The Week of Waking Up

"My mind is open wide

And now I'm ready to start"

- Arcade Fire, "Ready to Start"

Act One - Zabaleta Earns Hazard Pay : West Ham 0 - 0 Chelsea

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.

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.

Worst game of "Simon Says" ever

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.

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™ 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.

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 Band of Brothers, blazing over both times. 

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 "hide, manouevre and reveal" 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 "worse than Farage turning up for dinner", 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.

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.

This weeks xG map from Caley Graphics does a good job of showing that while we certainly could have won, it's not entirely accurate to say we should 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.

***

"He knows so much about these things"

- The Smiths, "This Charming Man"

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.

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.

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.

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.

***

"Cause I ain't gonna be made to look a fool no more, 

You done it once too often, what do you take me for?"

- Chas n' Dave, "Ain't No Pleasing You"

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.

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.

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 "serenity now!" when they get angry, and then slowly go crazy through repression.

Serenity now! Insanity later!

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.

So, a point gained. Traction. A foot on the ladder at home, and a journey begun. I'll take it.

***

"Dream it while you can, 

Maybe some day I'll make you understand"

- Oasis, "Fade Away"

Act Two - Not Shrewsbury : West Ham 8 - 0 Macclesfield

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.

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.

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.

Nobody has ever looked this happy to score against Macclesfield

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.

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.

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.

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.

***

"Whenever I'm asked who makes my dreams real

I say that you do"

- The Temptations, "Get Ready"

Act Three - The Pay Off : West Ham 3 - 1 Manchester United 

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. 

I enjoyed this

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.

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.

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 "the scouts who found Diop" after the game, which means we are about two weeks away from David Sullivan claiming credit for his signing.

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.

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.

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.

***

"You can't play it safe

And still go down in history"

- Emmylou Harris, "Belle Starr"

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.

Hazard doesn't play for United yet as he's still good. Give it five years.

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 "Han Solo chasing after stormtroopers" style overlaps. 

Cover me Andriy!

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 New Tricks. 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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

***

"Every minute, from this minute now

We can do what we like anywhere"

- Snow Patrol, "Open Your Eyes"

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. 

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.

Worth more of your time

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.

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.

***

"You'll never know just what you wanna do

Or where you wanna go, I think it's time"

- The Stone Roses, "What The World Is Waiting For"

Epilogue: The H List, An Announcement

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 Scrubs when everything was the same, but not really the same, and none of the jokes were funny.

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.

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.

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.

I hope you'll all still keep reading.

A Dream of Summer

"Oh how is it that I could come out to here, and be still floating?

And never hit bottom and keep falling through, just relaxed and paying attention"

- The Byrds, "5D (Fifth Dimension)"

West Ham 0 - 0 Manchester United (And Other Ramblings)

Hold me - I'm bored

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. 

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. 

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. 

Ask your parents

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. 

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 "West Ham Way". 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. 

But of course, it is. ExWHUEmployee 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. 

It would be impossible to invent West Ham if we didn't already exist. 

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. 

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 because I don't have any fucking idea. That's your job, David. 

Below me Luke Shaw wobbles the post. It seems only fitting. 

***

"I don't know what to say

You don't care anyway"

- New Order, "Crystal"

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. 

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. 

Can't you get someone sent off?

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

The assistant referee optimistically signals three minutes of added time, which is Referee for "let's all just get out of here" 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. 

***

"Tell me that you'll dance to the end
Just tell me that you'll dance to the end"
- The Thrills, "Big Sur"

West Ham 3 - 1 Everton (And Other Ramblings)

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.

I'm very much in favour of this sort of thing

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 glasnost I think he should try wearing goalkeeping gloves this summer, rather than giant inflatable hands. Panama have never seemed so terrifying.

Seriously, Jordan

And just like that, it's over. I am contented - maybe even malcontented - 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 "lease" into "Please fuck off, the Stones are here in a week".

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.

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.

***

"What she said was sad, but then all the rejection she's had

To pretend to be happy could only be idiocy" 

- The Smiths, "What She Said"

With this game being on a Sunday, we all got the benefit of hearing from "The First Lady of Football" 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.

For some reason the Baroness decided that she needed to use her last column of the season to say this:

"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"

Yes, Lord Sugar, I decided to deliberately insult all my customers and pretend that their complaints about me were totally imagined.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

***

So all that really remains is for me to say thank you. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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....

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.

The night of the malcontents

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.

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.

And of course, join WHUISA.

Until next season.