And here I am, staring at my screen feeling a little too much like I've finally got something in common with Theresa May. This is my Article 50 and if I just have some belief in myself, everything should magically turn out alright.<br />
<br />
Much time has passed since I wrote that first article. The big clubs <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/07/premier-league-big-six-win-battle-overseas-television-rights" target="_blank">eventually got their way</a>, with everybody finally acknowledging that what English football really needed was for Bournemouth and Brighton to give some of their overseas TV money to Liverpool and Chelsea, lest any of those smaller clubs ever used the cash to close the gap to the elite and make the division interesting.<br />
<br />
Outgoing Premier League chairman Richard Scudamore presided over this change, and was hailed for holding the league together, rather than losing those Big Six to a European Super League. He was thus able to explain to Daniel Levy that he'd come up with a way to scupper the idea of Blackburn ever winning the league again, <i>despite the fact they've done it more recently and more frequently than Spurs. </i><br />
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<i>Hero</i></div>
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But before I begin, I need to briefly address a few points that came out of the initial piece:</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><u><i>1. This is a waste of time</i></u></b></div>
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<b><u><i><br /></i></u></b></div>
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I know this. I'm a blogger on the internet. Everything I write is a waste of time. There isn't going to be a great uprising whereby we suddenly level playing fields all over Europe and next years Champions League final is Huddersfield vs Celta Vigo, even though that would be brilliant. </div>
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But it's alright to dream - it's all they let us do, after all. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><u><i>2. Stop Moaning - It's only what you did to the Football League</i></u></b></div>
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<br />
Well, yes, this is true. Although you'll probably remember West Ham getting heroically relegated immediately prior to the formation of the Premier League. <i>That's</i> the fabled West Ham Way.<br />
<br />
But even if that is true, it's not a reason to allow ourselves to complacently accept the status quo as an irrecoverable situation. My primary challenge to anyone proposing changes to English or European football is always the same - do these measures make it more or less likely that Hull or Chesterfield or Yeovil or even Millwall can win the Premier League? Can we get Getafe into a Champions League final? Can Crotone win Serie A?<br />
<br />
Unless you're trying to level the playing field for everyone, you're part of the problem. Or put another way - enough with this mendacious and solipsistic way of thinking spouted by the media at large that fans of teams like Arsenal somehow <i>deserve </i>success because they've gone a whole five years without a trophy.<br />
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All football fans are equal. It's really not a difficult concept. </div>
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<br />
<b><u><i>3. You just want to make it easier for West Ham to win things</i></u></b><br />
<b><u><i><br /></i></u></b>
Again, yes and no. I want it to be realistically possible for all teams to win. I want an end to the current situation where all football fans buy TV subscriptions and consume goods with cash that then flows back into the game through sponsors and TV revenue primarily to "The Big Six". Those six teams are the minority and it's time we ended their grip on the game.<br />
<br />
I suggest it's possible to have a system whereby teams win things because they are better run, better managed and have better youth development rather than because they are Liverpool and they've got enough UEFA subsidies to buy half of the Southampton team. And let's face it, any system that requires smart leadership is extremely bad news for West Ham.<br />
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Like I said before - this isn't a West Ham thing. It's a football thing.<br />
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<b><u><i>4. Go and watch a non-league team if you don't like it</i></u></b><br />
<b><u><i><br /></i></u></b>
Ah yes, that old staple. The only true fans are at Boreham Wood.<br />
<br />
People love their football teams no matter what level they play it. Hell, even Manchester United fans are as devoted to their team as any other. But no one set of fans are any better or more deserving of success than any other - that's really the whole point of this article.<br />
<br />
<b><u><i>5. Making English football fairer damages our chances of winning anything in Europe</i></u></b><br />
<b><u><i><br /></i></u></b>
English teams have a chance of winning European trophies? Who knew? Well lads, I'm afraid that while you prohibit any teams beyond the self styled "Big Six" the opportunity to play in the Champions League then we're not going to care about it, are we?<br />
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But, the broader point is fair, and that's why these proposals are for the whole of European football - I am the President of UEFA, after all. Imagine therefore, that I was actually doing my job and representing all football fans on the Continent instead of pandering to those in Asian TV markets and those of the G14. Instead imagine a world where money was more evenly spread and Southampton and Ajax could hold on to all those players they've developed and meet in the Champions League final. That's what we're aiming for.<br />
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It's also another reason that none of this will ever happen.<br />
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***</div>
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Alright, so with all of those caveats in mind, what am I planning? Well, let me delay you again slightly and explain the genesis of some these thoughts.<br />
<br />
Most of my ideas have come from studying Major League Baseball in the US. No one could ever accuse our American cousins of not giving capitalism a fair crack of the whip, but when it comes to sport they have a surprisingly nuanced world view.<br />
<br />
There is a tacit understanding within American sports that competitive balance is hugely important and that US fans don't simply want to watch the same teams winning championships year after year. Now, they also (sort of) elected Donald Trump as their leader so let's not get too caught up in praising their thinking, but there are lots of things we could learn here.<br />
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<i>Let's copy these guys - they seem to know what they're doing!</i></div>
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To start with, here are the Major League Baseball champions over the last twenty six years (chosen to match the Premier League era):<br />
<br />
New York Yankees (5), San Francisco (3), Boston Red Sox (3), Florida/Miami (2), St Louis (2), Toronto (2), Atlanta (1), Arizona (1), Anaheim (1), Chicago Cubs (1), Chicago White Sox (1), Philadelphia (1), Minnesota (1), Houston (1) and Kansas City (1).<br />
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By contrast the Champions League has been won in that timeframe as follows:<br />
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Real Madrid (7), Barcelona (4), AC Milan (3), Bayern Munich (2), Manchester United (2), Marseille (1), Ajax (1), Juventus (1), Borussia Dortmund (1), Porto (1), Liverpool (1), Inter (1), Chelsea (1)<br />
<br />
To summarise, that's fifteen World Series winners taken from a field of thirty two teams, with another eight having made the World Series in that time span. Big money teams still top the list, but it's still possible for smaller teams to succeed in a way that it simply isn't in European football.<br />
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By contrast, we see thirteen winners of the Champions League, taken from a field of <u>every single European club in existence. </u><br />
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Now, offering up baseball as a perfect comparison is flawed because there are several striking differences. Firstly, there is no real international alternative league for playing baseball so MLB can impose a luxury tax on player salaries without the risk of those players going to China for more money. </div>
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They also have a college and high school system that produces players for them, meaning that bad teams are able to replenish their playing staff through an annual draft, with players they have not had to pay a dime to develop.<br />
<br />
Neither of these things are true in football, and that causes us significant problems in trying to pick up tips on equality from baseball, but there is still plenty to be learned.<br />
<br />
And here we go. Here's what I would do as President of UEFA, in a utopian existence where I didn't have to pander to anyone for votes, or to sponsors for cash or to sportswear manufacturers for their influence. Pipe dreams baby:<br />
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***</div>
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<b><u><i><span style="color: red;">The Home Club</span></i></u></b><br />
<br />
Under my proposals, when a player signs for a team at the age of 18, that team is forever designated as his "<i>Home Club</i>". In order to qualify, they must play at least a year with the club after this point, in order to stop Chelsea just registering every child in the South East as their player.<br />
<br />
I'll hold off explaining why for the moment, but just remember this, as it will become important. Think of this as like the bit in <i>Sherlock </i>when you meet Moriarty very early in the script but don't realise it. It's the same thing, except not at all.<br />
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<i>I don't know what I'm saying anymore</i></div>
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<b><u><i><span style="color: red;">Squad Sizes</span></i></u></b><br />
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Squads will now look like this:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>FT25</b> - A twenty five man squad - with no homegrown quota - that the first team is selected from. </li>
<li><b>FT40</b> - A forty man squad of registered professionals over 21 who are contracted to the club. This includes the FT25 squad, but the key point here is that players can't play for the first team unless they're in the FT25 squad. This is where your under 23 players sit. </li>
<li><b>Y25</b> - A 25 man squad of players between the ages of 18 and 21. When a player reaches the age of 21 he must be added to the FT40 or he is allowed to leave the club.</li>
</ul>
If a player gets to 21 and isn't included in the FT40, he can leave the club without a transfer fee. If he gets to 23 and isn't included in the FT25, he can also leave the club without a transfer fee. There are loads more bits of nuance around these rules, but the simple objective here is to stop teams hoarding young players they have no capacity or intention to play. Fly free, sweet Rueben Loftus-Cheek.<br />
<ul>
</ul>
<b><u><i><span style="color: red;">Loans</span></i></u></b><br />
<ul>
<li>A team may have a maximum of five players out on loan at any time. A player on loan is not counted against these squad limits but must be added when he returns.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b><u><i><span style="color: red;">Injuries</span></i></u></b><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>An injured player can be removed from the squad lists and place on the Injury List. During this time he is not eligible to play for the first team, and must stay on the list for a minimum of ten days. </li>
</ul>
<br />
So, let's just assess all of that for a moment.<br />
<br />
You'll no doubt be thrilled to know that the actual rules around implementing this are ludicrously convoluted but the simple fact is that by reducing the number of players any single club can have registered at any one time we force players to be more evenly distributed through the game. By virtue of this talent pouring out from the better teams in the league, then it seems reasonable to assume the wider game would be strengthened. Now other European top flight teams have a chance to pick up young players from the Big Clubs™, and by extension we should see a trickle down of talent to the lower leagues too, as the biggest clubs can no longer have first team squads <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/25819091" target="_blank">with as many as 34 players</a>.<br />
<br />
Similarly, there is a specific rule here which is that when a player joins his "Home Club" at 18, he agrees to a "service period" of 5 years. If, at the age of 23, he is not in the FT25 squad then he is free to leave. This prevents the problem of talented young players being hoarded for ages by clubs but not being able to leave.<br />
<br />
To prevent the largest clubs from circumventing this rule <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/sep/01/chelsea-38-players-loan-who-where" target="_blank">by sending 38 players out on loan </a> there is also a restriction in place on loan arrangements. No more than 5 players can be sent out <i>and </i>they have to be added to the FT25 of the receiving team.<br />
<br />
Your immediate thought here might be - "<i>Jesus Christ, this is the most boring article I've ever read</i>" and I can't argue that this is pretty dry stuff. So, to tide you over, here's an inexplicable Sunday League photo. As President of UEFA I can reassure you that I remain firmly in support of this sort of thing.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQF_y1HdZosFijHHYF2eNCVnyMDOiBD3lPZF9fepc5b0ra0HH_AbkQzbLPuthH2CJtSX3oGOFJh5bn0HmzDgRrVtuEcBCdEYUUBAIssDvvcqdHGAoBp8ix-cXw7DEnFbOUjsRa/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="238" data-original-width="354" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQF_y1HdZosFijHHYF2eNCVnyMDOiBD3lPZF9fepc5b0ra0HH_AbkQzbLPuthH2CJtSX3oGOFJh5bn0HmzDgRrVtuEcBCdEYUUBAIssDvvcqdHGAoBp8ix-cXw7DEnFbOUjsRa/s320/Capture.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Low xG on this shot</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But you might also be thinking that by restricting squad sizes, we force young players to struggle as the very top teams will simply continue to buy all the best players in the world, and with squad places so valuable it would be unlikely that young players would get much of a chance. That seems reasonable, and therefore we need to incentivise teams to prevent this. Which brings me back to that concept I mentioned before of the "Home Club". </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><u><i><span style="color: red;">Revenues</span></i></u></b></div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
Under the <a href="http://www.totalsportek.com/money/premier-league-prize-money/" target="_blank">prize money arrangements in the Premier League, in 2016/17</a> each team received £84.4m for participating. They then received a "merit" payment dependent upon their league position. For reference, Chelsea received £38.4m for winning the league and Sunderland took home £1.9m for finishing bottom. And anyone who saw them play would probably consider the Black Cats were fortunate to get anything.<br />
<br />
Then there is a third slice of income known as a "facility fee" whereby teams receive money dependent upon how frequently they appear on television. Leading the way in that season was Manchester United who were paid £32.3m. They finished sixth in the league and you might remember that one of the arguments the "Big Six" make for taking more money is they don't want to reward mediocrity and I just died of irony.<br />
<br />
The lowest paid teams received £13.6m, giving Manchester United a very nice leg up before we even add in their UEFA monies and additional gargantuan commercial revenues.<br />
<br />
Under my proposal, that third slice would change dramatically. Instead of receiving money based on how often they appear on TV, the teams would now receive money based on how much of their squad they had developed through their academy. To the extent that they have players in their squad developed by another team, <u><i>then that team receives the portion of the prize money for that player</i>.</u><br />
<br />
In the 2016/17 season a total of £404.2m was paid out under the "facility fee" arrangements to Premier League clubs. Divided equally this would have seen each club receive £20.21m each, so let's halve that and say that each team now gets £10.10m each as there is a guaranteed minimum already built into the current formula. But now we remove the link to TV appearances and instead we look at the "Home Club" of each player on the FT25 squad for the PL teams.<br />
<br />
With each of the 20 teams having a FT25 squad, we have a total of 500 players. With £202.1m left over from the "facility fee", that equals prize money of £404,000 to each club per player on the FT25 squad.<br />
<br />
Let me demonstrate this using the West Ham squad for 2016/17. These are the players who made most appearances for us that season, although in reality I would suggest that the way to determine allocation could be to use the 25 players with the most time spent on the FT25:<br />
<br />
<br />
<style type="text/css">
table.tableizer-table {
font-size: 12px;
border: 1px solid #CCC;
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
.tableizer-table td {
padding: 4px;
margin: 3px;
border: 1px solid #CCC;
}
.tableizer-table th {
background-color: #104E8B;
color: #FFF;
font-weight: bold;
}
</style>
<br />
<table class="tableizer-table">
<thead>
<tr class="tableizer-firstrow"><th>25 Man Squad</th><th>Home Club</th><th>Country</th><th>Home Club Fee</th></tr>
</thead><tbody>
<tr><td>Adrian</td><td>Real Betis</td><td>Spain</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Randolph</td><td>Charlton</td><td>England</td><td>404,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>Byram</td><td>Leeds</td><td>England</td><td>404,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>Cresswell</td><td>Tranmere</td><td>England</td><td>404,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>Reid</td><td>FC Midtjylland</td><td>Denmark</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Ogbonna</td><td>Torino</td><td>Italy</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Collins</td><td>Cardiff</td><td>England</td><td>404,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>Fonte</td><td>Sporting Lisbon</td><td>Portugal</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Antonio</td><td>Reading</td><td>England</td><td>404,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>Lanzini</td><td>River Plate</td><td>Argentina</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Payet</td><td>AS Excelsior</td><td>France</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Ayew</td><td>Marseille</td><td>France</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Feghouli</td><td>Grenoble</td><td>France</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Nordtveit</td><td>Haugesund</td><td>Norway</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Obiang</td><td>Sampdoria</td><td>Italy</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Noble</td><td>West Ham</td><td>England</td><td>404,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>Fernandes</td><td>FC Sion</td><td>Switzerland</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Kouyate</td><td>RWDM Brussels</td><td>Belgium</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Snodgrass</td><td>Livingston</td><td>Scotland</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Tore</td><td>Hamburger SV</td><td>Germany</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Carroll</td><td>Newcastle</td><td>England</td><td>404,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>Fletcher</td><td>Man Utd</td><td>England</td><td>404,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>Calleri</td><td>All Boys</td><td>Argentina</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Zaza</td><td>Atalanta</td><td>Italy</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>Sakho</td><td>Metz</td><td>France</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td></td><td>Paid to English teams</td><td>3,232,000 </td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td></td><td>Development Payments</td><td>6,868,000</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The first thing to note here, is that West Ham only get paid a further £404,000. Tough - they should have developed more of their own players. If teams want to keep more of their prize money then now they have a distinct incentive to make sure that they have homegrown players on their FT25.<br />
<br />
Remember also, however, that West Ham would receive shares for Michael Carrick, Jermain Defoe, James Tomkins and Glen Johnson. It's complex, I guess, with money flying around everywhere but it ensures teams with productive academies are rewarded. And it's nowhere near as complicated as trying to figure out UEFA coefficients.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR91f9jw5bTOwO2Z0ngIV9l_v9y8b4GMtHuGO11SYDT-kZlAPr48nFD1U9QtsNlb79d6BseDuhD0UFdTptmX7yjI3fH-_MoVsN8C9NluFmGTHVv4ipQeBfFWQCx3NSZJc-IE1q/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-10-08+at+15.12.50.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="621" data-original-width="1100" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR91f9jw5bTOwO2Z0ngIV9l_v9y8b4GMtHuGO11SYDT-kZlAPr48nFD1U9QtsNlb79d6BseDuhD0UFdTptmX7yjI3fH-_MoVsN8C9NluFmGTHVv4ipQeBfFWQCx3NSZJc-IE1q/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-10-08+at+15.12.50.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>So see, there's this thing called a "Home Club"</i></div>
<br />
Another ancillary benefit is that £2m has been paid down the pyramid to lower league teams. Multiply that across 20 Premier League clubs and we start to get a little more parity back into the game. And if we're really feeling revolutionary then we would apply these same principles to the Merit prize money too. From Che Adams to Che Guevara, just like that.<br />
<br />
However, you will see there are a large number of players developed outside of the English system. It doesn't seem reasonable for English teams to have money earned as a result of a TV deal for the Premier League, paid away to clubs outside of the country.<br />
<br />
Instead, in this example West Ham are given this £6.868m <b style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;">but</b> they are only able to spend this money in two areas. Half will go their Academy and the other half to the West Ham Ladies teams. I have labelled these as "<i>Development Payments</i>".<br />
<br />
If this to be modelled across the whole Premier League I'd imagine that initially the larger clubs would get a lot of money under this system. But bear in mind this is because teams like Chelsea have enormous youth squads and have developed a cottage industry selling these players on but never graduating them to their own first team.<br />
<br />
The whole point of the new squad restrictions is that teams simply cannot do that any longer. Over time, I think this would even out significantly and create a "one in, one out" culture around players meaning we would see a far more even spread of talent.<br />
<br />
One point to consider is that if we were to apply this method to all teams in the footballing pyramid you could end up with a situation where smaller teams are having to make payment back up the pyramid to bigger teams for developing their players. It may therefore make sense to say that this particular criteria only applies to the top two divisions in a country.<br />
<br />
<b><i><u><span style="color: red;">FA Cup</span></u></i></b><br />
<br />
How to make cup competitions relevant again? Straightforward enough - the FA Cup winner (or equivalent) now gets a Champions League spot.<br />
<br />
Finishing fourth isn't really an achievement, especially given the current imbalance. Big teams will try to push for seeding if this happens, so therefore that is outlawed immediately.<br />
<br />
Also, at the time that the draw is made, whichever team is lower in the league is designated the home team for the tie. The same will apply to all European domestic cup competitions.<br />
<br />
<b><i><u><span style="color: red;">League Cup</span></u></i></b><br />
<br />
In the event that the FA Cup winner is already a Champions League qualifier, then the qualifying spot doesn't pass to the runner up, but instead passes to the winner of the League Cup.<br />
<br />
"<i>Hey!</i>" I hear you say. "<i>That's not fair - how can winning a cup be deemed equivalent to finishing fourth in the Premier League?</i>" Well, yeah, that's not really a like for like comparison is it? I'm saying that teams who win things should be rewarded for it.<br />
<br />
Alternatively, think of it as not rewarding mediocrity.<br />
<br />
<b><i><u><span style="color: red;">Europa League</span></u></i></b><br />
<br />
Gone is the nonsense league structure and we revert instead to the old UEFA Cup format. The prize money on offer for the Europa League this year is around <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbymcmahon/2017/08/24/how-teams-in-the-champions-and-europa-leagues-will-divide-up-2-5b/#5b04f2661b6b" target="_blank">30% of that on offer for the Champions League</a>, so we'll try and balance that up a little as well by upping it to 50% and reducing the Champions League pot accordingly.<br />
<br />
Also, no more parachuting the weakest Champions League teams into the Europa League. When you're not good enough to beat Ludogorets you can go home and think about it rather than be paid another few million by UEFA and given another competition to enter.<br />
<br />
<b><i><u><span style="color: red;">Champions League</span></u></i></b><br />
<br />
The same distribution model as seen above will be applied to the Champions League and Europa League prize money. The "Home Club" principle continues with the only restriction being that teams won't pay money to clubs outside of the UEFA organisation. In that scenario the money is held by UEFA and invested into programmes for "minority" football programmes such as those covering players who are blind, deaf, autistic, suffer from learning difficulties or are physically disabled.<br />
<br />
Football, after all, is for everyone.<br />
<br />
What I like about this is that, under this structure, teams like MK Dons and Shrewsbury would have received - and will continue to receive - prize money for the Champions League performances of Dele Alli and Joe Hart.<br />
<br />
<b><i><u><span style="color: red;">European Super </span></u></i></b><span style="color: red;"><b><i><u>League</u></i></b></span><br />
<br />
One common threat from the elite whenever the rest of us try and persuade them not to destroy the game, is to threaten a breakaway Super League. As tempting as it is to say <i>"off you go", </i>I'm now the President of UEFA and I probably can't be so cavalier about my organisation.<br />
<br />
I'll try, therefore, to do something slightly different. Any player, therefore, appearing in such a Super League would not be able to appear in any UEFA international competition. No European Championships and no UEFA members able to select them for World Cups. As such, the elite can have their league but can only fill it with players who have retired from international competition or have no chance of playing in international tournaments. So, the Dutch, I guess.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;"><b><i><u>Womens Football</u></i></b></span><br />
<br />
As mentioned above, teams will now be forced to spend a certain amount of their income on their Women's teams. This will also require that all clubs actually have women's teams. I mean, imagine being Manchester United and not offering your young female fans a team to follow and idolise until now.<br />
<br />
If your objection to this is that women aren't as good at football as men, you should log off and go find another blog. There is nothing for you here.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2EfCeQAO-l9KzbcXElmkI2fvxG0n6UbHs-hNy2FDcTqBd5OjJPdI4Vgq-M2KC2s6GuPgnNrCXlIzgGXqajvz7fo0kkeIaIlIpFmE38gN7hw03MI8CCFFOiP7DXLh8ZOeua6i4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-10-08+at+15.16.20.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="614" data-original-width="893" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2EfCeQAO-l9KzbcXElmkI2fvxG0n6UbHs-hNy2FDcTqBd5OjJPdI4Vgq-M2KC2s6GuPgnNrCXlIzgGXqajvz7fo0kkeIaIlIpFmE38gN7hw03MI8CCFFOiP7DXLh8ZOeua6i4/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-10-08+at+15.16.20.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>World Cup heroes come in both sexes</i></div>
<br />
<b><i><u><span style="color: red;">Youth Football</span></u></i></b><br />
<br />
There was a distressing article in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/oct/06/football-biggest-issue-boys-rejected-academies" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> last October by David Conn, highlighting the incredible rate at which young kids are hoovered up by large clubs and then spat out when it is clear they won't make it. In these cases there seems to be a distinct lack of care taken by the clubs over the academic education of these kids, or the mental health of those in their systems.<br />
<br />
Therefore, clubs will be forced to spend more on their academies (using the <i>Development Funds </i>shown above) with a particular focus on these two points. This isn't more money to make those kids better or make the team more successful. It's to better support the ones who aren't going to make it.<br />
<br />
And once again, the restricted squads are designed to help with this point by making clubs decide sooner on the fate of these kids. I'm sure there is an argument to lower the age at which the "Home Club" principle is enshrined too, with 16 perhaps a better age.<br />
<br />
Additionally, any agent wishing to operate with a UEFA sanctioned club must now pay a 10% levy to the domestic FA of any club he receives payment from, which in turn must be spent on domestic football facilities.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;"><b><i><u>Club Links</u></i></b></span><br />
<div>
<ul>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
No more can teams in different countries be owned by the same individuals or corporations. No more links, or feeder clubs. The fans of Vitesse deserve to be more than the holding pen for Chelsea's youngsters.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>***</i></b></div>
<b><i><br /></i></b>
And what, I hear you ask, would any of this achieve? How does implementing these complicated restrictions help in any way? How is this anything other than the footballing equivalent of a Dan Brown book whereby it all seems like it's quite clever, but none of it actually works and at the end of it all Tom Hanks is inexplicably an Aston Villa fan?<br />
<br />
In short, I don't know.<br />
<br />
I've been thinking about this stuff for a while, and mostly it's just percolated pointlessly with no real sense of an ending. Indeed, I wrote this article in October 2017 and then just sat on it because it seems so pointless. This is largely because I know it's all redundant thinking and that the requirements to make any of this work are astronomical.<br />
<br />
Take, for example, the idea of Premier League clubs paying money to lower league teams. This wouldn't get anywhere because the EFL and Premier League are separate entities. So, in that sense, it's a pipe dream.<br />
<br />
But as a thought experiment I think there is some merit in asking ourselves quite how far we are prepared to let all of this go. How long are we prepared to watch a sport that is so blatantly rigged in favour of certain teams, and at the same time routinely forces smaller clubs flirt with oblivion because there is no proper trickle down effect? Why are people lauding the genius of Jurgen Klopp for spending world record amounts on Alisson and van Dijk, and failing to acknowledge the inherent privilege of historically successful clubs like Liverpool? Let's get reality to one side for a moment and ponder what football would be like if it made even the most basic nod towards allowing everyone to be competitive.<br />
<br />
Therefore, feel free to let me know where this goes wrong in the comment section below. I'll be interested to hear from you all, irrespective of who you support or whether you agree. I already have some thoughts of some fellow supporters of great repute and will post them up in due course too.<br />
<br />
They raised many salient and valid objections to my suggestions, not the least of which being that the Premier League clubs outside of the Big Six were guilty of even greater greed by failing to vote against the proposals for the new revenue model, convinced as they were that they themselves could get a bigger slice of the pie.<br />
<br />
My only request - don't tell me it will never happen as I know that already. It's a series of pipe dreams that might lead to greater equality and would thus be considered a grave danger to modern football. I know it's unthinkable.<br />
<br />
But football is broken for all but the elite. I think we have a duty to try and fix it. Feel free to join the cause.</div>
HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-32807231047781937502018-05-16T02:42:00.002+01:002018-05-16T02:42:28.802+01:00A Dream of Summer <div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Oh how is it that I could come out to here, and be still floating?</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And never hit bottom and keep falling through, just relaxed and paying attention"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>The Byrds<i>, "5D (Fifth Dimension)"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><u><i>West Ham 0 - 0 Manchester United (And Other Ramblings)</i></u></b></div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxk34opc-9iriBhETffBcmOx4MfnlGEZRIE6g-HPQlNTv_ROpDJ9qIN5eLn-Bliq_Fdtx63aw4cFpHKsEmT0f3tcMpHk75tRbwrcdZp3TFU0kn6ZAXjtIAN1jV_aFcJOi80kR_/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="423" data-original-width="518" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxk34opc-9iriBhETffBcmOx4MfnlGEZRIE6g-HPQlNTv_ROpDJ9qIN5eLn-Bliq_Fdtx63aw4cFpHKsEmT0f3tcMpHk75tRbwrcdZp3TFU0kn6ZAXjtIAN1jV_aFcJOi80kR_/s320/Capture.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Hold me - I'm bored</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
With safety comes excitement, they said. Watch us throw off the shackles and dance like it's the last night of our holiday, we thought. How wrong we were. Jose Mourinho and his footballing muzak rolled into town and now I feel like those poor Manchester United fans have spent the whole season in an elevator. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I feel lightheaded. Up here where I sit, among the cormorants and the parachutists, games such as this play out as if I'm watching a dream. Nothing is happening. All this effort, and all this expense and still somehow Ashley Young is probably going to go to the World Cup. I feel like I'm on drugs. We could end homelessness in our country for the money it took to assemble this Manchester United squad. Such equivalencies are obviously false but I'm watching Luke Shaw waddle around like a duck on a diving board and I can't help feel that somewhere along the line our society went badly off the rails. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I first felt like this, incidentally, when Babylon Zoo wrote eight seconds of a song, then played it at the wrong speed and accidentally got to number one. This game is not holding my attention. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUAy6ZAngkRrDdvniKU4jlagdD1CW8MTHRI3gUELt18ALA2qp9aflgUU6BChPqHoR2jXwD7qLqpb9HzQTiVMH1J1Q0459UsrpYjXyeGUbY4U7DqD6CZ8XYqbdNwJEelU0KbZoC/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="641" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUAy6ZAngkRrDdvniKU4jlagdD1CW8MTHRI3gUELt18ALA2qp9aflgUU6BChPqHoR2jXwD7qLqpb9HzQTiVMH1J1Q0459UsrpYjXyeGUbY4U7DqD6CZ8XYqbdNwJEelU0KbZoC/s320/Capture.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Ask your parents</i></div>
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We are unchanged and looking for our first successive wins since January 2017. That feels both remarkable and quite plausible all at once. We have not been a good football team for quite some time, after all. David Moyes is losing the PR war, and responds by fielding all his available attacking power. That means Arnautovic, Mario and Lanzini and no rest for the two central midfielders who are going to have to do their running for them. As it is, we start with all the confidence of a team hunting down 15th place, and Adrian is soon pressed into a number of smart looking saves. He seems quite good. We should probably play him more often. </div>
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The defence looks surprisingly alright, bending but not breaking, with Declan Rice the standout man. His development has been one of the few positive elements of this season, and should render James Collins unnecessary. Instead, below me, several fans are calling for the Welshman to be given a new contract, for he plays the infamous "<i>West Ham Way". </i>I didn't realise that phrase meant missing half of our games injured and then smashing it fifty yards in the general direction of the strikers when you are fit, but there you go. Despite not playing since March, our fans are adamant that the 34 year old Ginger Pele must remain. Thank goodness the club isn't run according to the whims of the general public. </div>
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But of course, it is. <a href="https://twitter.com/WHUFCFZ/status/994328224481103872" target="_blank">ExWHUEmployee</a> revealed this week that the club will be running some online polls in order to gauge fan opinion on the manager and the stadium - as though not listening to the fans has been the root cause of all our problems. And so we find ourselves at the mercy of social media groupthink because the people who own the club have had their confidence blown to pieces by years of making bad decisions. Normal people would probably just hire somebody more qualified to help out, but instead, our gang of octogenarian nutjobs are asking the saloon bar inhabitants of the White Hart in Benfleet for their thoughts. </div>
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It would be impossible to invent West Ham if we didn't already exist. </div>
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David Sullivan looks like a drowning man. His head of recruitment has gone, he is unsure about his manager, his vice Chairman has nine jobs, the stadium is a monument to his own failures and his supporters hate him. Whatever you may think of him, I doubt he's enjoying his job right now. </div>
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Shorn of self belief, he is therefore turning to fans. It's cowardly really, but populism and appeasement are all the rage right now. Give the people what they want, and then throw your hands up when it turns out to be a barrel load of shit. I don't want you to ask me who the manager is <i>because I don't have any fucking idea. </i>That's your job, David. </div>
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Below me Luke Shaw wobbles the post. It seems only fitting. </div>
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***</div>
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<i>"I don't know what to say</i></div>
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<i>You don't care anyway"</i></div>
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<i>- </i>New Order<i>, "Crystal"</i></div>
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Once upon a time Manchester United at home was a date to ring in your calendar. They were great games, where you would stand for ninety minutes and then the other seven that referees would add on while Fergie's lot tried for a winner, and you could be guaranteed entertainment. We lost some mad games at Upton Park - 5-3 and 4-2 spring to mind - had several barnstorming 2-2 draws and then the odd famous win, capped off with the fever dream summer festival of nostalgia that was the 3-2 win to bid farewell to the Boleyn. It should have been the springboard to something bigger and better, but instead feels increasingly like the day we all said goodbye to a love we will never be getting back. And Sebastien Schemmel was there in a black cab for some reason. </div>
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But football clubs are living organisms and change constantly. It was just five short years ago that Alex Ferguson was still guiding the visitors and only 24 months since Dimitri Payet was causing us to expand our horizons and dream a little bigger. We declined immediately, while Manchester United have instead said the long goodbye. Once, I watched them play whenever possible because their games were unmissable, even if you hated them. Now, they border on the unwatchable, like a Formula 1 car driving with the handbrake on. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJP1DjaNxSPUmHdkIgzgxx6cYLFtxSX6u1K_xEZBQOQpGisILDt3qDsUp9MmzX1cABtM87lwdWETKbpu0U88mDH0nEGXku8XLKJRxZ3i-DAyUMmKmgJjABNy0AeutHz6liZNi-/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="631" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJP1DjaNxSPUmHdkIgzgxx6cYLFtxSX6u1K_xEZBQOQpGisILDt3qDsUp9MmzX1cABtM87lwdWETKbpu0U88mDH0nEGXku8XLKJRxZ3i-DAyUMmKmgJjABNy0AeutHz6liZNi-/s320/Capture.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Can't you get someone sent off?</i></div>
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And so it's nearly half time and we've had a couple of moments. Anything decent tends to come through Arnautovic, who is manfully besting Smalling and Jones while they foul him at every turn. I've come to the conclusion that we still have the attacking scene stealers that were so important to those late nineties teams I referenced above, but we lack the supporting cast. Once we could rely on Trevor Sinclair, Steve Lomas and Frank Lampard to diligently understudy our leading lights. What riches. The drop off now is palpable. Too many are average or in decline. In the moments when he can be bothered, Paul Pogba looks like he is playing a different sport. </div>
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Half time comes and goes and I've not yet been roused out of my chair. Michail Antonio didn't die for this. We continue to spark intermittently, primarily when Lanzini gets on the ball and Arnautovic gets on to someone's shoulder. At the other end, Adrian is still flinging himself around with elan, and Rice is mastering the art of the last ditch tackle. A football match has nearly broken out. </div>
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Far off, in the South East Zone of the technical area, Moyes has seen enough. On comes Andy Carroll, like the guy arriving two days late for a stag do and off his nut on ketamine while everyone else is unconscious in the hotel lobby. God bless Andy, who plays for twenty five minutes and manages not to win a single header. Instead he unveils a dazzling array of twists and turns, displayed with all the grace of a crane rolling down a hill into a skyscraper, and some Quite Nice passing skills. This may actually be the best way to deploy him until his next injury.</div>
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With Carroll on the pitch we switch to the 4-4-2 formation that lots of people have been demanding. This leads to our wide midfielders being Joao Mario and Manuel Lanzini and Manchester United still can't score. It should be said that this is primarily because they aren't trying. Even Marcus Rashford can't make any difference despite Mourinho introducing him with enough time to score his customary goal. </div>
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Somewhere in the ambience Mark Noble and Paul Pogba have one of those football fights where nobody does any fighting, but it's at least nice to see the two most diametrically opposed haircuts in the Premier League together at last. Cheikhou Kouyate doesn't get involved and instead lays down on the floor, asleep. Moments later Luke Shaw does the same thing, or maybe he's found a burger on the floor, and only then do I realise that £750m Manchester United are running down the clock against a team with Patrice Evra and Jordan Hugill on the bench.</div>
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The assistant referee optimistically signals three minutes of added time, which is Referee for <i>"let's all just get out of here"</i> if ever I've seen it. Mourinho makes two substitutions that take so long that the clocks go back during one of them. Jon Moss has to get home and he blows up despite the ball never actually getting back into play. A point. Boredom. No wonder those Premier League television rights packages remain unsold. </div>
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***</div>
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<i>"Tell me that you'll dance to the end</i><br />
<i>Just tell me that you'll dance to the end"</i><br />
<i>- </i>The Thrills<i>, "Big Sur"</i></div>
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<br />
<b><u><i>West Ham 3 - 1 Everton (And Other Ramblings)</i></u></b><br />
<br />
Three short days later and I'm back again. Once more unto the breach with one under achieving, over spending set of North Westerners exchanged for another. We have become experts around here on the subject of whether a football club can retain a shred of identity when it is being pummelled by the twin forces of avaricious owners and the relentless march of the Premier League towards a homogeneous mass of identikit clubs. Everton are next up, as they swap Goodison Park for a new waterside stadium and an owner who has already blown the thick end of £200m to make them slightly worse than Burnley. These are worrying times for those of us with our noses pressed up to the window, watching the Big Six huddle round the trough.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhslIqnBAjTQrYf8f5QVaQg16Ui2HpAJE7l3iFYa4umn8obkWJMTefBindvi2K39RFoFlTs5NHQ0JHdEXIqJIMEZb7hpLylTv1Aobarrks3Y9RbSExKbkrs7iL_DJ2GiVehuDUK/s1600/IMG_0366.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="638" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhslIqnBAjTQrYf8f5QVaQg16Ui2HpAJE7l3iFYa4umn8obkWJMTefBindvi2K39RFoFlTs5NHQ0JHdEXIqJIMEZb7hpLylTv1Aobarrks3Y9RbSExKbkrs7iL_DJ2GiVehuDUK/s320/IMG_0366.jpg" width="319" /></a></div>
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<i>I'm very much in favour of this sort of thing</i></div>
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But Mourinho has gone, and like the Dementors from Harry Potter, has taken the cloak of depression with him. It's the last day of the season! Sunshine, long range goals, players dreaming of Cancun and Arnautovic and Pickford trying to out shithouse each other. It's a welcome relief at the end of another season of sliding yet further down the hill.<br />
<br />
We start with our trio of attacking sprites once more, and Everton can't seem to get near them. This is particularly interesting given how much the visitors spent on trying to buy their own frontline. A couple of hundred million quid and Allardyce still left Rooney and Walcott out despite them both being guaranteed to score against us. Never change, Sam.<br />
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Our early play deserves better. Lanzini nearly gets in before a minute is on the board, and then Arnautovic slips in Noble to force a brilliant save from Pickford. The Everton keeper then seems to kick Arnautovic off the ball, and then celebrates with the travelling fans. It would be a shame if that comes back to bite him on the arse later. Meanwhile Angelo Ogbonna tries to control a ball with his Adam's Apple and lets in Oumar Niasse, which Adrian saves brilliantly. He seems quite good. We should probably play him more often.<br />
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Half time is approaching without the neccessary reward for our endeavours. And then we start passing again, and suddenly Kouyate has freed Lanzini by accident and the Argentine is sliding a left footed finish past Pickford from outside the box. It is a rose in the snow, a diamond in the soil and a bit of a worry if this kid is actually going to be in goal for us at the World Cup.<br />
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Everton are disjointed, with only Niasse and Tom Davies truly standing out. The latter is young, wears his hair like a matador and doesn't seem to quite have the pace to be a truly elite box to box midfielder. If Everton are going to carry on with their West Hamic transfer policy, we should make a bid for him - he'd be a legend here. Elsewhere I'd be inclined to mock the ageing Phil Jagielka if it wasn't for the fact that I'm genuinely worried he is the kind of player we will buy this summer.<br />
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Neither he or his two centre back partners are able to get particularly close to Arnautovic, who is thriving in his new central role. That tactical switch from Moyes seems to have flown under the radar but the ineffectual wide player of the first half of the season has been replaced by a Lidl Ronaldo and it has kept us in the division. We should probably acknowledge that at some point. The Austrian puts his own full stop on the sentence by turning Funes Mori and smashing a long range effort through Pickford's hands. Based on the evidence of this game alone, I am concerned that our World Cup goalkeeper has wrists made of crisps.<br />
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Everton threaten intermittently and even bring Walcott on, but their heart doesn't seem to be in it. The away fans look glassy eyed - they aren't used to such treatment in this part of the world. When they win a corner, I am relaxed as we know it will go long to the back post for someone to keep alive with a looping header back into the box. And as I wait for one of our defenders to do some defending there are three more headers and Everton have pulled one back. It is the most Allardician goal possible.<br />
<br />
But Lanzini is in one of those moods he can get in. Everton have little by way of deep midfield cover and the Argentine is running riot with Joao Mario. Their passing and movement is exquisite and the final day of term feel is reinforced by Pablo Zabaleta continuously appearing in the box and trying to score - like an enthusiastic 12 year old trying to get served in a pub. It would be a popular goal for a player who has done much to endear himself to the crowd and yet must surely be replaced if we are in any way serious about improving this team. Time waits for no man, especially not one playing for the second oldest team in the division and the slowest in the hemisphere. I've seen baths run quicker than our midfield.<br />
<br />
By the time Lanzini steps easily inside Coleman and places a glorious curling effort into the top corner, it feels like justice. Pickford could maybe have saved that one too, and in the spirit of <i>glasnost</i> I think he should try wearing goalkeeping gloves this summer, rather than giant inflatable hands. Panama have never seemed so terrifying.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBOzRiH6PIEpEBVRZW803CiNkrnK2GWiynYWf35k7Uk0Z4wwbPRYoAVWdiXYJdE56FjnCSxyAl-CkdP9g-9UeUHDUjxzSaWtJa6eBlp9cd8dGv56TMad0buqbXEZoMZORSa62Q/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-05-15+at+22.21.44.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="341" data-original-width="452" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBOzRiH6PIEpEBVRZW803CiNkrnK2GWiynYWf35k7Uk0Z4wwbPRYoAVWdiXYJdE56FjnCSxyAl-CkdP9g-9UeUHDUjxzSaWtJa6eBlp9cd8dGv56TMad0buqbXEZoMZORSa62Q/s320/Screen+Shot+2018-05-15+at+22.21.44.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Seriously, Jordan</i></div>
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And just like that, it's over. I am contented - <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/may/13/karren-brady-pressure-drop-sun-column-malcontents-west-ham" target="_blank">maybe even malcontented</a> - which is a strange and unusual feeling. My Pavlovian reaction to games of football in this place is to be upset and despairing, and wondering whether there will ever be time when we won't have to compete with the rest of the division with one hand tied behind our back, courtesy of our chaotic management structure. Instead today, I am smiling, as players mill around their pitch with their families, and the landlords remove the goalposts as they go because we've only got the place until six. Sadiq sure does know how to put the <i>"lease"</i> into <i>"Please fuck off, the Stones are here in a week".</i><br />
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James Collins basks in the applause of the still stunned masses. I've always thought he was a decent squad player, but that his frequent injuries and uneven form made him a curious terrace hero. He has never once made 30 league appearances for us in a season, and played fewer times in the claret and blue than Steve Lomas. According to my Twitter feed, he is the lifeblood of this club. Maybe he is, and that's why we're dying.<br />
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I profess myself bemused by the sudden outpouring of love for a player in his mid thirties, with visibly declining skills. I can't understand those who call for a new approach to signings and then want Collins back, but perhaps I am once more forgetting the innate romance of football. I think Collins is a symbol of a past we all suddenly value more dearly than we cared to admit when we were marching out of Upton Park for the promised land.<br />
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***</div>
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<i>"What she said was sad, but then all the rejection she's had</i></div>
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<i>To pretend to be happy could only be idiocy" </i></div>
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<i>- </i>The Smiths,<i> "What She Said"</i></div>
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With this game being on a Sunday, we all got the benefit of hearing from "<a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/6268235/karren-brady-mohamed-salah-kevin-de-bruyne-west-ham/" target="_blank">The First Lady of Football</a>" once more before setting out in search of a pub within a mile of the ground. This time she manages not to insult anyone until the very end of the article, which is kind of like the time someone from HMRC managed to make it nearly all the way home before losing the USB stick with all the sensitive data on it.<br />
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For some reason the Baroness decided that she needed to use her last column of the season to say this:<br />
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<i>"We have some problems at the London Stadium caused to a degree by the terms of our lease, which we are dealing with, but also to some degree by malcontents and keyboard warriors"</i></div>
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<br />
Yes, Lord Sugar, I decided to deliberately insult all my customers and pretend that their complaints about me were totally imagined.<br />
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I get that there are issues with the Labour Mayor wanting to make the deal signed by his Tory predecessor look bad, and I have no doubt that the failure of the landlords to adhere to their side of the bargain is frustrating and expensive to deal with. But the fact that the seats are miles from the pitch isn't an issue with the lease, it's an issue with the design. Here is the artist's impression that we were all shown before we moved to the Olympic Stadium:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0qwcByHktmZHkBNwb_atlBSFdNXHOrCXQouwcXQWEbCpYgO-YcDscijAAliPvPyqUswAQQosHexd0WCR9zFWMnATmaxEmcAkn-ROFZiz9uAg02zNeSgyZehGeaxJ-gj4AZPOn/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-05-16+at+00.40.37.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="306" data-original-width="622" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0qwcByHktmZHkBNwb_atlBSFdNXHOrCXQouwcXQWEbCpYgO-YcDscijAAliPvPyqUswAQQosHexd0WCR9zFWMnATmaxEmcAkn-ROFZiz9uAg02zNeSgyZehGeaxJ-gj4AZPOn/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-05-16+at+00.40.37.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Look closely. What is clearly shown here is a section of seating that overhangs the lower tier. This is not the case anywhere in the Olympic Stadium and a root cause of the frustration we all feel. The gap between the permanent seating and the temporary scaffolded stuff is incredibly distracting, breaks your vision and, crucially, leads to a sense of disjointedness which is killing the atmosphere in the ground. Along with our back four all being grandparents.<br />
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This picture also fails to show the very obvious curvature of the seating caused by the running track. Pointing this out doesn't make me a malcontent or a keyboard warrior, but instead makes me a pissed off customer.<br />
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I have long defended Brady in these articles, because I think too much of the criticism thrown her way is because she is a woman. I stand by that because even a cursory glance at her Twitter timeline, or that of any other high profile woman in football for that matter, will reveal a distressingly high number of men abusing her for the simple crime of not looking like them. We privileged white middle aged males, who so dominate football in England should never kid ourselves about how many of our tribe are desperately terrified at the prospect of anyone different from us being given access to the game.<br />
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But, and I hate to follow that up with a but, we would surely benefit from less Brady at West Ham. At a cool million per year she would be poor value if she were full time, but as it is, she now has multiple jobs and hasn't done anything visible in her role with us since the infamous saga of the marches. The stadium move is complete, and it failed, but there is no changing that. I'm really not sure what her role is anymore, and if her view is that she wants to antagonise supporters, then maybe she doesn't either.<br />
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***</div>
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So all that really remains is for me to say thank you. </div>
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Thank you to everyone one of you who has read these articles throughout the season, and even more so to those who then passed them to others. To those who have commented and "Retweeted" and "Liked" and "Shared" I am hugely grateful because I know that without you The H List would not have gone as far as it has. </div>
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I must thank Graeme and the guys at KUMB.com for carrying The H List and for those who have supported me on other forums such as Reddit, In The Brown Stuff, Hammers Chat and WestHamOnline and my apologies to anyone I've forgotten. I am grateful too, to No Place Like Home and Blowing Bubbles for carrying articles of mine on their pages and to Jim and Phil at Stop!HammerTime for having me on their marvellous podcast throughout the season. I am very grateful to all of you. </div>
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I was very proud to be nominated for an award at the Football Supporters Federation gala in December, and remain very humbled that so many of you took the time to vote for me. I was well beaten, though, so those of you who didn't vote should feel bad. </div>
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I intend to write a couple of retro pieces over the summer, so please let me know if you have any suggestions for games or players. My only rule is I need to have seen the era....<br />
<br />
It's been a tough season, and I've truthfully never felt so unsure about the direction the club is heading. We need a lot of new blood from top to bottom, and the splits in our fanbase are devastating. But at the core of our disjointed mess still remains the club I fell in love with. Nothing can beat the electric thrill of the first time you see West Ham, and we shouldn't forget that for an entirely new generation of fans, the London Stadium will be their Upton Park. Sure, they might miss out on the strange alchemy of home games under the lights, or the heaving mass of humanity that was the North Bank when a goal went in, but they already have Lanzini ending Spurs title bid and Payet slaloming through the Middlesbrough defence and Carroll destroying the concept of beauty against Crystal Palace.<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The night of the malcontents</i></div>
<br />
Our club endures, and so do we. It remains the imperfect conglomeration of people and ideas and love and edginess and humour and failure that it has always been, but we've allowed that to be buried somewhat among the weight of this awful season. But in the storm, hope. Take it where you can find it - Declan Rice, Marko Arnautovic, the kids and their popcorn, the corner flag protests, your child telling you they can't wait to go to the game or, hell, it can even be David Moyes.<br />
<br />
But whatever it is, find that thing that keeps you connected to your club. Treasure it and remember it, because I think it's getting harder to do that these days. And yes, while they can change a lot of things, they can't change that indelible link you have to West Ham. It's yours. It's ours. It most certainly isn't theirs. We are the concrete foundation of this club, and the more of us that stand shoulder to shoulder, the higher we can build up. I foresee another difficult season ahead and more than ever, we need to remember those things that made us Hammers to begin with and then stand side by side to remind each other of it. The owners aren't this club - it's me and you. Let's not forget that.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And of course, <a href="https://whuisa.org/join/" target="_blank">join WHUISA</a>.<br />
<br />
Until next season.</div>
HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-46443122924851493072018-05-10T16:41:00.002+01:002018-05-10T16:41:14.759+01:00Leicester 0 - 2 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Come on, come on, and dance all night</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Despite the heat it'll be alright"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>The Lovin' Spoonful,<i> "Summer in the City"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><span id="goog_942263660"></span><span id="goog_942263661"></span><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
Thank fuck for that.</div>
HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-27739848833037213222018-05-02T00:36:00.001+01:002018-05-02T00:36:46.378+01:00West Ham 1 - 4 Manchester City (And Other Ramblings)<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"I don't want to spend night after night with you</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>While you figure it out"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>-</i> She and Him,<i> "I've Got Your Number, Son"</i></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>A LETTER TO DAVID SULLIVAN</b></div>
<br />
Dear David<br />
<br />
This is one of those open letters. God, how tedious of me. I've become one of "<i>those</i>" people.<br />
<br />
I know, I know - I should be better than this. But then again, so should our team after eight years of your ownership and instead we're going to either go down or survive with fewer than forty points. Neither of us have much to shout about.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>First question - where on earth do you get your jackets?</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I should be writing about this game, but to be honest, I've got nothing left to say about West Ham capitulating at home. I've seen this game a dozen times already at the London Stadium since you moved us there. I don't know how many more times I can say that Cheikhou Kouyate is no longer in control of his own legs, or describe Javier Hernandez nearly breaking out into a walk.<br />
<br />
So let's just talk, you and I. Two seriously pissed off West Ham fans with an eye on the future.<br />
<br />
I'm guessing that this weekend was tough for you. Perhaps I'm naive but I still believe that you are a genuine supporter, albeit one with a remarkably high tolerance for the team you support being abysmal. I suspect it must be galling for you to sit in Director's Boxes with the officials of clubs like Burnley, Swansea and Brighton and have to offer up polite chit chat while the team you have assembled at such great cost gets destroyed in front of you. I can't believe that at least a couple of them haven't at least leaned over and whispered something along the lines of <i>"David, old chap, not to pry but exactly how incriminating are the photographs that Patrice Evra has of you?".</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
You're not a quitter, you say. You're not walking away from a job half done. Fair enough, I suppose, although I think you might be pushing the limits of the word "<i>half</i>" there. It's the standard rhetoric of people in jobs that are beyond them, but which remunerate them handsomely. And rest assured, I think we are all aware that the several million pounds of interest that the club pays you each year probably helps to while away the hours on those long drives back down the M1 after yet another Northern shellacking. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I happen to think that people who refuse to quit when they aren't up to the task are selfish. People mocked Kevin Keegan mercilessly but by resigning as England manager in 2001 he helped England to reach a World Cup, by admitting he wasn't up to it. I find that infinitely more courageous and honourable than sticking around despite all the evidence being that you don't possess the ability to do your job. I'm. Just. Saying. David.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. For our story begins some time ago. 2010, to be precise, and West Ham was a club on the precipice. We were, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/w/west_ham_utd/8464631.stm" target="_blank">according to the BBC</a>, <i>"in 16th, in a season plagued by injuries and off field distractions". </i>Seems a little outlandish, I know, but that's what they said.<i> </i><br />
<br />
You described the situation thusly - "<i>We have a short term goal to stay in the Premier League, and in the long term we'd like to be challenging for the top four and the Champions League....the club has such an unbalanced squad. We will be honest with the fans about the books and the crazy wages the Icelandic owners paid out that has brought the club to its knees". </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I won't lie, David, that last one is my favourite.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
You finished up by saying "<i>We're taking on a huge task at a club with enormous problems. It will take time for us to turn it around.". </i>Remember what we were saying about a job half done? Time travellers from 2010 might wonder if you've even started at all. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I should also add that there was also some stuff about how you always supported your managers, right before you fired Gianfranco Zola and replaced him with Avram Grant. For a bet, possibly. Anyway, we're five managers in now so I always figured that one was probably a joke. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Plus ca change and all that, but I wonder if you ever sit at home, looking at those life-size waxwork butlers of yours and wonder whether you are in some mythical Greek hell?<br />
<br />
I know I do.<br />
<br />
In the same way that Tantalus is forever doomed to stand in a pool of water that recedes whenever he bends down to try and drink it, you seem destined to sit in the bottom half of the Premier League and watch poorer, smaller, but smarter, clubs breeze past you. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
It puzzles you, I'm sure, that fans aren't more grateful to you for saving us. I suppose that can be put down to the fact that a lot of fans don't really think you did. They saw a very wealthy individual swooping in and picking up a distressed asset that was always likely to produce a return with even a modicum of investment. Harsh, I suppose, but there you go.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There can be no denying that the clubs finances look an awful lot healthier now than they did in 2010, but of course this is largely due to the explosion in television rights. While Karren Brady might like to brag about turning around a failing business, most of us are a bit nonplussed by all that. The single best decision you made was to employ Sam Allardyce, at obscene expense, to ensure the club was back in the Premier League when the gravy train rolled into town. And if ever there was a man unlikely to miss a gravy train...</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And a pint of fucking wine</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I have no doubt that you are perplexed as to why exactly a home defeat to Manchester City would inspire all this angst among supporters. After all, City beat everybody, have unlimited funds and scored a couple of flukey goals. Their dominance says an awful lot more about the job being done by the men who run the Premier League and UEFA than it does about you. And, in isolation I'd agree with you. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I don't understand why so many fans are upset about a supposed lack of effort when it seems clear to me that David Moyes had instructed the team to sit off and hold their shape to try and deny City space behind our defence. We did this at the Etihad to great effect, and I suppose you could say it sort of worked here for about ten minutes. City scored through a deflection and an own goal, both of which were unfortunate but exactly the kinds of goals that you let in when you are shit. And David, before you protest, we are <i>absolutely </i>fucking shit.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But I'm not sure it's this particular defeat that's really the point here. It's the fact that every single one of us knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. You knew it was coming too. I know you did. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Since moving to the London Stadium we have played the current Big Six on thirteen occasions. We have won three (God bless London derbies), drawn once, and lost nine. In those games we have scored ten goals and conceded thirty four. Holy Shit, Dave! THIRTY FOUR. It's not just that we're terrible, it's that we're reliably terrible. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
We've never once scored four goals in a game at our home ground, and yet Manchester City have done it three times. Once upon a time you could judge a teams title credentials by how they fared at Upton Park, but under your watch, we now get to see how they would play in testimonials. I honestly thought Kevin de Bruyne was going to fall asleep yesterday.<br />
<br />
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I am incredibly bored!</i></div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Whether you accept it or not, the fact that we don't even remotely compete in games against one third of the division is a pretty good reason for the widespread apathy that is surging through your core support like poison through a bloodstream.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But I'm sure, you're sitting there fed up at having your efforts ripped to shreds. What of Dimitri Payet? What about that season of finishing seventh? And you'd be right. That was a great season. You should have bought a decent striker in January, of course, but instead did it on the cheap and missed out on a Champions League spot that was begging to be taken. I often wonder about that, and I'm sure you do too. Some better refereeing and Charlie Austin instead of Emmanuel Emenike and who knows where we would all be right now. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But if wishes were horses, I'd be dragging Nigel Farage through the streets of Calais behind my carriage. We blew it and then returned immediately to the stagnant mediocrity that has been the hallmark of your ownership. Barring that one marvellous season when the Premier League went crazy, big teams fell and little teams rose and bloody Leicester won the league, we have been unrelentingly boring to support. I can describe it in no other way. West Ham on the pitch are generally one of the most tedious sides in the land.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>We've got a live one</i></div>
<br />
We just...exist. Drifting aimlessly through seasons, lurking in the bottom half of the table leaving nary a footprint in the sand. All of our impact is on the back pages, as we lurch from crisis to crisis, amusing the world as we go. We are irrelevant on the pitch and shambolic off it, and there is nobody to be blamed for that other than you. I resent being asked to give you my season ticket money before the end of the season because I feel like I will just be endorsing you to go out and waste it once more.<br />
<br />
Let me ask you a question, David, if I may. Is there any challenge in your role? By which I mean, does anyone ever tell you that what you're doing is wrong? If not, perhaps you ought to ask yourself why.<br />
<br />
Once, many years ago, I worked for a brief time at a place that had a "hands on" owner. The company had two security guards, one of whom worked from 5am until 1pm, and the other from 12pm until 8pm. They had a handover period of one hour in the middle. One day the owner turned up for an operations meeting and noticed them both at reception. Troubled by such an unnecessary display of manpower, he told his operational team to fire one of them because it was ludicrous to waste money like that. Given how long ago it was, this might have saved the company around £25,000 per year.<br />
<br />
The problem with this was that it meant we had one security guard to cover fifteen hours. In the end, he did the early shift and the company paid the landlord of the building to have someone come and lock up. The cost of this service? £40,000 per year.<br />
<br />
Whether that is apocryphal or not, I don't know, but it was told around the corridors as being true. And nobody was surprised because the distinguishing characteristic of that business was that anybody close to the owner just mumbled in agreement and told him what he was saying was great. It led to a very well paid senior management and a very poorly run company.<br />
<br />
Challenge is a good thing, David. People disagreeing with you is healthy, because it introduces some rigour to your decision making process. Getting people into positions of seniority who have a backbone and some vision is a really healthy thing for a company to do. I understand that long term strategic thinking wasn't a huge part of your success in porn or property, but it couldn't be more vital to the industry in which you currently operate. You keep telling us that the manager must have the final say on transfers despite employing five in eight years. Any player signing on anything longer than a two year deal is likely to outlast the manager he signs for. Can you not see that this is a nonsense?<br />
<br />
If nothing else, please look around. Examine what is working for those other smaller clubs who have gone skating past you so easily. You need some help. You've done your best, no doubt, but there is so much more intellectual horsepower in those clubs it's not even a fair fight. They have long term business plans that allow them to think further ahead than the next transfer window, and they don't lurch alarmingly from one crisis to another. It's pretty tough to admit, but when your business is failing and you've changed the staff, the place you do business and the management then perhaps it might be time to admit that the only thing left to change is...you.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<br />
But before you get too excited about making lots of changes, David, I'd like to ask one more thing of you. When you come to make those decisions - please don't do anything for public approval. I know it's been your preferred method to road test ideas by disseminating them through various social media outlets and then gauging public response, but this highlights everything that is wrong with your leadership. Your job isn't to satisfy fans before the season, it's to do it at the end.<br />
<br />
I know fans are a nightmare. How can you appease people who scream that they want a high energy pressing game and then scream even louder for Hernandez to be on the pitch? What hope do you have of reasoning with people who insist on playing 4-4-2 without acknowledging that we don't actually have anyone who can play wide in midfield? Where do you go with supporters who criticise Moyes for not instilling a sense of organisation and professionalism into his team and then side with professional waster Andy Carroll because he didn't walk straight back into the team after being out for months? What is up with people who plaster pictures of themselves in the San Siro all over their social media accounts and then tell you they're giving up their season tickets because they're sick of the number of tourists in the stadium?<br />
<br />
But that's the point, really - fans are emotional and illogical and moody, but the simple thing we all want is success. Produce a better team and we will fall in line. You need to stop taking short cuts and start working to some semblance of a plan. Or better yet, employ some people to design and implement that plan, because this current squad you have assembled is one of the worst I've ever seen and fans have every right to be pissed off about it.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Not that logical, shockingly</i></div>
<br />
None of which is to say that fans aren't important. We're crucial. But we need you to listen to us on other things, because you've currently got it the wrong way round. And so you stay silent when our fans are threatened, when the stewarding is unsafe, when we are campaigning for safe standing and when that godforsaken fucking stadium turns out to be a total disaster, but find the time to canvas opinion about whether we should sign El Hadji Diouf. This is madness.<br />
<br />
Any business making strategic decisions to gain short term approval from their customers is doomed to fail. If you had any belief in your own vision, you wouldn't care remotely for public opinion. Instead we have this strange briefing against Moyes now to prepare the ground for letting him go in the summer. I happen to think Moyes would be a poor appointment, but still the best you could realistically manage, although either way that's not terribly important.<br />
<br />
What's important is your long term plan. How do you want to play? What type of team are you trying to build? What profile of player are you targeting and how do you plan to attract them? If Moyes is your ideal candidate then back him and commit to the plan. The problem is that you and I both know that no such template exists. Instead, everything is geared to short term survival and kicking problems down the road until you eventually sell the club and can leave them for the next guy to resolve.<br />
<br />
And there's the rub. When you took us from Upton Park you ripped the soul out of the club. But crucially you didn't replace it with anything. I would suggest that the only thing that could really have worked is to have replaced it with a brain. A razor sharp, young, progressive, cutting edge managerial set up that could have bridged the gap between us and the elite. I can't tell you how often I daydream of West Ham Red Bull, David, because it would be no further removed from the West Ham of my youth than your version, and a damn sight more successful.<br />
<br />
Instead...nothing. Just the same unimaginative approach that you have always employed, and in the end it has led us to where you have always ended up. At the bottom. <br />
<br />
I should add that none of this is personal. I think you're a businessman who saw an opportunity to profit and you took it. But the issue is that you haven't given us anything. Absolutely nothing. Not the stadium, not the team, not the managers, not the Academy, not even any glimmer of hope for the future. And if your plan is to just hang on to the club until the restrictive covenants are lifted and then sell for the biggest profit possible, then you need to be aware of what that will mean for your legacy. And perhaps you won't care, and perhaps your sons won't care, but you'll be forever known as the guy who destroyed West Ham.<br />
<br />
I hope it doesn't come to that, David, I really don't. It doesn't need to. We have attributes that other clubs would kill for. Stand aside and let people who know what they are doing utilise them. Look to Kevin Keegan - admit you're not up to it. There really is no shame in it.<br />
<br />
Yours sincerely,<br />
<br />
<br />
HeadHammerShark<br />
Disgruntled of Block 256</div>
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HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32800805.post-91152295393211343712018-04-25T03:28:00.001+01:002018-04-25T03:28:27.852+01:00Arsenal 4 - 1 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Hey! Wait! I've got a new complaint"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>Nirvana<i>, "Heart Shaped Box"</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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I had a curious experience watching this game. I now coach my daughter's under 10 team - with a heavy focus on shot locations, Expected Goals and fun, but mainly shot locations - and we had a game at 1pm. So I duly recorded this match, avoided my heavily vibrating phone, and watched the game with a two hour delay, and no social media echo chamber to influence my thoughts. </div>
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And after eighty minutes I was bordering on happy. Not only had we thoroughly dominated the first half, but after conceding an epically shit opening goal, we deservedly hauled ourselves back into the game with a thrilling equaliser from Marko Arnautovic. The flaws in the performance were obvious, and the unbalanced, lopsided squad was badly exposed at times, but there was a sense of resilience and purpose to our play that was never present under Slaven Bilic this season. If nothing else, we were finally throwing some punches back, and doing it all on a day that the rest of the world was determined would be a farewell party for Arsene Wenger. </div>
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And then Declan Rice ducked. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2WZHa8vjI7Lz7eeuwIkWq8drPaM1CwgmowKueIpTf40IgolXncNiy1J6Sm7n4h_G1OkcUTuSmzLCJ7pAZqOduTXVUd-3pUyCoeGR67D5JCrWS5ZpMur4ng2egIEzLkMYdGRJm/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-22+at+23.10.17.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="706" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2WZHa8vjI7Lz7eeuwIkWq8drPaM1CwgmowKueIpTf40IgolXncNiy1J6Sm7n4h_G1OkcUTuSmzLCJ7pAZqOduTXVUd-3pUyCoeGR67D5JCrWS5ZpMur4ng2egIEzLkMYdGRJm/s320/Screen+Shot+2018-04-22+at+23.10.17.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Farewell Arsene - don't suppose we could interest you in a flat in Hackney Wick?</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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Is it possible to lose a game of football by four goals to one and feel you were unlucky? If so, then this was it. Arsenal opened the scoring when Aaron Cresswell got close to Nacho Monreal at a corner in the same way that Australia is close to New Zealand, and the Spaniard duly took advantage. His well struck volley actually went just inside our post which threatened to open up the old debate about whether teams should have a man on the posts at corners. I say "threatened" because we actually had Arthur Masuaku stood right there up until the exact second the ball went in. The problem is that such prosaic notions as stopping shots hit straight at him are not Arthur's metier. </div>
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Instead, Arthur chose this moment to announce his support for the thinking of the French Marxist philosopher, Paul Lafargue. Big Paul, as I imagine he was known to his friends, lived an eventful late nineteenth century life before penning the renowned essay <i>"The Right to Be Lazy" </i>in 1880<i>. </i>This would prove an influential document for both European Marxists and West Ham squads through the years. And so, as Monreal's shot arrowed towards young Arthur, there followed this exchange:<br />
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="color: #17365d; text-transform: uppercase;">ARTHUR MASUAKU</span><span style="color: #17365d; text-transform: uppercase;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">(jumping
inexplicably to one side)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The
proletariat, betraying its instincts, despising its historic mission, has let
itself be perverted by the dogma of work. Rude and terrible has been its
punishment!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #17365d; text-transform: uppercase;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">JOE HART</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Yeah, that
geezer killed himself, Arthur.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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And thus we went one down having spent most of the game up to that point being the side looking most likely to score. That's not to say that we were playing particularly well, but we simply exploited the complete inability of any of Arsenal's hopeless defenders to cope with balls over their heads. Thus, a succession of well directed long passes sought out Arnautovic, who used his pace and power to get into a number of dangerous positions. Unfortunately, none led to a goal, but it was an effective tactic in the circumstance, and rather more well thought out than some fans seemed to have given credit for. </div>
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Yet, the problem with our current side is that it is a Jenga column of a team. Removing something from one location and replacing it further up just weakens the foundations completely. And so it was that Manuel Lanzini and, to a far lesser degree, Javier Hernandez arrived to shift momentum, only to leave gaps that would be mercilessly exposed by Arsenal as the light was dying. </div>
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That we were playing at The Emirates today served only to highlight those flaws. The glorious sunlight couldn't help but transport us back those two short seasons to the Dimitri Payet inspired side who destroyed Arsenal on opening day in 2015. That was a side who were set up to defend and then launch spring loaded counter attacks that primarily flowed through our nascent superstar, but which were augmented by the excellent midfield cover of Reece Oxford and the ceaseless running of Diafra Sakho. All are gone now, their footballing gravestones the series of inadequate men brought in to replace them. No matter what you think about this game, the contrast between then and now was dragged out into the bleached sunlight today and paraded for all the world to see. Hubris, thy name is West Ham. </div>
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***</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>"Now you're at the wheel, tell me how,</i></div>
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<i>How does it feel? So good to have equalised"</i></div>
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<i>- </i>The Stone Roses,<i> "Waterfall"</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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Before we drop too deeply into our traditional H List inspired malaise, let's just take a moment to enjoy the simple art of goalscoring. Has there been a more satisfying goal this season than Arnautovic's equaliser? Arsenal came at us after half time, and our complete inability to retain possession meant we couldn't get out of own half, but there was still some lingering sense that if we could ride out the barrage we might yet survive. And then after Arthur's "<i>after you</i>" there was that crushing sense of inevitability as another promising start was about to be frittered away. Another war lost for the sake of a stray bullet.</div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcGQGBNsjdwAlnn832hrVld6giegPQsAMGopDtusvBf0B7_1EXsTt8hrurs-YimsiFHNry3KuL-kXG3xt0XyeDyu5NZ0qTpc1I225XTVDKeBCM1qf0Oa2WRH3wHbDqYl9iWl0t/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-23+at+00.43.19.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="802" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcGQGBNsjdwAlnn832hrVld6giegPQsAMGopDtusvBf0B7_1EXsTt8hrurs-YimsiFHNry3KuL-kXG3xt0XyeDyu5NZ0qTpc1I225XTVDKeBCM1qf0Oa2WRH3wHbDqYl9iWl0t/s320/Screen+Shot+2018-04-23+at+00.43.19.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Love the man, bemused by the hair</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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On some days, you can sense a goal coming in the same way you can feel an oncoming storm. Imperceptible changes and shifts in pressure let us know that something is happening far off in the distance. A dark cloud, a chill breeze, a shot here, a cross there, on come the substitutes and up go the umbrellas. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Well, that wasn't happening here. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Lanzini and Hernandez arrived and more men went forward. It left us terrifyingly open at the back, and highlighted even more starkly, the total absence of defensive midfield cover in this side. But with men pushed forward we had a chance to keep a few second balls alive and from one such piece of broken play, Lanzini flicked through to a malingering Arnautovic who turned and drilled home a superb equaliser.<br />
<br />
It was one of those perfect moments when it's just possible to forget everything else and live, there and then, in the sheer joy of the present. We have the worst owners in the Premier League, a terrible, ageing squad, a ground we all hate, and a schism the width of a running track between our supporters. In theory, we shouldn't, and indeed can't, compete with Arsenal. But those things are not football. They are paraphernalia. Those things inform and influence but they are not the game.<br />
<br />
For the game is beautiful and brutal and unfair and glorious, and as our moody Austrian picked up that half chance and turned on his weaker foot and displayed supreme technique to rifle home a half chance, generating that satisfying snare drum sound as it hit the base of the net, well...well, then we were experiencing the joy of all life.<br />
<br />
This season, hell the last two years, have been too short of those grab-your-mates-arm, fuckinghavethat, hairs on the neck, fall forward two rows, "Christ is this really happening" kind of moments. And the very fact that I feel obliged to write a section solely about the goal in a 4-1 defeat is the perfect embodiment of why Sullivan and Gold need to move on. It's like being pleased that your Grand National horse has their saddle on the right way round, immediately before they smash into Becher's Brook.<br />
<br />
So yes, I shall always think fondly of the time that Arnie punched back at The Emirates and brought the music to a sudden, record scratch halt at Wenger's farewell party. It's sad that it's come to this, but come to this it has.<br />
<br />
And for twenty minutes thereafter, I thought I was watching our best away performance of the season.<br />
<br />
And then Declan Rice ducked.<br />
<br />
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***</div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>"If the businessmen will drink my blood, like the kids in art school said they would</i></div>
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<i>Then I guess I'll just begin again"</i></div>
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<i>- </i>Arcade Fire,<i> "Ready To Start"</i></div>
<br />
As frustrating as this game turned out to be, I'm not sure what people were truly expecting. Arsenal haven't lost at home to anyone outside the Top Six all season, and with it being the beginning of Wenger's long goodbye, we continued our proud unbeaten 123 year run of being Britain's best party guests. Joffrey should have invited us to his wedding.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixEIBIsozfkDO8PmHQd-sos8QappOpeUzDP41XArlwKc2tYVDXNqC3wfvtixJ4QomxHA_Eh8Acwo_NucO_xbNHdX5IaB_hmYnIibei6gy0NuU49o0O0FevmmpLb9Nzs8GZsPpg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-24+at+22.09.01.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="579" data-original-width="1030" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixEIBIsozfkDO8PmHQd-sos8QappOpeUzDP41XArlwKc2tYVDXNqC3wfvtixJ4QomxHA_Eh8Acwo_NucO_xbNHdX5IaB_hmYnIibei6gy0NuU49o0O0FevmmpLb9Nzs8GZsPpg/s320/Screen+Shot+2018-04-24+at+22.09.01.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>They've spent how much on Joe Hart?</i></div>
<br />
But after all this, I don't know how many more times I can go to the well. Chicharito as the answer? He had ten touches after he came on and did nothing. He can't play on his own up top, and if we play with any more than one forward we expose our wildly underpowered midfield, and indeed, one thing that struck me on Sunday was how few of our players are good on both sides of the ball.<br />
<br />
The ones who can attack are non-contributors defensively, our midfielders either don't have the legs (Noble), have legs but possibly not their own (Kouyate) or are a footballing graveyard where good moves go to die (Fernandes). The best is obviously Lanzini, who leads the high press well but shouldn't be asked to do too much more. Joao Mario is obviously a decent player who probably needs some time to adapt to English football, and is too rich for our blood. That said, his last 27 corners have all hit the first man so he is at least adapting to some West Ham traditions well enough.<br />
<br />
So as much as I want a more adventurous, younger, more mobile, more tactically fluid side, I also accept that Moyes can't possibly be expected to extract that from his current squad. Anyone demanding a 4-4-2 has to acknowledge that the wide players in that formation have to defend. Therefore, you might pick Masuaku and Fernandes to do that, and suddenly you have Mario and Lanzini on the bench, and four at the back and Brighton are beating you 3-0 at home.<br />
<br />
It's also sadly true that we have no options in central midfield. Noble was excellent here but needs younger, more mobile legs around him. Fernandes fits that bill, but suffers from the unfortunate drawback of not being able to play football, while Cheikhou Kouyate has declined so much I am going to nickname him "Sterling".<br />
<br />
Whatever way I slice it, I find an imperfect squad yielding an imperfect team. It's all well and good to demand a more attacking team but when we commit more forward we end up shipping goals by the boatload, not helped by a goalkeeping situation whereby we'd be better off if we spliced our two options together and had one dive one way and the other take the opposite side.<br />
<br />
But much of the issue with how fans feels seems to me to be a classic case of fans failing to appraise the evidence of their eyes and instead thinking in emotional terms of how they remember the players. The problem with that is that players decline so rapidly and so imperceptibly that it is almost impossible for fans to notice when we actually see them play so fleetingly. One of the great tricks of Sir Alex Ferguson's tenure at Manchester United was his ability to sell players at the height of their powers, or right at the start of their decline. Beckham, Stam, van Nistelrooy, Ince and Cole were all moved on when it seemed they had something left to give, but were on the wrong side of the ageing curve.<br />
<br />
Ask yourself when was the last time we did that? It's rare for us, primarily because we are usually buying those types of players, but also because as a club we have developed a fear of selling, when it would perhaps be wise to accept that some sales can actually be doubly useful because you can clear out declining players and get money back for them. The trick is knowing that they are declining before everybody else does. An analytics department would be useful here.<br />
<br />
As it stands now, I would say that Kouyate is one such type. Other clubs may see him as being young enough to reclaim but I'd be prepared to take that risk. Cresswell might fit that description too, and Arnautovic probably does as well, although the club can't sell one of their few usable players. Ultimately we would have to trust the club to make that assessment because that institutional knowledge is critical - we know nothing of who is injured, who is declining physically, or who is becoming less productive as a result of minor tactical adjustments the manager wants to make. Ogbonna is a good example of a player who seemed lost and now should win Hammer of the Year, after some actual honest-to-God coaching.<br />
<br />
My broader point is that when fans demand that the likes of Hernandez play more regularly, you can't just do that in a vacuum. It's not enough to argue that he has to start because he "guarantees goals", when all our sports science numbers might suggest he has lost a yard in pace, or Moyes has identified that a penalty box striker isn't much use for a team who don't get in the box very much. I'm just throwing those out there as possible reasons, but my broader point is that all of this stuff is linked and relevant. The fact that he was a good player when he was 26 is not.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Feel the sunshine on your face, it's in a computer now</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Gone are the future, way out in space"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>- </i>Blur,<i> "Out of Time"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Fuck this descent into misery. Let's predict the future!</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>MAY 2018</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
We flirt with relegation by losing to Leicester but salvage it with a win over Manchester United at the London Stadium. We finish the season up with a 0-0 draw with Everton that is so bad it leads to Jeremy Corbyn proposing to renationalise football. </div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
With the season over the club announce David Moyes on a three year contract having publicly courted Arsene Wenger until he eventually emigrates to stop David Sullivan calling him. This appointment will ensure stability for around ten months before people start talking about an extension. When asked how the search for a new Head of Recruitment is going, Sullivan denies all knowledge of such a vacancy. He then announces that he and Jack will be attending the World Cup in Russia. </div>
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<b>JUNE 2018</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
It's season ticket renewal time! Benzema! Bacca! Rodriguez! Welbeck! </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
You renew your season ticket, because you're an idiot.</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
We promptly sign Peter Crouch from relegated Stoke and Charlie Austin's one working knee from Southampton. David Gold gives a radio interview where he states that Financial Fair Play rules make it very difficult to bring anyone else in. Meanwhile, Burnley sign James Ward-Prowse for £30m.</div>
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England go out of the World Cup to Senegal. We are linked with every player having a good tournament for a minnow. This is fine, as those guys are always good signings. </div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>JULY 2018</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
We sign four players from Panama and Tunisia after they impress in their countries successful campaigns. In order to make this work we sell twelve players, including Jordan Hugill to Preston for £4m. That's how it works. </div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>AUGUST 2018</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
We eschew money spinning, useful tours to the US or Asia and instead play three games in Slovenia against Swedish amateur teams. We draw all three. Everything is fine. Only Declan Rice from the first team is actually doing any training, as the others are all either in traction after the World Cup, or on holiday in Mexico.</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
We open the season with a 6-1 defeat at Manchester City. Moyes and the players describe it as a good run out, leading me to wonder if they are aware the season has started. Newly promoted Wolves win 3-0 at the London Stadium before we get the show on the road with a 1-1 draw at Cardiff. </div>
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Twelve minutes after the transfer window closes, Manuel Lanzini does his knee. </div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>SEPTEMBER 2018</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
David Sullivan is busy scouring the globe for out of contract players who we can sign as we finally get a win at home to Swansea with a late Noble penalty. Everyone would be feeling a bit down about our poor start but thankfully we have those flags around the pitch before matches. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
That architect finally gets round to looking at the possibility of redesigning the stadium. His report is one page long and contains two words. </div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>OCTOBER 2018</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The new signings aren't working out brilliantly and are all on the bench, while Austin is in America trying to buy a new knee. James Collins and Pablo Zabaleta are our centre back pairing as we grab an unlikely win at Brighton, who fire Chris Hughton out of shame. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Michail Antonio returns in the home draw with Newcastle where he nearly lasts to half time before injuring his hamstring. Gary Lewin pronounces himself happy with this progress. Crouch equalises with a minute to go and does the robot and then does a funny Tweet. We lose in the EFL Cup to, oh I don't fucking know, Swindon. </div>
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<b>NOVEMBER 2018</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Everybody is injured. There are bodies everywhere. The Club release a statement referencing their unprecedented injury crisis for the tenth straight year. Mired in the bottom three, Sullivan gives a well thought out, superbly judged interview to <i>The Guardian </i>announcing that if we can just get through to January we can fix it all then, and that Moyes was probably the wrong appointment but nobody else would come. </div>
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We are somehow playing Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea, Man Utd and Liverpool in consecutive games. We lose them all except for Spurs, obviously, which buys Moyes an extra six months in the role. </div>
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<b>DECEMBER 2018</b></div>
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Karren Brady launches her Christmas cookbook, a range of specialist leggings for businesswomen and an album of corporate jingles. She launches this at 8pm on ITV on a Wednesday when we are gaining a surprising win at Fulham. </div>
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We are away on Boxing Day, which is a coincidence, and lose 5-0 at Everton. We do at least welcome back Andy Carroll who tore his Achilles Tendon in the summer doing the Macarena in Tenerife. He plays 17 minutes and concedes 12 fouls. </div>
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<b>JANUARY 2019</b></div>
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Everything is fine! We win all our league games this month as our unprecedented injury crisis that we have every year finally abates. Austin scores four in four, including the winner at Newcastle where away fans now watch the game from a hot air balloon attached to the top of the stand. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaxPVuoGaeWg20oIAR4moFMI3cQkeSPmfsYshyQzlojp_f1I15y3m7DHQIwyCkUzcYrChTQA6eG9mJi0Y9RBA1jBX_nOVG358_Iism9zhnPOAjVb8HgX7grJ5KiUxaBDA6vEjS/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-25+at+03.05.22.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="580" data-original-width="940" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaxPVuoGaeWg20oIAR4moFMI3cQkeSPmfsYshyQzlojp_f1I15y3m7DHQIwyCkUzcYrChTQA6eG9mJi0Y9RBA1jBX_nOVG358_Iism9zhnPOAjVb8HgX7grJ5KiUxaBDA6vEjS/s320/Screen+Shot+2018-04-25+at+03.05.22.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>The Mike Ashley Stand</i></div>
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We win our 3rd Round Cup game at Bury live on the BBC who couldn't look any more unhappy about it. Our reward is an away tie at Manchester City. </div>
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With the team surging to 12th and our injured players on the mend, Sullivan announces that no dickhead buys any players in January and instead announces a couple of loans for players who were top drawer on FIFA '15. Neither ever play for West Ham but cost the club £800,000 in agent's fees. This is fine.</div>
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<b>FEBRUARY 2019</b></div>
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Doctors discover that Austin's knee is made entirely of chewing gum and he is ruled out for the season. This isn't an issue as Carroll is now returned from a back injury he sustained attempting to pick up a concrete bollard on a team night out in Dubai. </div>
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We lose 5-1 at Manchester City in the fourth round of the Cup, which everybody agrees is a big improvement on the opening day game. The match is played at 10pm on a Saturday night for overseas television audiences. British rail services are so good that some West Ham fans don't get home until March. </div>
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The Annual Accounts are released. The club made a profit of £76m. Nemanja Vidic signs as a free agent to cover for the injured James Collins. </div>
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<b>MARCH 2019</b></div>
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The East Stand at the London Stadium falls down in the middle of the night. It turns out that building a stadium for a two week event and then fixing it up with sellotape and Prittstick is sub optimal. As the Directors aren't in this stand they don't give a shit and agree to meet with the landlord at the end of the season to resolve the issue. </div>
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For his part the Mayor says that he can't be held responsible for things like stands falling down and suggests that West Ham pay £140m to replace it. The case ends up in court at a cost of £25m in legal fees. The Mayor agrees to rebuild the stand, but fifteen feet further back. Sullivan agrees. We beat Wolves 4-1 in our annual <i>"where the fuck did that come from?"</i> away performance. </div>
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<b>APRIL 2019</b></div>
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We avert relegation for another year with two home victories over Burnley and Leicester. Both games finish 1-0 and contravene the Trades Description Act. </div>
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Sullivan gives a well thought out, superbly judged interview to <i>Sky Sports </i>announcing that never again will the Club be in this precarious position and that if we can just get through to the next transfer window then everything can be resolved. In the background David Moyes can be heard sobbing. </div>
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Meanwhile, West Ham Ladies have gone the season unbeaten. </div>
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<b>MAY 2019</b></div>
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We finish 15th.<br />
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It's season ticket renewal time! Ribery! Giroud! Bale! Sturridge!<br />
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You renew your season ticket, because you're an idiot...</div>
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HeadHammerSharkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06552428837566691752noreply@blogger.com4