West Brom 4 - 2 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

1. Our Defence - Truly Defective

I don't know if you've seen True Detective, but Season 1 is my favourite piece of television ever made. It contains genius characters, an emotional journey and an ending that was uplifting and brought succour to the soul without truly vanquishing the forces of evil.

Season 2, however? Not so much. The location was changed and even though there were a lot of familiar elements, nothing quite worked in the same way and it ended up as an incomprehensible load of heartbreaking nonsense.

So stop me when you figure out where I'm going with this. Or if you see Vince Vaughn playing at right back.

2. Time Is A Flat Circle

Year	After First 5 Games	Finished	Manager
2005/06	10	9	Pardew
2007/08	10	10	Curbishley
2011/12	10	3	Allardyce
2008/09	9	9	Curbishley/Zola
2015/16	9	7	Bilic
2012/13	8	10	Allardyce
2014/15	7	12	Allardyce
2006/07	5	15	Pardew/Curbishley
2013/14	5	13	Allardyce
2009/10	4	17	Zola
2016/17	3	?	Bilic
2010/11	1	20	Grant

It's only five games. But if you look at the previous ten seasons, the first five games have been tremendously predictive of the rest of the campaign. As shown above, anything in the 8-10 point range has resulted in a top half finish, and anything in the 1-5 point range has yielded a white knuckle descent into a relegation battle. 

Naturally, most West Ham fans remain convinced that this particular squad is too good to go down which by now might as well be the club motto. We could stick it just under the "London" on the club badge, along with two fighting season ticket holders.

I'm not suggesting that we'll go down. I'm not suggesting that Slaven Bilic is currently channelling the ghost of Avram Grant. What I am pointing out, is that in the last decade there have been zero instances when West Ham have started poorly and recovered to finish in the top half of the table.

3. I Lack The Constitution For Suicide

So, off we went to face Tony Pulis and his merry band of free wheeling, high scoring banditos. In their last 13 league games West Brom had won just once and managed only 6 goals in the process. Still, West Ham have always been pretty good for what ails you and arrived in town having conceded at least twice in 11 of our previous 15 league games.

Now that is some seriously shit defending.

Things started poorly here as Arthur Masuaku misplaced his cerebrum and handled the ball whilst under less pressure than an astronaut on the moon. West Brom, despite being the league's pre-eminent free flowing attacking force, didn't exactly pour forward. Instead they sat back, invited pressure and broke with enough menace to lead 3-0 at half time.

One passage of play before half time was instructive, as our vaunted attacking players moved the ball from one side of the pitch to the other whilst West Brom put ten men behind the ball and looked on with the curiousity of a cat watching a pendulum, until Mark Noble took a heavy touch and the home side broke to force a corner within the space of seconds. This constituted the most useless set of passes since universities started giving out degrees in social media, and represented how we could have had 70% of possession and still be 4-0 down after an hour. To West Brom.

4. There Is No Such Thing As Forgiveness

So West Ham haven't so much hit the ground running as smashed headfirst into it from 10,000 feet after the reserve chute didn't open.

I'm not going to be so revisionist as to say I saw this coming, but I've been uneasy about things for a while. Our pre-season seemed disjointed and aimless, culminating in a second successive Europa League Armageddon and our transfer dealings look bizarrely unsuitable for the travails ahead.

Assuming all our players were fit and healthy and firing - a scenario so unlikely it might well render this point redundant - I think our strongest first eleven would look something like this:

Adrian
Arbeloa
Cresswell
Reid
Ogbonna
Noble
Kouyate
Payet
Lanzini
Antonio
Sakho

Some might quibble with the inclusion of Diafra Sakho over Andy Carroll, and may prefer to include Andre Ayew in there somewhere too but I would say that this is a defensible enough team, and thus I see two spectacular problems.

Firstly, the team includes 33 year old Arvelo Arbeloa who hasn't yet played a minute for us and gets in the team because we don't have a functioning right back in the squad. Secondly, the team doesn't include any of the other new signings.

Now, you may argue that Feghouli and Ayew would get in there if they hadn't got injured immediately upon arriving. But where would they play? Neither would displace Payet, Antonio is the leading scorer in the league and Lanzini has arguably been the only one of our midfield trio to be worth his place.

The form of Noble and Kouyate has been so mediocre that both must be in jeopardy of losing the places, but Håvard Nordtveit has been incredibly underwhelming and Pedro Obiang must have killed Bilic's cat, such is his current persona non grata status.

Elsewhere, Edmilson Fernandes and Ashley Fletcher are surely too young to be relied upon to impact the season although both are going to end up playing a reasonable amount purely due to the awful performances elsewhere.

Which brings me to Zaza, Tore and Calleri. All on loan, all looking out of their depth and all not good enough to improve the first team.

So we spent hugely in the summer and didn't improve the team - only the wider squad. That was fine when there was the Europa League to half-heartedly mess around with, but now it is solely the Premier League and it seems clear that we are in for a season of struggle.

5. Life's Barely Long Enough To Get Good At One Thing. So Be Careful What You Get Good At

I can't help but feel the right back spot has been instructive in this sense. We lost Carl Jenkinson to injury and then bought Sam Byram. He struggled and couldn't displace Michail Antonio, who was being played there solely because Bilic wanted to shoehorn him into the side somewhere.

That particular house of cards came crashing down when Swansea came to town and destroyed us 4-1, with Andre Ayew tormenting Antonio all day. Having seen that particular display, our answer to having a glaring hole at right back was....to buy the Swansea left winger.

6. You're Livin' Wrong

The West Brom fourth goal was worth the price of admission alone. Having got to the interval just 3-0 down, our back four apparently googled "Ukrainian border defences in Crimea" for inspiration as to how to approach the second half. This led to the slightly unusual decision to attempt to defend a West Brom attack without a defence at all. 

Manuel Lanzini seemingly missed all this and made a valiant chase back, but his half hearted attempt wasn't enough and we became the first team to concede four goals to West Brom under Tony Pulis, or possibly even ever because after all they are fucking West Brom.

If you're struggling to visualise the goal, try and remember what it was like as a kid when you were playing computer football games and your dad would ask to play. He'd have no idea what he was doing so would randomly press all the buttons and suddenly three of his players would be in the crowd, two more would be on the floor breakdancing and the centre halves would be engaged in a passionate kiss. In between laughing, you broke away and scored because you can only beat what's put in front of you.

Anyway, yeah, that was Nacer Chadli's second goal on Saturday.

7. You Owe A Debt

Whilst I spent most of Saturday night singing "Where have you gone, Danny Gabbidon? Our nation turns it's lonely eyes to you" to myself, I can't help but wonder about Dimitri Payet. Some of the spark has gone. It's possible he's knackered after the European Championships, or it's possible that other teams are now targeting him so much that his effectiveness is reduced. I mean, he still leads the league in assists, so he can't be doing too badly but even then two of those goals have owed a bit more to Antonio's finishing than the crosses themselves.

It's ridiculous to worry about Payet when our defenders seem to have forgotten how to do anything, but I'd like to see him dictating games again. It doesn't help him that our defensive midfield pairing of Kouyate and Noble are playing terribly, but he is our premier player and we need him to take games like this by the scruff of the neck and drive us forward. We saw some of that in the second half on Saturday but it can't happen only when we've let in four goals.

And how galling that the last sentence is now a statement of fact rather than hyperbole.

8. The Secret Fate Of All Life

I'm ashamed to say that I make snap judgements all the time, and they are often based on ludicrous things. If you tell me you write a West Ham blog, I will happily read it up until you use the word passion in a sentence other than "passion is an irrelevant, meaningless, catch all phrase used by idiots to explain elements of the game they don't understand". If it's used in any other context I'm just going to smile politely and eventually delete the link.

And so it goes with centre forwards. If a ball comes into the box and you attempt an overhead kick from a ridiculous angle, with no hope of success, then I am going to judge you. Simone Zaza - stop doing stupid things. Hold the ball up. I'm judging you. 

West Ham 2 - 4 Watford (And Other Ramblings)

1. Fool's Gold

"This", I said to my daughter, "Is going to be brilliant".

A home game, against a decent but not great team, on a Saturday, in the pouring rain, at 3 o'clock. Finally, I was going to be able to begin passing on to her some of the magic that drew me in when I was her age.

I really didn't have any idea that I was about to endure the worst football watching experience of my life.

2. Here It Comes

My journey to this game began a few days prior, when my wife was casually browsing our online banking statement and asked me why I'd spent £60 at West Ham. I immediately denied all knowledge, whilst secretly hoping that I hadn't got drunk and finally bought that life size Herbie the Hammer costume, before remembering that I'd entered into the ballot for the Watford game.

Naturally the Club weren't going to do anything so obvious as tell me I'd got tickets, but off we went, nonetheless. As I had received no confirmation email once again, I had no idea which turnstile to go through - again. I dutifully asked the first couple of stewards I encountered for help, but both just stared blankly at me like I'd asked them to name their favourite commedia dell'arte characters, so back to the ticket office we trudged.

There, I enjoyed a brief moment with the lady behind the counter, and as our eyes met through the plexiglass window the shared pain of our afternoon coalesced in front of us. She was very helpful, and we eventually emerged into the stadium...20 yards from the away fans. Exactly where you want to be with an 8 year girl, and evidence that not letting people in the ballot have any say in where they sit might not be the best idea of all time. Now the Watford fans were actually rather delightful. Saturday was the first time I've ever looked at fans giving me abuse and thought "Well, they seem like nice people", but had it been Spurs or Chelsea there would have been a riot at the game.

3. Something Burning

Apropos of that point, it's annoying to me that away fans have been given such good seats at the stadium. If you've ever been to Old Trafford or St James's Park you'll know how far from the pitch the visiting fans are, and indeed, at Newcastle the highest seat in the away section is a quarter of a mile from the opposite corner flag. I know - I've sat in it.

In my ideal world, clubs would be given an equivalent allocation and location in our ground that they give to away fans. Man Utd, therefore, would be on the roof and Newcastle could watch from the viewing platform of the Orbit. That might be a touch impractical, but if that fails at the very least stick them up in the Gods somewhere, miles from where they can theoretically influence things.

4. Standing Here

So - the big news of the day. The crowd.

I saw three fights at this game. Two between warring West Ham fans, and one as home and away fans clashed after Watford's fourth goal.

The fights in the home end were especially awful. I saw crying children being picked up and dragged away to safety as fat, red faced thugs laid into each other. All I could think as I saw it was "There but for the grace of God". I'd had no say over my seat selection - and if I had, how would I have known there would be trouble there anyway? The fight continued for a while, and seemed to be broken up by other fans rather than the stewards.

A second scuffle broke out behind me, leading to my daughter asking "Daddy, why is everybody fighting?" and then a few dickheads attempted to get into the away section. They were able to do this because home and away fans were separated only by a low fence and a few stewards who couldn't have looked less interested if you'd doped them up with ketamine.

I don't really know what is the root cause of all of this, although I have my theories, but it defies belief that the Club didn't think a family section would be needed at the new ground. It is probably too late now, but without one most people are simply going to arrive at the same conclusion I have, which is that they won't be taking their kids back for a while.

Just consider that for a moment - West Ham fans aren't taking their children to games any longer because the Club can't guarantee their safety from the actions of other West Ham fans. If that doesn't shame everybody attached to the Club, then nothing will.

As the Watford fans sang, in the most thoroughly middle class chiding ever, "You're just embarrassing". Sadly, this is utterly correct.

5. The Hardest Thing In The World

There is something that West Ham fans need to hear and I don't suspect it will be popular but I am going to say it any way.

It's not the new ground. It's the people in it.

It's not the new ground. It's the people in it. 

It's not the stewards, it's not Karren Brady, it's not the away fans, it's not the Police (how could it be, there literally aren't any) and it's not the stadium. They all play a part, but it's not them.

It's you. It's me, It's us.

Sure, the plus two scheme was a figurative slap in the face to fans who didn't deserve it. By selling tickets to literally anyone who turned up with a season ticket holder, the Club blew the chance to fill the ground with people with a history of following the Club. If rumours are true and lots of fans of other teams have bought tickets and are now selling them on to Hammers at inflated prices then some people might want to have a think about that.

And yes, I get that the standing thing is frustrating. People stood a lot at Upton Park, myself included, and now they can't. But if you think that it's reasonable to physically or verbally assault people who ask you to sit down then I don't know what to say to you.

And, contrary to the group think idiocy of Twitter, it's really not the huge impingement on people's human rights that they seem to believe it is. You can't stand up at games of football in the Premier League. That's the law. And it's not a new one either.

Newham Council mostly turned a blind eye to this at Upton Park, but they're not doing that at the London Stadium, and as a result the Club can't take the capacity up to sixty six thousand.

So the standing rebels, who are attaching themselves to this flimsiest of causes, are preventing other fans from being able to get into games. That creates an angry underclass - and make no mistake, that's what it feels like - who, when they get into games are pissed off that their Club appears to have been stolen from them by new fans. Combine that with those who want to stand and those who want to see, those who never wanted to move in the first place, and the fact that the average West Ham fan is a bit more earthy than, say, his Arsenal equivalent, and this is what you get. Chaos.

My abiding memory of this game was that almost everybody in the ground seemed angry. 

It seems to me that if people just sat down for a bit, the Club could get their license and then begin the process of unofficially creating standing sections - dressed up as "singing sections". Until then, they are going to continue to send poorly trained, poorly paid stewards to ask people to sit, and the ground will continue to be the poisonous bear pit that it currently resembles. I understand that people might not think that the Club deserve this level of cooperation, and I'd agree they don't, but this can't carry on as it is.

Oh, and nobody is trying to prevent fans standing up at crucial times - it's just persistent standing that is causing the issue. So my advice is that the next time we blow a two goal lead at home, take a load off, sit down and boo from a more relaxed position.

It really shouldn't need saying, but as long as West Ham fans are fighting West Ham fans then this truism will remain:

It's not the new ground. It's the people in it. 

5. Tears

Anecdotally, I am led to believe that amidst all the rucking, a game broke out on Saturday. For 40 minutes, this was actually what we'd all been dreaming about. West Ham sweeping forward at will, with Michail Antonio setting up Miguel Britos for a nice bout of post traumatic stress disorder by skewering him mercilessly for half an hour. Antonio headed in twice, once from a ludicrously brilliant rabona cross from Payet, and the only question at that point was how many we would get.

There were warning signs though, as Watford flooded forward themselves with alarming ease, but it could easily have been 3-0 when Daryl Janmaat demonstrated everything he'd learned about defending at Newcastle and inexplicably knocked the ball against his own post when doing almost anything else at all would have been easier.

Sadly, that was about it as Ighalo smacked in a deflected strike off James Collins and the comeback was on.

The day was best encapsulated by Watford's equaliser as Collins allowed a through ball past him because he was too busy blowing up balloon animals at the time. "Not to worry" said Adrian as he came pedalling off his line on his unicycle, only to crash into Collins who responded by squirting water in his face from a plastic flower attached to his shirt. Not wanting to miss out, Winston Reid ran up and slammed a custard pie into both their faces and Troy Deeney ignored all of that, before gloriously drifting the ball into the net from an acute angle and making it 2-2.

Half time came and went, but sadly the trombone music played on, and truthfully we were lucky to escape with a 2-4 defeat.

6. What The World Is Waiting For

Everything started brightly on Saturday, and ended with us playing Fletcher, Calleri and Tore up front. That's right - Bilic's masterplan to get back into this game was to take the bloke who scored twice, play him at right back and bring on Gokhan Fuckin' Tore who has played 4 times for us and I already think is dire. Or Kieron Dyer. Which is the same thing.

Payet set up two goals, but blasphemy though it may be to say it, looked off the pace to me. Once Watford got to grips with our plan (Give it to Payet, then Antonio), we had nothing in response. There were a lot of players getting used to each other, and others getting over injuries but we never fully convinced as a unit, and that was the most alarming part of the day today for me.

It should also be pointed out that once it got back to 2-2, the crowd disappeared from the game completely. Up until then, the Watford fans were pin drop quiet and the atmosphere was fairly decent but as goes the team, so goes the crowd and after half time it was all about infighting and standing up.

Whatever you think about the new ground, it's not hard to see that our home record will drop off this year. As an friend of mine said - it could be like playing 38 away games.

7. Going Down

West Ham's back four prepare for the game on Saturday.

Oh boy. I have watched this unintentional slapstick scene over and over again. It’s golden. pic.twitter.com/E1L83E6d4F

— SimonNRicketts (@SimonNRicketts) August 5, 2016

8. Don't Stop

Lots of people are writing about this.

If you've made it to then end of my waffling and feel you can stomach some better writing then try here where Terry Land presents his view of Saturday and nails a lot of my thoughts too.

Manchester City 3 - 1 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

1. Hors D'ouevres

My last post was somewhat swathed in negativity about West Ham and I'd like to counteract that a little. Sadly the actual game I'm writing about didn't offer me that opportunity, so before we get on to our latest adventures in debacleland, I thought I'd share a story with you all that made me incredibly proud to be a West Ham fan.

During the last school term, the head of literacy at my daughters' school came up with a rather good plan to try and get boys more interested in reading. She wrote off to several leading professional sports clubs asking them if they could send old, unused programmes to the school as this was almost exclusively the only thing that certain young boys could be enticed to read.

A number responded with small donations of ten or so - Manchester United, Leyton Orient, Harlequins RFC and, to their credit, Spurs. From West Ham, the club with the most young fans in the school, there was nothing.

Disappointed, the Head Teacher wrote again to the Club, reiterating the request and explaining that this was a school squarely in their catchment area and full of disappointed young Hammers who were desperate to read all about Joey O'Brien's record collection.

A week later he received a telephone call from none other than David Gold, who apologised profusely for the oversight and explained that with the upcoming Stadium move having just been sprung on them, there was an awful lot going which had only been exacerbated by a number of our fans deciding to take up renovating coaches just as Manchester United arrived in town. He then passed him through to the Department of - actually I have no idea - Programmes, who explained that the school could have whatever the Club still had in stock.

And so it came to pass that loads of young West Ham fans received a bulk delivery of old programmes after a personal intervention from our Chairman. Say what you will about the way the Club is run but I thought that was fucking brilliant.

2. Mains

What I think we're all currently trying to figure out, is whether or not we should be panicking yet. It is, after all, three games into the season and therefore the perfect time to assess things if you're an idiot. Now, in fairness to those on Twitter who are warning that the Four Horsemen are upon us, we have played 7 competitive games this season and won just 2. That's a pretty shitty start even when you factor in our injury list, which can only really be described as "West Hamian".

However, some perspective is required. The injuries matter as they have robbed us of 3 of our 4 most important players (Payet, Lanzini and Cresswell - Kouyate is the other, in my opinion) and mean that we are seeing players without the requisite ability or confidence starting games.

But beyond that, look at the fixture list. Over the course of this season Chelsea and Man City are going to be two of the toughest away trips in the league, for everybody. We should have got a draw at Chelsea - overmatched even though we were - and here we put up a reasonably decent fist of it in the second half. In between, we bored Bournemouth into submission and thus sit with 3 points after 3 games. It could be better, but it could also be Stoke. So let's wait and see how we fare against Watford in a couple of weeks, with a few players back and an international break to fix up some of the tactical messes we've been creating. If we lose that though, we should all go apeshit.

3. Pep

God bless plucky little Pep Guardiola. Battling along with just the best squad in the league and £150m of new players to work with he has somehow managed to turn things around at everybody's favourite friendly oil baron's plaything. After the shame of losing at home to us last year, it never really looked like that would be repeated once Raheem Sterling put City into the lead after just 7 minutes.

Once Fernandinho had doubled that lead on 18 minutes - akin to being punched in the face by Santa Claus - it really did feel like we had got our West Ham back. I fully expected us to lose by 4 or 5 goals, but credit to the new found resilience of Bilic's side we stuttered through to half time with the score still at 2-0.

At half time Slav abandoned his experimental homage to the Ajax youth system, which dictates that forwards must be able to play at right back to learn every position on the pitch, and brought Sam Byram on. This had the dual effect of allowing our best attacking player Michail Antonio to play further up the pitch and also removed Gokhan Tore from the field of play where he had been stumbling around with all the impact of your drunken uncle Barry at a wedding.

With Antonio freed to actually do something other than chase aimlessly around after Nolito, we got back into it in the second half but a lack of real cutting edge eventually did us in and we settled for one of those "lost 3-1 but it could have been 6-0 so just think on that before you get too uppity" kind of defeats. I consider these to be even more intrinsically West Ham than Bobby Moore himself.

4. Slav Against Humanity

There is a funny board game that I discovered recently called Cards Against Humanity. You may be familiar with it, but if not let me describe it a little. Each player in the game is given ten white cards which have random statements on them. A black card is then placed in the middle of the table with an open ended sentence on it, and players then have to complete the sentence using a white card and the funniest version wins, as selected by the player whose turn it is to judge that round.

As an example, on holiday recently a card was drawn that said "Delays on the Underground today were caused by....." and the answers given were:

a) ...two midgets shitting into a bucket
b) ...sperm whales
c) ...Christopher Walken

My friend genuinely went for c) having decreed that the first two were "just stupid". I'll leave you to consider that for a moment.

Anyway, what does that have to do with West Ham? Well, I'm beginning to suspect that this method is how Slaven Bilic is deciding where to play Michail Antonio. Before each game he lines up the cards and Edin Terzic, Nikola Jurcevic and Julian Dicks all have to try and make the big guy laugh the most with their answers.

"Today Michail Antonio will play..."

a) ...right wing back
b) ...Vladimir in a production of Waiting for Godot
c) ...Christopher Walken

"Ha-ha, nice one Dicksy! A back 5 it is"

You're probably familiar with the statistics. The most headed goals in the Premier League over the last year, and second only to Dele Alli in midfield goals over the same time despite not actually playing in midfield. 

He is being picked there because Bilic doesn't think Byram is up to it, and because our squad is top heavy with attacking players and he's trying to shoehorn Antonio into the side. One would think this might lead to us buying a right back and letting some of our front players go, so naturally we have bought holding midfielder Edmilson Fernandes and striker Simone Zaza for reasons I can't fathom at this point.

Michail Antonio has now deservedly been called into the England squad and I'm pretty sure it's not so he can play at right back.

5. Central To The Problem

I'm just going to say this - I think we have a problem at centre half. Winston Reid got injured last year and has not been the same since.

James Collins told everyone he was in the form of his life last year and it sort of became a narrative, but it was noticeable that he didn't play at Euro 2016 until suspension kicked in and before then he was kept out of the side by James Chester.

Angelo Ogbonna is our best pure defender but he is also Italian meaning that his customary corner marking tactic is to envelope forwards like a Portuguese Man O' War. This is being clamped down on heavily this year and seems like a penalty waiting to happen. Note how he was absolutely nowhere near Fernandinho when he headed in his goal.

With no Tomkins around, these are the prime options and it felt like Bilic didn't much fancy any of them and so just went with 5 at the back. This was supposed to lead to marauding wing backs but instead led to us sitting deeper and deeper as Man City toyed with us in the first half.

Reid is probably the best player of all three and the one who is most able to stabilise things with a return to form.

6. Not If His Throat's Knackered Though

If we're talking about Reid then we should also mention the elbow in the throat he took from Sergio Aguero. Although he's not a typical dirty player like, oh I don't know, Diego Costa it was still a red card offence and he should have walked.

That said though. Arthur Masuaku should also have been sent off for persistent fouling and was very fortunate to last the game. I'm pretty sure he wasn't dismissed solely because referee Andre Marriner thought it was all a bit one sided anyway and felt a touch sorry for us.

I particularly enjoyed the Chelsea fans on social media who launched a campaign to get Aguero banned retrospectively, arguing that if it had been Diego Costa everyone would have been going mad. The reason I found it amusing is because this incident was exactly the same as a Costa one. Everyone saw it, it should have been a red and it wasn't. He didn't get sent off - just like Diego Costa!

Diego Costa - hard done by. Everyone knows it.  

                                  
7. Talking Diego

It's an article about a game against Man City, so let's talk a little more about seismic dickhead Diego Costa. Or more specifically refereeing decisions of the type he was involved with in our first game. Here is a little run that West Ham endured in a crucial five game run at the end of last season:

Everton (A) W 3-2 (Everton awarded penalty for foul committed outside the box)
Chelsea (A) D 2-2 (Chelsea awarded last minute penalty for "foul" committed outside the box)
Crystal Palace (H) D 2-2 (Kouyate given red card, later rescinded, when leading 2-1)
Arsenal (H) D 3-3 (Lanzini goal incorrectly ruled offside)
Leicester (A) D 2-2 (Leicester awarded last minute penalty because FAIRYTALE)

Now, every set of fans in the country could compile a list of decisions that they feel have gone against them, but these were either flat out incorrect "line" calls or widely pilloried judgements where even the national media were sympathetic toward West Ham.

That run of decisions, amongst other things, did for our Champions League hopes. Now we are just three games into the new season and we already have seen two opposition players not being sent off when they clearly should have been. These things happen, and it's a long season but it feels like we're due a run of shockingly bad decisions that actually benefit us.

8. I'm Formulating A Theory Here Slav...

Slaven Bilic after Man City:

"We stayed in the game. I wasn't happy at half-time, I asked the guys to show character and spirit and a different mentality, which they did. Praise for the team for the second half performance."

Slaven Bilic after Astra Giurgiu:

"We didn't play good in the first half or with desire as a team. We were second best."

Slaven Bilic after Chelsea:

"When you lose a game and concede late, of course you are disappointed. Apart from the first 15 minutes until we equalised, they were much better than us. We came back into the game. We played well after 1-1, but we made the mistake in the middle of the park. We gave the ball away and conceded a cheap goal."

Chasing games is not a good way to win games. It might help us immensely if we didn't start so badly so often.

West Ham 0 - 1 Astra Giurgiu (And Other Ramblings)

Before we begin you need to know something. Anyone who has read my last column will know that I was pissed off about not getting a season ticket at the new ground. I think the Clubs decision to allow existing season ticket holders to bring two friends with them was unfair and has marginalised a lot of genuine fans with far more history of following the Club than some of those who now have very cheap season tickets. Lots will disagree with me, which is perfectly reasonable, and I write this not to debate the point, but to simply remind you to read this column through that prism.

1. Everything Old Is New Again

So I did a series of tweets on this game last night and then decided that 140 characters wasn't quite enough to capture the full glory of the experience. And thus another biennial H List post appears.

I'll try and keep things linear and describe the entirety of my experience from beginning to end. Having been away for all three of the prior games played at London Stadium, I decided to cave in to the constant badgering from my 9 year old daughter and take her to a game. "It'll be good" she said, thus proving definitively that children should not be allowed to make any decisions that involve entertainment.

I began on the West Ham ticketing website, which allowed me to select our seats but which wouldn't allow me to pay for them. I won't lie - I found this shocking, given that pretty much the only area where West Ham have consistently demonstrated market leading excellence is in taking money from their supporters.

Undeterred, I abandoned modern technology and went full 1999 in my attempts to watch Astra Giurgiu by calling the Ticketmaster hotline. Here I was informed that I was 89th in the queue and could expect a wait of around an hour (at 13p a minute - it's the West Ham way).

Feeling ever so slightly agitated I tried the website again, which was still stoically informing me that I had no right to buy tickets for Claret members despite us both being Claret members, before yielding to the inevitable and calling Ticketmaster back. The young lady I eventually spoke to was very apologetic, and seemed upset with the online system which will come back to bite her when the machines rise up and take over the world. Although if that rebellion is being led by the West Ham ticketing system I'll still feel fairly comfortable that we can outflank them.

So, as requested, she booked me two seats on the end of the aisle, which was my cunning plan to avoid the standing issues that have plagued others with young children, and we parted as friends.

Two weeks later, I had not received a confirmation e-mail or indeed any tickets. The club did then send me an email the day before the game telling me that they were fairly certain someone in the post room had mailed out our Claret Membership cards, but Darren was off last week and you know what Graham's like so on the off chance that it hadn't happened, would I be a sport and pop to the Ticket Office a mere two hours before kick off and get paper tickets then?

Leaving aside the fact that I bought our memberships weeks ago, I was a bit puzzled by this chain of events. Where was I sitting? I had still received no details of our seats. Oh well, I've seen Karren on The Apprentice and that's always a slick endorsement of modern business practices so I shouldn't worry as doubtless this little chain of events would end up with a relaxing customer experience the following night.

Well, lo and behold, the cards arrived on the morning of the game and off we went. I logged in to my ticketing account and took a screen shot of the seat details and showed them to a steward when we arrived - who sent us off to Block A. On the opposite side of the stadium from the one I'd requested, but at this point I was simply glad that we were in the correct stadium at all so I ignored that. We joined a lengthy queue and then in a stunning turn of events, the cards didn't work.

Like a fat Frodo, I wasn't to be defeated and thus we went back to the ticket office where a frazzled looking lady printed us paper tickets, just like Gandalf would, and then looked at me like I was asking for her kidney when I mentioned that I'd been trying to find out for three months where I was on the Season Ticket waiting list and would she be able to help me? I'll own up that one - I think my timing was a little off there.

Now armed with paper tickets we wandered back and in a moment reminiscent of Indiana Jones finding the Holy Grail ("Only the penitent man shall pass") we entered London Stadium a healthy 9 minutes before kick off. Off we went to find our seats where I was delighted to discover they were slap bang in the middle of the row. Skynet getting it's revenge in early.

Now, this has been a largely negative commentary up until now but I should point out the many things about last night that were enjoyable. The tickets themselves were amazingly cheap. I paid £22.50 for my daughter and I to watch top level football, and also West Ham.

The staff that we encountered were also all exceedingly helpful, all sympathetic and all very good at their jobs. Nothing was too much trouble, and I got the distinct impression that we were far from alone in experiencing difficulties getting in. And I do understand that it's a new stadium, with lots of people using it for the first time and lots of teething problems.

So, I can give the Club a pass for not really having their shit together but it still made for a largely miserable experience up until that point. Being inside the ground though I drew comfort, because after that crappy 90 minutes nothing the players could serve up would be any worse.

And yet, of course it fucking could.

2. Atmospheric Pressure

Before we get to the game, and believe me when I say I'm putting that off as long as possible, let's talk about the surroundings, briefly.

There is a moment when you enter a new stadium where it rises up in front of you as you leave the concourse and head to your seat. It happened to us last night and the look of wonderment on my daughters face was almost enough to wipe out all the misery up to that point. London Stadium is a huge, sprawling arena that has been impressively customised to feel like home. She loved the crossed hammers and the massive player banners outside. It's a nice looking set of digs alright.

It has its flaws, of course, and the running track is horribly obvious. There is no feeling of being on top of the pitch like there was at Upton Park, and I wouldn't exactly say there was an atmosphere inside so much as the sense of an atmosphere. Old pockets of supporters have been broken up and distributed around the ground, and new fans have arrived and it feels like it. But on other nights, when the opposition are more meaningful, the team are better and the stakes higher I can see how the noise will swell up and move around the seats like a slow moving wave.

Of course, I still remember my first trip to Upton Park, but that didn't inspire awe in me, more a homely sense of comfort. It was a back alley bare knuckle fighting club compared to this gladiatorial Colosseum, and truthfully you'd probably rather have the former on most days but for the big games it will be fine and for midweek home games against Accrington Stanley it will seem like Lord's on Day 4 against Zimbabwe.

3. Stand And Deliver

At the moment most fans seemed to be most upset about the fact they aren't allowed to stand and have taken to tweeting David Gold about this in a furious temper, which makes sense because Gold is a football club chairman and prints the Daily Sport and is therefore in charge of standing regulations at live events in England.

I am not sure exactly what it is about this that is puzzling so many fans. Football supporters are not allowed to stand consistently at matches and haven't been able to do so for decades. When I had my season ticket at Upton Park the club went through a period of sending lots of letter to fans in the Bobby Moore Lower about persistent standing where they repeatedly asked people to stop as they were at risk of having their capacity slashed.

This seems to be the same deal. As far as I am aware, Newham Council grant West Ham a permit to host live events, and if West Ham can't guarantee that their fans will co-operate with the terms of that permit then they are able to impose limits on capacity. I read a Twitter rumour that this was the reason behind the big block of unsold seats at the Bournemouth game. I can't confirm that, but I believe it is also true that these problems are now preventing the Club from getting permission to extend the capacity upwards of the current 54,000.

So when those fans take to Twitter to bemoan the fact that they can't show their pashun for the Club by standing up and abusing Enner Valencia, it is worth remembering that their actions are actually stopping other West Ham fans from being able to see their team - literally in the sense of those behind, and also tangentially as the Club can't increase capacity while they do this. If they feel that strongly about safe standing perhaps they should register with the Footballer Supporters Federation who do lots of good work in this area.

But logic isn't the strong point of mass gatherings of people, particularly those who feel they have a cause, and so with their hearts full of the desire to stand up and yell things at the referee, many supporters last night chose to eschew singing anything in support of the team and instead focused on singing "Stand up if you love West Ham" for the entire game. Because remember folks, nothing shows how much you love the team like standing up to boo them. You just can't get the necessary basso profundo when you're sitting down.

4. You Can't Spell Infant Without The Word Fan

I will get to the game soon I promise, and rest assured I don't want to write about it anymore than you want to read about it. But first I just wanted to make a couple of observations about the crowd last night. I've been in absentia from West Ham for a season or two but last night was the most ethnically diverse crowd I've ever seen at a game. Additionally, there was a much increased percentage of women and girls in the crowd too. For that alone, Sullivan and Gold deserve credit for seemingly moving the Club away from it's long time (ageing) white male fan base.

But where I was sitting there was a weirdly poisonous feeling in the crowd. This was primarily because most fans were drunk, a long held side effect of late kick offs, and not particular to the new stadium. One trio of dashing young gentlemen arrived 20 minutes into the game and then proceeded to call everyone "cunts" when they didn't stand to join in with any of the 400 renditions of "Stand up if you love West Ham". These lads were big on showing pashun, and less big on actually watching the game, and certainly unconcerned about the high volume of small children sat near them.

Elsewhere, a guy in the row behind me spent the entire second half shouting "You're shit Valencia" every time he or Michail Antonio touched the ball, to the point where I actually questioned if he was a West Ham fan at all. Meanwhile the three teenagers in front of me were so bored they took to not-at-all annoyingly throwing their Sprite bottle in the air and attempting to land it upright, whilst the young boy behind me played on his iPad for the full 90 minutes. None of these things are especially remarkable, but when you combine them with the footage of some fighting in the crowd and pictures of some people wearing other clubs colours you can see there seems to have been a bit of a change in demographic.

When you increase the number of tickets available, and then lower the price of those tickets you remove barriers to entry for people. Some who couldn't afford a ticket can now come (this is a good thing) and those who were previously not too bothered about attending can also now come (this might not be such a good thing). I think there were a lot of the latter sat around me last night, and it shocked me a little. The joy of a season ticket is the like minded sense of devotion that it engenders in you and your fellow season ticket holders. The communal suffering is almost cathartic. My concern about the new stadium is that it encourages football tourists, a transient group who come for the experience and not for the cause of supporting the team. No one in my section did anything last night to support the team, and for that reason it was one of the least pleasurable games of football I've ever attended. And I had a season ticket at West Ham for 25 years so terrible football games is an area on which I am an undisputed authority.

5. The Game!

I enjoyed the way that the stadium is decked out to honour those heroes of the past. Moore, Hurst, Peters, Bonds for us and Ennis, Farah, Rutherford and Bolt for athletics fans. It's nice - a tie to the past in a way that makes you nostalgic but also highlights that all journeys must begin somewhere.

To that end, Slaven Bilic also decided to pay homage to Alan Curbishley last night and seemingly pick a team for a 0-0 draw. There were many tropes that I noted and enjoyed - the right footed centre half at left back, the right footed winger on the left, the left footed winger on the right and the substitute centre half being chucked up top for the final few minutes to really highlight what a successful summer it's been in the transfer market.

If this particular West Ham team was to play an entire Premier League season, there is little doubt in my mind that we would be relegated. There were contributing factors, of course. We had no fewer than nine players missing, which is pretty good going even for West Ham, but there were also lots of things to worry about.

Has a team ever looked this lacking in match sharpness seven competitive games into a season? Where the fuck did they go on their summer holidays - somewhere with an all you can eat buffet based on the lack of dynamism on display.

There was also a worrying lack of progression to our play which highlighted the missing creative players. Tore nominally fits that bill, but playing on the wrong side and lacking fitness he just looked like Alessandro Diamanti without the end product, which is really saying something as the Italian is the footballing Sagrada Familia - 130 years and still no finish.

Elsewhere, Kouyate ran around a lot and Obiang looked very decent so naturally he's being shipped out on loan. Enner Valencia appears to have lost all confidence and Reece Burke might have a strong hair game, but a left back he ain't.

It was a scratch team, and they played like it, but there was a worrying lack of intent and incision that will get badly punished by better teams in the Premier League. I could go into the match stats but it's all too painful - we lost deservedly due to not being able to create anything and an absolute masterclass in time wasting from Astra. Fair play to them.

6. Squad Goals

Primarily my concern is how far backwards we appear to have gone from last year. We are just a few months removed from a fabulous season and yet the squad appears substantially weaker. Alex Song has been replaced by Harvard Nordtveidt, Victor Moses by Gokhan Tore, Emmanuel Emenike by Jonathan Calleri and Eliott Lee by Ashley Fletcher.

It's only early of course, but the first two seem substantially worse than their predecessors. Emenike was one of the worst players I've ever seen at West Ham so if Calleri can stop missing one on ones every game he couldn't fail to be an improvement, and Fletcher is already the player who presently looks to have the most to offer of our new boys.

Of course, Andre Ayew and Sofiane Feghouli are currently undergoing their initiations and are therefore unavailable - at most clubs they make you sing a song, at West Ham you do your hamstring. Welcome aboard boys!

Simone Zaza is also apparently about to arrive for a cool £24m which seems like a lot, but I paid £7.40 for a stale hot dog and a Sprite last night so I think we'll be fine, and so long as he stays off the penalties he should be a good addition. Arthur Masuaku also looks decent enough as a stop gap until Aaron Cresswell returns and reminds us all what good full backs actually do.

The problem with that amount of turnover is that there is a period of time when those players need to be moulded together. Very good players fit into any system, but it can't happen instantly and rather sadly we are already into the new season. Bringing a team together on the hoof is challenging and we have the double whammy of lots of difficult away games to open the season, while our home games are winnable but we're still struggling to settle into the new ground.

It will take time, and by cunningly playing like the Watford Long John Silver Impersonators we have ridden ourselves of the pesky business of playing in Europe. Ironically, those players who were so inept last night are largely those who would have benefitted most from a decent European run in terms of playing time.

It seems highly probable that some will now be loaned out. After all, how do you fit all of Carroll, Sakho, Valencia, Zaza, Calleri, Fletcher, Payet, Tore, Feghouli, Ayew and Antonio into a front 3? Of course, this being West Ham that will probably remain a largely hypothetical question.

7. Editors Note

My wife has just reminded me that our daughter is 10, not 9.

8. In Summary

A decidedly mixed experience. There is a notable new stadium effect when teams move to new surroundings and I think it's highly likely that we will be affected by that this year. It's a shame that the team is so disjointed at present, as I think a fully fit squad could have hit the ground running and gotten off to a flier. Still this is West Ham so I might as well wish we could have a unicorn as a mascot as wish for a fit group of players.

I can see long nights of frustration ahead as teams sit back and defend, and hit our shaky looking back four on the counter attack while Bilic struggles to get some cohesion into our play. We'll be fine, eventually, but there will be bumps in the road. Our next 5 home games are Watford, Southampton, Middlesbrough, Sunderland and Stoke all of which are winnable and all of which have banana skin written all over them.

'Twas ever thus. I suggest we all sit back and enjoy the ride. Or stand. But only if you love West Ham mind you.

West Ham 1 - 0 Sunderland (Or My Last Visit To Upton Park)

“Oh excellent” said nobody. Another memorial for Upton Park.

I don’t care – this is for me, not you. Sitting here in the seamy grey drizzle of a London Tuesday, I am hit with an overwhelming desire to write something down. This is it. The last time I’ll ever get to see West Ham play at Upton Park. Or The Boleyn Ground if you’re feeling posh.

And I won’t even be there. So forgive me this little act of vanity but I’m having a slightly out of body experience today as I contemplate all of this moving on happening without me. At the place where I spent the best part of twenty five years giving a little piece of soul fortnightly to men like Ian Bishop, Julian Dicks and Matty Holmes. Rio Ferdinand, John Moncur and Sasa Ilic. Samassi Abou, Trevor Sinclair and Lee Boylan. Paolo di Canio, Edouard Cisse and Darren Powell. Kepa Blanco, Scott Parker and Kevin Nolan. Some heroes, some not, some you won’t even remember, but all of them important to me in some way.

I can't say that it ended as it began.

***

My first trip to Upton Park was on April 30th 1986, when West Ham seemed destined to win the League and Alan Devonshire was the best player you'd never heard of before. Ipswich were the visitors, West Ham won 2-1 and I'm pretty sure the 7 year old me was holding back tears of joy when Ray Stewart banged in the late winner.

That game had a Nick Hornby-esque story arc as Ipswich took the lead and John Lyall's exhausted team - in the midst of playing 10 matches in the final month of the season - fought back valiantly to nab a late victory. In many ways, I've never forgiven my Dad for taking me to that game. It set an impossibly high bar, and created a world for me where West Ham would always play free flowing attacking football, challenge for the title, and come from behind to win games forever.

It was false bloody advertising is what it was.

***

And so at 12.45pm on February 27th 2016, nearly 30 years on, I watched my last ever game at the Boleyn Ground. West Ham versus Sunderland.

It had the kind of weather where the cold permeated your bones like ice water, where your breath hung in the air long after it was drawn and the wind whistled through the stadium, swirled in the stanchions and dived down on to your head like a Stuka bomber. It was almost as though God had asked Sam Allardyce what kind of day he would like for his return to East London and Big Sam had puffed out his large Dudley frame, grinned his chewing gum grin and said "Let's pay homage to those lovely Icelandic former owners", before presumably blaming his back four for something.

As things transpired, West Ham won an unremarkable game 1-0. Michail Antonio scored a well-crafted winner and then had an epileptic fit, Dimitri Payet shivered his way through the game as peripheral as one of the many plastic bags floating across the sky on the breeze, and Sam Allardyce bemoaned the state of the pitch. Because when you're a footballing purist like Big Sam you want a billiard like surface in order to maximise those diagonal lofted balls to the edge of the box.

I must say enjoyed that last comment from Allardyce. I got my first season ticket when I was 11, and held it for the next 24 years with my Dad. We stood on the North Bank and sat in the Bobby Moore Stand Lower, saw us go up and down, and survived the Bond scheme and Carlos Tevez and Manny Omoyinmi. But we sat down after the 2013/14 season and both confessed that we were no longer enjoying watching West Ham. I respected Allardyce's arch pragmatism and I admired the limitless self-belief, such a curious counterpoint to the strict limits he imposed upon his players on the pitch, but I wanted something more from my football viewing. I wanted to dream.

***

I understand that West Ham isn’t special to anyone but West Ham fans. I understand that Upton Park isn’t a cathedral to anyone but those who worship there, and not even all of them. That’s how football works. I’m sure that Tottenham and Derby and Burton fans are rolling their eyes today at the “Farewell Boleyn” circus. I don’t blame them, but I’m not apologising either.

I often ask myself, how could anybody ever support Arsenal or Manchester United? You might as well go into a casino and cheer on the house. But that’s how these things work and that’s the universal oil that greases the cogs of the game. I have never been in thrall to the legends of my football club in the same way that, say, Liverpool fans seem to be. My club is special in certain ways, but to me and my fellow fans - nobody else, and I understand that. We are no better or worse than Aston Villa, Barnsley, Millwall or Chesterfield. And that’s the crux of it. There is nothing inherently special about any football club or stadium, unless it’s yours. And then they might just be the most special things of all. It’s all just different sides of the same many splintered thing.

But moving on from this stadium is oddly difficult. I’m beginning to think that maybe Indiana Jones knew why – it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.

As I look back on it now I seem to be able to tie so many important moments in my life to visits to West Ham. My nan died the same day as a 1-0 Cup win at home to Crewe; my parents split up the night after a 1-1 draw at home to Barnsley; my first love broke my heart after a 1-1 draw at home to Aston Villa, my daughter was born just after a home win against West Brom. Maybe these things are meaningful, maybe a lot of stuff happens on weekends, but I suppose the constant is that much of my life was measured by the distance to the next visit to Upton Park. That wasn’t always a positive thing, but it’s how it was.

Walking away after that Sunderland game and knowing I would never go back was a strange, elegiac experience. It was a final line drawn under a period of my life.

***

So we gave up our season tickets in 2014, and it didn't help that by Christmas, we were second in the table. Of course, Allardyce had essentially stumbled arse backwards into a formation that worked but, as is customary, West Ham came down with the Christmas decorations and he reverted to type once the injuries hit. But for a while there it was fun, and I missed my fortnightly trip to Upton Park.

Which brings me back to where I started. One shouldn't romanticise the place undeservedly of course. It is a jigsaw of a stadium, with mismatched stands and terrible transport links and the worst customer facilities in the universe. The next time hot water comes out of the taps in the toilets will be the first. But as a hothouse for memories it holds many poignant and special moments atop those turrets.

I love the idiosyncrasies of the layout. How a song can spring up in one corner of the ground and rumble around the stands until the whole stadium is rocking. Ipswich (them again) were the visitors for the 2004 play offs when the girders shook and the noise was enough to scare the opposition into allowing Christian Dailly to score. Of course, that aspect of the ground has faded now, and the really atmospheric fever dream midweek games are long consigned to the past. It’s why I don’t object to the move. We can either sit around in our comfortably uncomfortable old house reminiscing about glory days that don’t have that much glory, or move forward and make new and better memories.

***

I can’t say I’m happy about the way the priority list has been managed. I followed West Ham all my life, and when this move came about season ticket holders were allowed to bring two fans with them and effectively jump ahead of me in the queue. I have paid a tremendously high price for tiring of Sam Allardyce. I am sure many will say that once I gave up my season ticket I lost my right to complain, and that’s probably correct. It is somewhat galling, however, to find that after a quarter century of attendance the Club deemed me less worthy of a ticket than random friends and acquaintances of other fans. Thus I now sit in a huge, sprawling waiting list with no obvious hint that I will ever get a ticket again. Another line drawn, another chapter closed.

It’s an overlooked aspect of the process which leaves a sour personal taste, but I still don’t object to the move. John Ford once said “Whether or not you believe you can do something, you are right” and I respect and admire the energy that David Sullivan, David Gold and Karren Brady have injected into my club. I wish our social media presence wasn’t filtered through a 15 year old boy and I hope that we never have to hear about the rise of the Krays again, but I can’t deny the forward path being furrowed.

I shall probably blink back a tear tonight, but only for myself and my own loss. Farewell Boleyn, and all that, but hello Olympic Stadium and the promise of a brighter, much brighter, future.

I think there is a bubble rising in East London – I hope it never bursts.

The West Ham Way (Or, why I decided not to renew)

There is no apology that is less needed than the one that goes "Sorry I haven't blogged for a while". So I won't make it.

This season has been one of the worst I have ever endured as a West Ham fan. And I'm 35, so I speak with a wealth of experience of terrible seasons. It has been tedious, dull, repetitive and hopelessly uninspiring. Highlights have included been outplayed by such footballing luminaries as Stoke and Crystal Palace, losing 5-0 in the FA Cup to a team managed by Billy Davies, and an accidental run to the League Cup semi finals where we showed so much backbone and attacking ambition that we managed to hold Man City to an aggregate 0-9 score. Because double figures would have been embarrassing.

Since March 1, when West Ham were beaten at Everton by a late Romelu Lukaku goal, it has been almost unbearable to watch us play. Things reached a nadir when the team were booed off the pitch after a tortuous and undeserved 2-1 home victory over Hull City, and with just three games remaining it is entirely possible that we will finish the season with six straight defeats, staying up only by virtue of the appalling teams around us.

Fans are divided over the issue of Sam Allardyce. Many, myself included, have been prepared to hold their nose and accept his pragmatic style of play in return for the promise of security that it brings. In that respect he has been a godsend for the owners David Sullivan and David Gold, who have mortgaged so much on the club being in the Premiership at the point where we move to the Olympic Stadium.

Allardyce started in the Championship with the wreckage of Avram Grant's ineptitude and smuggled the team up through the Play Offs. The first season back in the top flight was a relative success, with fans happy enough just to survive and bloody a few noses on the way. This season, however, has been lost in a blizzard of injuries and a mystifying transfer policy that saw us playing without a striker for the best part of two months after Andy Carroll was injured, Modibo Maiga was proven to be hopeless, and Carlton Cole was released and then re-signed in typically West Ham fashion.

But things are different now. There is an increasingly vocal minority who have lost faith with Allardyce. There has been no visible progression in the style of play and perhaps most alarmingly, a worryingly inability to get the best out of Andy Carroll despite structuring the entire team around him.

The backdrop to the unrest has been the thorny issue of "The West Ham Way". Decried by Allardyce and most media pundits as a figment of the imagination and dismissed as the delusional ravings of a fanbase who have romanticised too much of their past and forgotten the reality of their existence. The most commonly repeated phrase through the whole debate has been - "Be careful what you wish for". In short - fear prevails.

We, as West Ham fans, are being patted on the head by the media and told that we need to accept the current horrible reality or we will go the same way as those other teams who got ideas above their station. Remember Bolton? Remember Newcastle? Remember Blackburn? Be careful what you wish for.

Never was this more apparent than on last nights Match of the Day when the "West Ham Way" was once again declared as being simply losing and Allardyce was at least transcending that. I thought that was typically lazy punditry so I did a little research. Here are the Premier League records of West Ham managers since 2006:

Curbishley W23 D13 L26 (Win% - 37%) {Points per game - 1.32}
Zola          W20 D13 L32 (Win% - 30%) {Points per game - 1.12}
Grant        W7   D12 L18 (Win% - 18%) {Points per game - 0.89}
Allardyce   W22 D17 L34 (Win% - 30%  {Points per game - 1.13}

So, Sam Allardyce is delivering the same results as Gianfranco Zola.

I'll just let that settle in for a moment.

There is another side to this, of course. West Ham's transfer policy has been haphazardly schizophrenic for years now and the squad he inherited was uniformly awful. The club is still partly owned by Icelandic creditors and for all the good work of the owners in reducing the debt, we still can't afford any missteps in the transfer market. This years summer budget was substantially less than, say, Southampton and once it was all spent on Carroll and Stewart Downing it was utterly predictable that both would then miss the start of the season with injury.

But this is West Ham. We always have loads of injuries. Generally we have a good team and a weak squad and the latter is almost always exposed due to injuries. Every manager we have ever had has had to deal with this and it engenders little sympathy from me.

This is getting a little long

I should cut to the chase, in the absence of a decent editor.

I don't think Allardyce plays as bad a style as many others think, but he also doesn't play as attractive a style as he thinks. There are others who could achieve the same limited results as him and do it without boring us all senseless.

As it stands, I have decided not to renew my season ticket for next season. And neither will my Dad or Sister, and I have shelved plans to buy season tickets for my three kids.

Such is the structure of modern football that West Ham, who are in the top 10 of English clubs in terms of Premiership longevity, attendance, turnover, wage bill and ticket prices have almost zero chance of winning anything. The game is so utterly rigged in favour of the big teams that a club such as ours has nothing to aim for except the odd cup run. Our acceptable range of league position is 8 - 17. Where we finish really doesn't make all that much difference to anything except for prize money, which never results in lower ticket prices and therefore I don't care about.

All we have, therefore, is the way we play and the entertainment it provides. And the Allardyce style of play is boring. Defensive solidity is nice, but it's also boring. When I think back on the games I have watched this season, my overwhelming recollection is of how utterly tedious the games have been.

I could perhaps live with that if we were knocking on the door of the top 6, but we're not. We are mired in mid table looking at the likes of Swansea, Southampton, Hull and Stoke and wishing we were them.

It's no longer fun to watch West Ham, and I can't continue to be fed this line that it's Allardyce or bust. This isn't the only way, it's just the only way he knows, and the owners are too scared of not being in the Premiership to make a change. That's fine, and their prerogative, but I am not sure sure how many fans are going to stick around to watch it.....

West Ham United vs tottenham hotspur: Match Preview - 25/09/2010

1. Is It That Time Already?

After registering a solitary point from our opening five fixtures, we are already at that stage of the season where we scour the fixture list to see where we can pick up the points necessary to avoid relegation.

Meanwhile, through the looking glass, tottenham fans are convinced they have the capacity to secure both silverware and peace in Afghanistan by May.

Traditionally, it is also around this time of year where they all too easily secure three points at Upton Park.

2. Opposition

Despite being as odious as ever, few can argue that this is not the best-equipped Spurs squad for some time. Champions League qualification finally arrived at White Hart Lane last season, and I feel sick even typing about it.

It’s not jealousy. I know as well as anyone that European fare at Upton Park will only ever come in the guise of the Intertoto Cup, or some ‘ollandaise sauce on yer ‘otdog. It’s the perceived validation, that last season confirmed what Tottenham fans knew all along – their status as a massive club.

Fulham got to the UEFA Cup Final (I’m still adjusting to ‘Europa League’), but entertain no fantasy of grandeur, content they are a midtable outfit capable of exceeding expectations on occasion.

The bottom line is, tottenham have to do well if they are to remain competitive. This summer’s acquisition of Brazilian Sandro and Dutchman Rafael Van Der Vaart has taken tottenham’s expenditure since May 2008 to £173 million.

The alluring prospect of a financial whirlwind just waiting to be reaped, remains.

3. Butterfingers

Robert Green’s summer exploits remain in the public consciousness thanks to a couple of similar blunders in consecutive weeks.

Green’s spilt effort against Chelsea lead inexplicably to the champions’ second goal and killed the game. At The Brittania Stadium, Green again displayed the nimble dexterity of an arthritic mammoth to present Robert Huth with a gilt-edged chance, the German bruiser mercifully striking the post.

Indecisiveness also contributed to Stoke’s equaliser – Green failing to claim a cross which should’ve been his, further illustrating his current fragility.

All goalkeepers make costly errors, errors which are sternly judged as they often lead to goals.

Despite continued woes, I think Green has the mental strength to rediscover his old form and once again embody the assured goalie we have often relied upon. However, he is, and will always be, one of those ‘keepers prone to the odd clanger.

I can accept that (to a point), but it’s the current lack of belief which concerns me. Defences look to their ‘keeper to command the box and act decisively. Any crisis of confidence will inevitably bleed through, particularly to a back four which has seen five different line-ups this season.

4. Picture Book

Joe Jordan was all too willing to accept Harry Redknapp's insistence on a holding midfielder.

5. The Only Way Is Up

A first win of the season, and a first away win since the opening game of last season, is as good a place as any to put a stop to the most septic rot on the fetid corpse of our recent exploits against tottenham.

Two good goals away to Sunderland in midweek will hopefully provide some crust of confidence to our malnourished ego.

If Scott Parker can maintain his recent dominance of any midfield he steps onto, Kieron Dyer and Pablo Barrera run effectively at the creaking Spurs defence, and Rob Green keep his gloves free from goose fat, the backing of what will doubtless be an intially vociferous home support could provide the result which will kick-start our season.