And Into The Fire

"Out of the blue and into the black

They give you this, but you pay for that"

- Neil Young, "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)

Well, that didn't last long.

When last you were here, we were basking in the warm glow of a nascent unbeaten run and an emphatic thumping of Manchester United. Since then we've lost to Brighton and Spurs, found ourselves in the middle of a national discussion around employment rights and freedom of speech and a new signing has picked up a season ending injury because traditions must be upheld, goddamnit.

I'll see you soon - save me a bed on the ward

Brighton 1 - 0 West Ham 

Our trip to Brighton could almost have been directed by Guy Ritchie, so predictable was the outcome, as we followed up a rousing victory over Mourinho by going very quietly into the night. Such swings of form and fortune are the hallmark of supporting a lower half team, but it's still a thudding punch when it happens.

The most frustrating element of this game was that we had so much of the play. After a fairly non descript opening, our defence went full Moses and the Red Sea as Beram Kayal set up Glen Murray in the 25th minute. This marked the sixth time Murray has scored against us which officially means that he is now a Nemesis, which rather reminds me of the moment you find out that the bad guy in Lord of the Rings is an upset lighthouse keeper.

And Glen Murray did appear

Thereafter we pressed and harried for an hour, and ended up fielding a thoroughly playground 4-1-5 formation as Manuel Pellegrini asked the outstanding Declan Rice to do everyone's defending and shovelled attackers on ahead of him. For all that, our best chance fell to Fabian Balbuena who headed inexplicably wide, unmarked from a Felipe Anderson corner. This upset the Brazilian so much that he has apparently refused to ever take a decent corner again.

Marko Arnautovic also had some presentable chances, including a last minute opportunity created by Robert Snodgrass and Lucas Perez that he skied over the bar. In such moments it's possible to see why he plays for us and not for a bigger club. That inconsistency probably says a lot less about him than it does about the remarkable continued excellence displayed by the likes of Kane and Aguero.

And thus we left the South Coast with a curious mixture of feelings. In isolation it was hard to criticise the performance given that we had dominated the ball and had the better chances, but there remains an itch that can't be scratched about defeats such as these. It's not that I think we ought to always beat teams such as Brighton - we have, after all, not ever actually done so in the Premier League - but more a sense that such erratic failure remains hard coded into our DNA.

We did enough here to win, would have grumbled but accepted a point and yet somehow went home with our pockets empty. Plus ca change. Perhaps one ought to acknowledge the difficulty of getting a team up and running in just eight games. Pellegrini has endured a difficult start after all, with no team in the league having a tougher opening nine games than us, but I'm still waiting to see something click into gear, a penny drop or a corner turned. We remain a footballing roulette wheel.

***

"No I do not feel that good

When I see the heartbreaks you embrace"

- Bob Dylan, "Positively 4th Street"

And so to Spurs. It doesn't make much sense, but in recent years this has been a fixture to rejuvenate us from cold spells. Whether it was Ravel Morrison crowning Sam Allardyce's tactical masterclass at White Hart Lane (and convincing Big Sam to play unsuccessfully without a striker for two more months), the highlight of Andre Ayew's Hammers career at Wembley, or the Friday night title charge ending winner from Lanzini, we have done well against Spurs of late. Indeed, going into this game we had actually won this fixture more times than them in the preceding eight years, despite that being arguably the best period of their modern history.

It was a shame then to see us fritter that away with a subdued performance of questionable intent. Andriy Yarmolenko started diffidently and ended up being stretchered off with an Achilles tear. His season is over, and the wisdom of David Sullivan's long held policy of buying players who are either old or have poor injury records continues to look like a folly. A reminder too that the glibly promised new scouting and analytics department has yet to be seen. Perhaps it's part of a package deal with the London Stadium WiFi.

Anyway, Yarmolenko joins Carlos Sanchez, Jack Wilshere, Winston Reid and Lanzini on the Andy Carroll Memorial wing, and we are now just a couple of weeks away from the Pellegrini rite of passage press conference where he tells us he's never seen an injury crisis like it.

I have no sympathy - when you buy with no regard to player fitness being a skill and don't invest in training or medical facilities then this is what happens. Topping the injury charts stops being unfortunate when it happens every single year. So off went Yarmolenko and on came Grady Diangana, which tells us quite a bit about how well Michail Antonio must be doing in training.

We were also missing Pedro Obiang, which was a shame as central midfield has long been the weak link in the Spurs chain. With the Spaniard missing, Harry Winks was the best player on the pitch in the first half, which was even more impressive as he was playing alongside Easter Island statue Eric Dier and "bring your best mate to work day" winner Moussa Sissoko. In the second half that accolade belonged to Declan Rice, in supreme form again, and it wasn't hard to see that we might be witnessing an England midfield pairing of the near future there.

I thought Spurs were the better side in the first half as they pushed Kieran Trippier way up the pitch to take advantage of our defensively weak left side, and used some clever movement from Erik Lamela and Lucas Moura to trouble our back four. We held firm as the visitors nice play rarely resulted in attempts on goal - they mustered just two all day - until Sissoko took advantage of Anderson and crossed for Lamela to flick in a header. They could have scored again soon after but for a marvellous save from Lukasz Fabianski, and at half time I wasn't all that confident.

We looked especially vulnerable from our own corners as Anderson was taking them with all the skill of a man whose eyes were sewn shut, and our two deepest lying defenders were Pablo Zabaleta and Mark Noble which is akin to leaving two guys in a canoe to keep out a submarine. We survived, although I refuse to accept this as evidence that this plan is a good idea.

No problem lads, Zaba and Nobes are there

The second half was much better, as we pushed higher and played all the game in the Spurs half. In the end, we failed to get anything largely due to the excellence of Hugo Lloris who made four fine stops. Tactically I still struggle to see exactly what Pellegrini is attempting to achieve, although he wasn't helped here by the performance of Anderson, who was resolutely dreadful until he was mercifully hooked off. Worryingly, our best performances this season have come when we've been able to counter attack against stronger teams and thus we have been heavily reliant upon the trio of Yarmolenko, Arnautovic, and Anderson. The first is done for the season, the second is operating on one knee and the last made me pine for Sofiane Feghouli here. With softer fixtures finally around the corner, Pellegrini is going to need to find a way for us to play on the front foot. 

It would also be remiss of me if I were not mention the outstanding performance of our centre halves, Balbuena and Issa Diop. While they probably get altogether too many opportunities to demonstrate their excellence, it has been reassuring to see them settling into something approaching a solid partnership. Coming into this season it seemed impossible for us not to play with three at the back simply due to the limitations of our personnel, but Diop alone has been so good that those fears have faded away. With the brilliant Fabianski behind them there is cause for optimism as we face weaker opposition, even if our general approach to full backs seems to be to pick two people at random and then reach for the rosary beads. 

Midfield remains our main area of concern, primarily because most of them are injured. A central trio of Noble, Obiang and Rice offers a nice balance, but we finished this game with a four of Diangana, Rice, Snodgrass and Antonio and a sudden surge of affection for Cheikhou Kouyate. It is slightly disconcerting that if Rice were to suffer an injury, it feels like it would curtail the entire season. Perhaps we ought to stop leaking details of his contract demands to friendly websites and instead concentrate on actually advancing his career.

***

"Get out your mat and pray to the West

I'll get out mine and pray for myself" - 

The Jam, "Eton Rifles"

But matters on the pitch are only ever the hors d'oeuvres when you're dining at Chez Titanic.

And so perhaps the most controversial element of the last month has revolved around our Under 18 youth team coach, Mark Phillips, who sprang into the public consciousness after writing a number of tweets where he stated that he had attended a march by the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) in London, and explicitly praising West Ham fans for being the largest segment of the marchers. For those of you unfamiliar with the DFLA, they are a self styled anti-extremism group who splintered from the Football Lads Alliance (FLA), who were themselves an offshoot from the English Defence League (EDL), and I'm now wondering if their main plan for defeating extremism is through the medium of acronyms. Phillips was suspended by West Ham, and our fan base was cleaved down the middle by the issue. 

The DFLA pronounce themselves to be a non-political, anti extremist group and they appear to have garnered a lot of support from West Ham fans. From the state of my timeline on Twitter after this story broke, I would hazard a guess that some H List readers were on the march and in that sense I feel duty bound to examine the organisation properly. Members are adamant that the group opposes all forms of terrorism as well as holding other disparate positions such as demanding better treatment for military veterans, objecting to paedophile grooming gangs and wanting action on "missing" immigrants. Noted right wing agitator Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has also previously attended a march under his more commonly used moniker, Tommy Robinson.

Flowers for Al-Jazeera

Quite what any of this has to do with football is beyond me, and while the marchers may feel their stance is apolitical, a letter was handed in at Downing Street by the organisers demanding changes to government policy, which seems to me to render that argument redundant. Thus people carrying our club crest on this march are making a political affiliation of their cause to West Ham whether they accept it or not.

But one also has to acknowledge that the march was legally organised, did not contravene hate speech laws and thus was lawful. Therefore, the question of whether Mark Phillips was within his rights to legally attend seems clear to me - he was.

But freedom of speech and thought and expression are not the same thing as freedom from consequence. Glen Hoddle was within his rights to say that he thought disabled people were being punished for sins of a former life, and the FA were within their rights to decide that was unacceptable and fire him. Thus, Phillips was perfectly at liberty to attend this march, and tweet in support of it - his sister was caught up in the London Bridge terror attacks - but one also has to acknowledge that the DFLA have been described as Far Right by the Police, Anti Fascist groups and the Premier League and appear on several watch lists due to anti Islamic posts on their Facebook page.

It probably didn't help Phillips that his Twitter timeline was later examined and it was found that he had liked a post from Katie Hopkins suggesting that Viktor Orban would "defend Christian culture in Europe", and another comparing Jeremy Corbyn to Hitler. Friends say he is a great guy and a good coach, but people who don't know him have no personal interactions to go on and can only therefore judge him on his actions. It isn't surprising that people have concerns.

While several members dispute that the DFLA position is Islamaphobic, I would suggest checking your back door for Labradors if you read their site because there is an awful lot of dog whistling going on. And this, I think, is the key point that seems to be missed by so many in this debate, and it's something I have said about West Ham previously;

You don't get to tell other people how they feel. 

So yes, Phillips was entitled to attend the march, and others are just as entitled to decide that the intent of that march was Islamaphobic. That same freedom of speech that protects him also protects them.

And if Muslim Hammers supporters say that this is an issue, and that they would be less likely to take their child to our Academy, or even to games, then DFLA members don't get to tell them they are wrong. That's just not how society works, and anyone truly believing in free speech wouldn't pretend otherwise.

And no doubt there are some who feel that their support of the DFLA has been misrepresented and that they genuinely are just taking a position against terrorism. Well, that's reasonable enough and we all ought to be grown up enough to accept that there is nuance in everything and that no one group of people ever think homogeneously about anything. I, after all, consider myself a Labour supporter but have little time for Jeremy Corbyn or the anti-Semitism that seems to stick to the party like glue. I understand the shades of grey.

But any DFLA member wishing to apply that logic, and wishing to be distinguished from those who marched with them and threw Nazi salutes, might want to ponder the irony of asking not to be judged by the actions of a few individuals - whilst marching against Islamic extremism. If the DFLA wants to get off Far Right watch lists and be seen as the peaceful non political group they wish to portray, then they need to do an awful lot more to disentangle themselves from those who clearly have no issue with those labels.

***

"You do it to yourself, you do

And that's what really hurts"

- Radiohead, "Just"

But back to West Ham. My overriding feeling about Phillips is that I am angry with him for dragging the club into this. It is bad enough that fans choose to march in this way with our club crest so prominent, and claim to represent the rest of us, but for an employee of the club to do it is naive at best. And lest we forget, he has done this just a few months after Tony Henry was fired for referring to African players as causing "mayhem".

But then I find myself asking the same question over and again. What exactly does it say about the culture of our club that these things continue to happen?

For an answer to this I think you first have to understand Sullivanism. How no stone shall ever be overturned, no edge shall be sought, and how others do the leading and we follow on later when it is more expensive. Tomorrow never matters, only today, which is currently a catastrophe because we didn't do what we were supposed to do yesterday. Sullivanism is a lifelong devotion to bailing water out of a sinking ship and never addressing the hole in the boat. This is how you spend more on your squad than all but fifteen other European teams and still end up being worse than Bournemouth.

And what this culture of being substandard does is bleed and seep everywhere. If the training ground isn't up to scratch and the Baroness is encouraging people to watch her new TV show rather than the first team match being broadcast at the same time, then why the hell should anybody else care about the way the club is projected? What exactly does working for West Ham mean, and what exactly does our club stand for? Truthfully, I think what these repeated episodes tell us is that the answer is.....nothing. The club stands for nothing.

And when you have no moral core, no vision, no structure and no plan and you stand for nothing, then this is what happens. People lose sight of the success of the club being meaningful. From the outside it looks to me like there is a huge vacuum where there ought to be leadership. Sullivan is holed up in Theydon Bois on the phone to agents, Brady is part time and Pellegrini disappears back to Chile whenever there is a break in fixtures. Who, I wonder, is there to shape the club and establish the values that employees ought to be adhering to?

That West Ham leadership structure in full

I don't know Mark Phillips, and I have no idea what his past performance or conduct has been like, or the terms of his employment contract, and therefore it would be entirely inappropriate for me to comment on what should happen to him. Very specifically, I have no idea if his views have ever impeded the development of kids from ethnic minorities because until a month ago we had never developed any kids from any background at all.

I will say this though - this sort of thing happens too often for me to think it is a series of random events. Employees are operating with no regard for the club's reputation either because they have no regard for the club's reputation or it has never been made clear to them that they need to be more professional in their conduct. And that comes from the culture within West Ham. It comes from leadership, or more relevantly, the absence of it and it comes from the acceptance that West Ham is not a high performance work environment.

So, when youth coaches feel they can tweet from Far Right marches, and when high profile players go out boozing while injured, and when nepotism is rife, and the Vice Chairman refuses to give up a pointless and unhelpful Sun column lest it detract from her personal brand, then what does that tell us? What do these repeated demonstrations of valueless behaviour really mean?

I think it is clear: the club is rotting from the inside out. Mark Phillips is just a symptom - the disease is elsewhere. 

West Ham 0 - 3 Brighton (And Other Ramblings)

West Ham play Crystal Palace next week and I’m concerned that it will be a meeting of such colossal awfulness that it will somehow destroy the world. I'm not telling you to say goodbye to your loved ones, but I'm not telling you not to either. 

***

On nights like this, when the fans flowed out of the ground like steady rainfall off a roof and the brief, fragile illusion of hope from last week was shattered like a Manchester United coach window, it was hard not to be transported back a few years.

I remember the Bond Scheme era of the early Nineties, when visits to Upton Park were shrouded in a deep sense of unhappiness and I recognise some of that again now. Fans always have a healthy distrust of those who sit in board rooms, but the disconnect now is substantial. In fairness, when you talk haughtily about taking the club to another level, fans are generally going to expect that to be a level up from the one you started at, after all.

Hello crisis, my old friend

I write a lot about the joy of being a football fan, and I think some of that has roots in those early years of being a kid on the North Bank when men were on the pitch holding banners calling the Board “Lying, Thieving Cheats”. That constant cycle of negativity, where one half decent performance would be followed by three awful ones, was a bleak one in which to learn to be a fan. If you wonder quite why Harry Redknapp is still revered in some quarters, it’s worth remembering that he is seen as having delivered us from that. He gave us joy after a long period of genuine misery.

And what price some joy now? Already that magical 2015/16 season seems like something from another lifetime. Thinking back on that now seems like reminiscing about the Renaissance so long ago does it seem, but as commenter Stu from Saturday points out, it only happened last year.

As impossible as it seems right now, all of that joy happened in the last calendar year. Knocking Liverpool out of the Cup? Last year. Stopping Spurs from going top of the league? Last year. 2-0 down at Everton and winning 3-2? Last year. Payet into the top corner at Old Trafford from thirty yards? Last year. Winston Reid with the last goal at Upton Park? Last year.  I realise that I am literally explaining the concept of linear time to you but, my God, what the actual Whitney Houston has happened to us?

And so before we get into the post-mortem, it’s worth remembering that the anger and pain of right now is the direct descendent of the joy of those games and that season. That’s what football is all about.

***

There is always an episode of The Apprentice every year, where the candidates are set the challenge of sourcing a list of slightly obscure items without using the internet, because seemingly when you partner with Alan Sugar you also have to use all his Amstrad gear and apparently they haven’t added WiFi just yet.

Every year when this task arrives, one team spend ages trying to find all the stuff by ringing around and asking, and then run out of time, but get most of it. The other team always engage in no planning whatsoever, instead declaring that they’ll figure it all out “when they get there” and then end up running around at the deadline asking if French people love their children and trying to buy a Top Hat from a dry cleaners.

And then we can buy Chicharito and I'm sure we'll know just how to get the best out of him

We are the latter, of course.

All those failures of our leadership to self-review or acknowledge any of the external criticism of their incompetence has led us to this point, where we are nine games in and already the manager is a lame duck and the season is, at best, one of treading water and at worst a relegation struggle. In October.

And now, as we limp ever onwards with that lack of a plan, strategy or direction it’s even more galling that one of those very same board members sits in judgement on those poor bastards on The Apprentice, who can at least point to the fact that the things they are being asked to do are completely unreasonable.

I have come to the conclusion that West Ham as a club are rather like one of those lorries you see on the M25, where the vehicle has been limited so that it can’t go faster than 60mph. In this analogy I’m not disputing that Bilic needs to be questioned about why he can’t get the lorry past 40mph, but the broader question is why can’t any manager get us past sixty? And the answer lies in those self-imposed limitations.

I really, genuinely think the best manager in the world would struggle at West Ham. The board interfere constantly and unhelpfully, the off the field structure that delivers the playing staff to the first team is a joke and the Academy system doesn’t produce players able to take the team forward.This is a bad recipe for success I say, submitting my entry for the Understatement of the Year 2017 Competition.

It’s probably worth remembering that even in that magical 2015/16 season referenced above, the best campaign many of us have seen for thirty years, we still ended up just seventh, didn’t even qualify for the Europa League proper and Leicester won the whole bloody thing. If ever there was an opportunity for that lorry to go at 70mph it was then, and we still somehow managed to get a flat tyre in sight of the finish line.

***

So while this should be the end for Bilic, there is a pretty decent argument to be made that this is no different to much of what has gone before. Was the team demonstrably worse here than when they lost 3-0 to Southampton, 5-0 to Man City, 5-1 to Arsenal, 4-0 to Liverpool or 3-0 to Newcastle? I understand the difference between losing like this at home to a promoted team and to a Top Six behemoth, but the actual performances have been this abject for ages. So while it’s easy to ask “If not now, when?”, that’s a question we have asked a dozen times before now, and received the same inertia from the Board each time.

In fact, we’ve now reached a point where it’s actually possible to chart the cycle of performances under Bilic:

We’ve been bad under Bilic for a lot longer now than we were good. That’s not a defence of course, he should have gone ages ago, but just an attempt to explain why the Board will more than likely just shrug their shoulders and let it roll on another week. They never planned to extend him past the summer anyway, so a few more of these insipid home performances won't touch the sides. 

I think David Sullivan was off the week they did “sunk costs” on his Economics course.

***

The strange thing about this game is that all the signs were there prior to the match that things were about to perk up. Most agreed that the team had been poorer for having to try and adapt itself to fitting Andy Carroll into the alleged short passing framework that Bilic likes, and were excited by the prospect of seeing Chicharito up front.

Also in was Arthur Masuaku ahead of Aaron Cresswell, who I felt was unlucky to lose his place. It did, however, seem to please the crowd slowly rolling into the arena that Phil Whelans now lovingly refers to as “The Thunderdome”.

And then, nothing.

We saw a passive start, as on so many other evenings just like this, and the visitors took an early lead as Glenn Murray latched on to a Pascal Gross free kick to nod past Joe Hart with less pressure on him than if he was in a vacuum. Gross was the leading chance creator in the Bundesliga last season, by the way, and cost the Seagulls just £4m. It’s amazing what you can find when you take FIFA off domestic mode.

After that we seemingly woke up and pressed Brighton back. It was immediately clear the visitors were very well organised with a clear plan to flood the central areas and force us wide. We complied willingly as Arnautovic and Antonio saw plenty of the ball but wasted it in the fashion of Chevy Chase with the water bottle in the Three Amigos!

Fer cryin' out loud, Marko. Can you beat the first man at least once?

According to Geo from HammersChat, by the end of the game we had thrown in 41 crosses, compared to 26 against Swansea and Spurs and 33 against West Brom and Huddersfield. I feel I must point out at this juncture once again that Andy Carroll was not playing.

What’s especially galling about this is that (as I repeat for the millionth time) crosses are not a great way to score goals at this level. Witness the unstoppable Manchester City machine and their parade of cut backs for onrushing players to score.

If Bilic has set his team up to hammer teams with crosses then he is even less tactically capable than we thought, and if he didn’t and the players just did it anyway then there’s not much point in having a manager who can’t get the team to play how he wants. I mean, if that’s the criteria then I might as well put myself into the mix for the job. I’m cheap and I don’t know how to organise a defence either.

As fans, however, it is hard to distinguish between the institutional incompetence of the structure the players are deployed in, and the personal deficiencies of those players. We currently are 20th in the league for distance covered and high intensity sprints ran. Taken in isolation, you might say those numbers could be explained away for one game like Friday where we dominated possession, but over a season it is a stark indicator of our failings. So as fans, do we lay the blame at the feet of the players who don't make the runs, or the manager who lamented a lack of intensity in training as though it was a natural phenomenon outside of his control? Christ, what a choice. 

Similarly, how much of Friday night was down to Arnautovic and Hernandez being woeful and how much was it down to them being deployed in a system that didn’t suit them? I offer up no answers here because I don’t see how I could know, but the wider point is that whether it’s a failure of tactics or communication, both are vital for managers to succeed and a failure on either front really should be terminal. It is particularly unforgivable that Bilic spent all his summer budget on those two players and very obviously doesn't have a pattern of play in mind to extract the best from them. 

I accept that certain things are out of his hands, and players must take a certain amount of responsibility for their own poor form and lack of independent thinking, but to watch this team on Friday night was like watching a scratch team chucked together for a charity match. I can forgive managers who can't put together a way of playing to get the best out of a front pairing of Usain Bolt and Boris Johnson, but this, however, was a nonsense. 

***

As it is, we know that Sullivan and Gold want to be regarded as owners who give their managers time. Part of this is apparently down to the resistance they met from others within the game when they first took over at Birmingham. I get that – who wants to take lessons on morality and pornography from people who made their fortunes out of dubious housing and banking practices, after all – but they would be wise to consider that continued inaction from a board is just as likely to be problematic as knee jerk reaction.

By not acting once again, they have allowed Everton and Leicester to jump ahead of us. With Ronald Koeman and Craig Shakespeare gone we will now see another two targets go off the board and have two less names to pursue. Even though Everton fans bring their kids with them to on pitch fights, it’s still a more attractive job than ours, not least because the interference from above is less pronounced and the purse strings looser. Leicester, meanwhile, might be about par with us given their crazy board but they have the kudos of a Premier League title to throw around and crucially they've acted first.

When I analyse the way that this West Ham board approach managerial decisions I am forced to conclude that they have little confidence in their own ability to appoint anyone better than they already have in place. If I’m right about that, it is the nearest they have come to self-awareness, albeit given the way they have repeatedly been turned down by their first choice targets it would be odd if they didn’t realise this was true. I still remember David Gold being asked about why they had appointed Avram Grant and him offering up the excuse that “You don’t have anything to go on apart from the interview, do you?”. Christ on a mobility scooter, David, give me a ring – I know how to use Google.

Exactly how good were they to work for, Avram?

So while we may all clamour for Bilic to be dismissed, we have to accept that his replacement is highly unlikely to be much better. There is literally no way this Board could hire the equivalent of Pochettino from Espanyol or Marco Silva from Olympiakos because they don’t have the confidence or decision making structure to identify what it is that makes those individuals better coaches than the likes of Grant or Bilic.

They also don't seem to understand that the wider structure within which a manager operates is as big a factor in his success as his own abilities. For that reason, firing Bilic and replacing him with a mediocre short term hire feels pretty unappealing to me. 

I feel forced to repeat once more that if the people who make decisions on our board about footballing matters were to apply for those same roles at other Premier League clubs, they wouldn’t get them. This should be a sobering thought for all those who think firing Bilic will provide an immediate panacea.

***

Still, at 1-0 down we shouldn’t really have been out of the game, even though the sight of us smashing cross after cross at Chicharito was beginning to feel like watching one of those “Vietnam War” documentary episodes where American troops continued disappearing off into the bush on hopelessly ill thought out missions with little or no success. We are, after all, yet to win a home league game at the London Stadium when the opposition have scored a goal. Going a goal behind has thus been a death knell for the last eighteen months. 

Therefore, Brighton sat back and absorbed lots of first half pressure after taking the lead, although it was noticeable that they broke on the counter with more pace and purpose than we did at any stage. That lack of speed in our team was brutally exposed once more as Antonio was injured in a first half clash and then limped his way through the next seventy minutes. All hail Gary Lewin, folks.

The second goal, on the stroke of half time, killed the game as Joe Hart came rushing off his line to save brilliantly from Murray, but was unfortunate as the ball was recycled back to Izquierdo on the edge of the box. Hart might have expected some of his teammates to have shown an interest at this point, but they were all distracted by the sight of Ian Bishop wearing a particularly fetching hat in the Directors Lounge and instead allowed him to curl a sumptuous shot towards the top left hand corner. From the side I thought Hart had make a second outstanding save but instead he merely palmed it into the top corner and once more we'll have to contemplate whether he really does have more trouble going to his left than Tommy Robinson.

I'm blaming Bish's hat

I thought the acquisition of Hart was a pointless vanity signing for Sullivan, but one thing I would say is that he is probably the best I’ve ever seen coming off his line. He has made a number of outstanding stops in those one on one situations, but at least twice he’s been beaten by rebounds from those saves – here and the second Harry Kane goal against Spurs. If nothing else, that might point to the glacial speed at which our defence transitions back in such situations.

At two down, we might have expected a bit of second half fire and brimstone but instead we got a couple of Lanzini free kicks and yet more crosses towards a worryingly isolated Chicharito. Initially Lanzini had played as the number ten but he soon swapped with Kouyate, who was himself then withdrawn in favour of Ayew at half time. "If in doubt change everything", seemed to be the motto.

With time slipping away, Zabaleta conceded another brainless penalty and Glenn Murray dusted himself down to score his second and hand the visitors a thoroughly deserved win. The worst thing for Brighton was that they couldn't really tell if this was a good performance or not because we were so earth shatteringly, heart breakingly, Robbie Williamsly bad. 

I should probably point out that this was all particularly embarrassing as Glenn Murray is fifty four years old.

***

Back when the Bond Scheme was halving the size of our support, and long before the internet and Twitter, the opinions of fans were shaped and carried by the fanzines of the time. Over Land and Sea, On The Terraces, On A Mission and Fortunes Always Hiding were the message boards of the day and I read them all voraciously. They were my window into the world of what other fans thought, and my hazy recollection is that they led the rebellion against the boardroom incompetence of the time. (I may be getting my timeframes mixed up there as On A Mission was more a Whistle era organ if I recall properly, but I think the point still stands). With such a small number of voices to listen to, I think fans were rallied more easily, and though discontent brewed in the pubs and in the stands rather than in cyberspace, there was a common train of thought among fans, arguably shaped by the fact that fewer people had platforms upon which to express themselves.

Plus ca change

Nowadays, of course, everybody has such an opportunity and the breadth of opinion is wider than a pair of specially made Neil Ruddock shorts. To my mind, with that proliferation has come a general decrease in the quality of thought given to the writing, but also a more disparate set of views. As such, I don't sense the same level of unity among fans as there was back then. Plenty of supporters think the club died when we left Upton Park, while as big a group seem perfectly happy with the new ground and instead lament the failures on the pitch more than anything. Whatever side of the divide you find yourself on, I don't get the sense of an impeding catastrophic seismic event in the stands.

Instead, if I took anything away from Friday it was that the great danger the Club faces now is apathy. I thought it was stark that the ground emptied in the way it did, and telling that people were laughing more at the ineptitude on display than any outright anger. 

Maybe I'm projecting my own world view onto others and I'm a million miles off, but right now I get the impression that a lot of people are despondent about things because they see the bigger picture and wonder about how the club can really move forward, and lament what has been lost in the fruitless pursuit of even the slightest improvement in our on pitch fortunes. 

Bilic will go at some point soon, but whoever comes in will still have to operate in the same broken system, with the same interference and the same financial limitations. I'm not saying people have stopped caring, but maybe they are starting to think that whether they do or not is a bit irrelevant because the board seem so relentlessly incapable of making good decisions. I'm sure you'll tell me if I'm wrong, but it feels to me like the whole club is at a crossroads right now and for every week they allow us to drift along aimlessly like we currently are, they lose a little more of the soul of the club. 

I don't want these clowns making decisions, but even I am forced to accept that it probably would be better if they did something. Because somehow, this cycle needs to be broken. 

West Ham 3 - 0 Brighton (And Other Ramblings)

1. Trades Description Act - Possible Lawsuit

Here's my match report. We won. Tree - and I mean a large redwood - mendous.

Now, with the match thoroughly dealt with, how about moving on to something more interesting?

As we teeter ever more dangerously on the precipice I thought I might take a look back over our glorious travails to this point. Be warned this is an 18 rated article:

(Marks range from 1 - 10, 1 being Ashton Kutcher and 10 being Dean Ashton. Have a guess how many 10's there are.......)

Keepers

Robert Green - Apps: 14

It is fairly unusual for a keeper who has conceded as many goals as Green has to still be so universally popular but that probably shows that most fans are well aware of the fact that our daring decision to play this season without a back 4 has left him ever so slightly exposed.

Clean sheets against Man Utd and Arsenal augur well for better days ahead, although the 10 goals conceded at Bolton and Reading must have made him long for Norwich and the days when he only used to let in 3 away from home in the Premiership.

Finding a West Ham keeper who can actually kick is a rarity though. Sort of like a Spice Girl who can sing. Almost mythical.

Best Performance : Man Utd (h)

Mark : 6/10

Roy Carroll - Apps: 8

Pertinently, nobody is going to look back on Roy's season and remember the football. It will always be the season that he made the front page of The Sun as he underwent treatment for gambling and alcohol addiction.

Thankfully he didn't let a little thing like that get in the way of attending the team Christmas party at Stringfellows where he still managed to let his hair down with the lads.

Has been displaced by Green and won't be back soon, barring injury. His decline was evidenced by the fact that he last kept a clean sheet when Queen Victoria was on the throne.

Best Performance : Watford (a)

Mark : 4/10

'Defenders'

John Paintsil - Apps : 3 (2)

I knew this bloke was going to be trouble when he somehow forced the Ghanaian FA to comment on the Middle Eastern troubles by exuberantly waving an Israeli flag around at the World Cup. In fairness, I suspect that the Ghanaian FA might well do a better job of managing the Middle East peace crisis but that's not really the point.

When he arrived in the UK there was a problem with his contract as we had spelt his name wrong, although it must be said that this was only because his passport had the incorrect name on it to begin with. Nothing dubious there then.

All of that aside, he has proved to be Tomas Repka in reverse. Great going forward and appalling defensively, hitting a nadir when being outpaced by Edgar Davids at tottenham.

Best Performance: Liverpool (a)

Mark : 5/10

Tyrone Mears - Apps : 3 (2)

Arrived from Olympic diving champions Preston North End and spent much of his early West Ham career lying down, looking perplexed. At this point my main concern is whether I should be calling him Ty or Tyrone. I'm a simple man and I need to know these things.

Likely to be sold for £365,000 to Stoke on July 27th 2007. I wish I could be more precise for you, I really do.

Best Performance : Aston Villa (h)

Mark : 3/10

Jonathan Spector - Apps: 14 (1)

Has been the least usless of our myriad right backs. Was AWOL for much of the season before coming in against Palermo and not looking totally inept. Also got away with an awful knee high tackle on Robin van Persie which endeared him to me greatly.

Best hair on the team, sightly negated by the fact that being an American he doubtless refers to the game as "soccer".

Best Performance : Arsenal (h)

Mark : 5/10

Christian Dailly - Apps : 6 (3)

Ah Christian. If all our players were as committed as you we'd be sitting pretty in 13th place mistakenly thinking that a UEFA Cup spot was there for the taking. If all our players were as talented as you we'd be Millwall.

The fact that Dailly has featured at all this year is testament to his own enduring longevity and the total lack of fight from the rest of them, so evident during some of our more hideous defeats.

Single handedly destroyed my vision of Man City's Stephen Jordan as a good player by flitting past him effortlessly during the recent home defeat.

If ever a man was destined to play in wet, muddy conditions and look good doing it, then it's our Christian. What a haircut.

Best Performance : Man City (h)

Mark : 6/10

James Collins - Apps : 6

I lead the clarion call for his inclusion earlier in the year when we just couldn't seem to find it within ourselves not to concede before I'd even sat down. He came in a few times and did nothing to justify my faith in him. So he should consider himself off my Christmas card list. That'll learn him.

Has been mostly injured, and frankly if he can't get into this back 4 then something is a bit amiss.

I saw him in Romford one day after training and I can confirm he is extremely tall.

Best Perfomance : Man Utd (h)

Mark : 4/10

Anton Ferdinand - Apps : 19

He drives a Baby Bentley apparently.

Another of the 'must do better' club. Reputedly a leading member of the clique and certainly a prime culprit in a season that has been derailed by off the field garbage. There is precious little excuse for being caught on CCTV going in to Faces nightclub at all, let alone alledgedly being caught doing a bit of GBH right outside.

A shame because his footballing progress since I first saw him as a callow youth at Preston on the first day of the 2003/04 season has been remarkable.

Caught 'dancing' on that bloody Reo-Coker video too.

Best Performance : Man Utd (h)

Mark : 5/10

Danny Gabbidon - Apps : 17

I'm not sure I've ever seen a footballer regress so quickly from one year to the next. Impeccable last season, he has been dire for much of this year. No doubt he has been affected by the fact that he was injured through pre-season but he gave away a penalty on the opening day and hasn't looked forward since.

Has somehow escaped being dropped, so possibly in possesion of some incriminating photographs.

Welsh.

Best Performance : Arsenal (h)

Mark : 4/10

Paul Konchesky - Apps : 20

Ol' Blue Eyes. Where art thou? Give me back my languid, always looks knackered, sweet swinging full back and take back this imposter you've left me with. I can trace his demise back precisely to the moment that he got into the England squad. It seems that one week with Eriksson and Maclaren has decimated his confidence completely and he has subsequently declined and fallen like a Roman Empire.

Passes with all the accuracy one might expect of a man supplanted in the Charlton side by 64 year old Chris Powell.

Best Performance : Aston Villa (h)

Mark : 5/10

George McCartney - Apps : 2 (6)

Prime member of the "I'm not as bad as you think I am" club. Admittedly that is a club with a very select membership these days at Upton Park. Has overcome the double whammy of being Northern Irish and learning his football at Sunderland to forge a useful role in the squad for us. That in itself should tell you all you need to know about our season so far.

Makes Victoria Beckham look beefy.

Best Performance : Arsenal (h)

Mark : 6/10

Midfielders

Nigel Reo-Coker - Apps: 21

It probably seemed like a reasonable purchase. Maybe £40, stick it on for a night out and not worry about it. Unfortunately then a film crew came round and got some footage of you 'dancing' like an epilepsy sufferer whilst wearing it and now you've been universally villified.

Bet that Nige regrets buying that "Billionaire Boys Club" t-shirt now.

A fall from grace of epic proportions, mostly brought about by a stinking attitude and an agent with ice for brains. The tigerish little chap of last year has been replaced by an ego the size of Roseanne Barr and he's showing about as much ability.

A move might do him good. Then again it might not (think Shaun Wright Phillips). He just needs to forget about leaving and try and remember how hard he had to work to get out from where he was just two season ago. (And if you can't remember Nigel it was on the bench behind Steve Lomas and Carl Fletcher).

Now that we have signed Quashie we have by some distance the most amount of Nigel's in the Premiership.

Best Perfomance : Arsenal (h)

Mark : 4/10

Hayden Mullins - Apps : 20 (2)

A somewhat controversial choice perhaps but my Player of the Season so far. Now that's a bit like being voted Britain's Most Honourable Politician but, there you go, someone has to win it.

Responded well to being dropped earlier in the season and has been steady if unspectacular since then. Has played poorly at times but the sad fact is that no one in our squad has even approached consistency this year.

Tellingly, he is our second top goal scorer with 3.

Best Performance : Blackburn (h)

Mark : 7/10

Matthew Etherington - Apps : 16 (1)

An excrutiating season so far for our bambi legged lefty. Has performed so badly at times that he actually managed to make Andy van der Meyde look competent in our away game at Everton. Seems likely to move on now that we have acquired Luis Boa Morte and could actually end up replacing him at Fulham where his fluffy brand of football should fit right in.

Despite all of the above a large proportion of our goals do tend to start on our left hand side.

About as good defensively as the French Army.

Best Perfomance : Arsenal (h)

Mark : 4/10

Yossi Benayoun - Apps : 14 (4)

Yet another who has fallen off more rapidly than a drunken jockey. Rewarded for a patchily impressive first season with a ridiculous wage hike and has played like a man with his mind on other things. Looks lightweight, out of form, disinterested and yet frustratingly, remains our sole source of creativity in midfield.

Described our display at Reading as "...playing like drunks.." which is somewhat disingenous because when drunk people are being humiliated they usually show a bit of fight.

Best Performance : Charlton (h)

Mark : 3/10

Lee Bowyer - Apps : 13 (2)

Started brilliantly and then faded like jeans in the sun. It's scarcely credible that this player was once one of Europe's most feared attacking midfielders given that he has still yet to score for us in his two stints.

Hit the post at Liverpool when he really should have scored and it's tempting to think that had that gone in both his and our season's would have been very different. Still likes a scrap and does work hard but something is missing from his game.

The woman who sits in front of me steadfastly refuses to clap him and instead turns round and folds her arms when his name is read out. I admire her dedication if nothing else.

Best Perfomance : Charlton (h)

Mark : 5/10

Javier Mascherano - Apps : 3 (2)

Remember that heady day in September when we signed two Argentinian World Cup stars? "We're going to win the UEFA Cup" I thought, "In fact, we'll probably win the Boat Race too".

So quickly can wild expectations turn to dust. He looked great in his first game and subsequently looked mystified at having to play against people like Jermain Jenas. I have been calling for him to be given a chance. mostly on the basis that he can hardly do any worse than our current midfield but first Pardew and latterly Curbishley have studiously ignored him.

Is now likely to be squeezed out by the arrival of Nigel Quashie, which is a sentence I never thought I'd write. There are lots of rumours surrounding him, the most credible of which being that in order for him to leave he needs to be able to demonstrate to FIFA that his career is being harmed by staying at West Ham, something that can best be proved by us not picking him. And you thought it was a something stupid.

Likely to go down as the biggest waste of talent in our history. Which is truly saying something.

Best Performance : Palermo (h)

Mark : 4/10

Strikers

Bobby Zamora - Apps : 17 (1)

There are those who sing that he is better than Jermain. These people are on drugs. Unless they're meaning Germaine Greer - I don't really know.

Has put in some performances so bad that dogs in the surrounding streets have simply laid down and died. Bobby's first touch can have that effect on you.

Is our leading scorer despite not finding the net since the Aqe of Aquarius. In fact, if you get a minute go on to You Tube and look up his goals this season. How many do you think were confidently and deliberately struck into the net? I'm not complaining but you'll see what I mean.

Best Performance : Charlton (h)

Mark : 5/10

Teddy Sheringham - Apps : 4 (13)

It is a scathing comment on the rest of this shower that a 40 year old who has started just 4 league games all season came quite close to winning the Player of the Year. Teddy remains the player with the best technique and finishing skill at the club, even if he appears to be relying on alchemy to continue turning out at his age at all.

Proved that those dimples have lost none of their potent charm by dating the winner of the Miss UK competition. Purely coincidentally, Teddy was a judge in that same competition. What a guy. (What are the qualifiations for judging one of those things by the way?)

Best Perfomance : Blackburn (h)

Mark : 7/10

Marlon Harewood - Apps : 14 (8)

Just one league goal all season, but what a goal it was. Has otherwise looked a pale shadow of the 14 goal player we saw last year. Incredibly it turns out that Marlon was destined for the World Cup before getting injured in the FA Cup Final. Sometimes life is just a little too weird for me.

Noticeably lacking in confidence and seems to have been guilty of resting on his laurels after an impressive first year. Has been linked with a move to Charlton as part of a swap deal for Darren Bent. If that does materialise I imagine you'll see Alan Pardew walking round with his arm in a sling after we bite his hand off.

Best Performance : A Question of Sport (Sept 2006)

Mark : 4/10

Carlton Cole - Apps 1 (10)

Scored within 30 seconds of his debut and it's been all downhill since. Conceivably could have played more, but then he actually could have turned up to training a bit more aswell.

I've struggled to see what all the fuss was about with Carlton though. He's certainly physically imposing but he's not particularly mobile and he's not exactly been putting it about up there.

It will be interesting to see how much he plays under Curbishley as they apparently had a bit of a falling out during his time at Charlton, although that's a story you hear about pretty much everyone who played over there. Which is something to look forward to.

Best Performance : Reading (h)

Mark : 4/10

Carlos Tevez - Apps : 7 (6)

The man who would be king. Our pint sized saviour who tries harder than anyone who has his kind of reputation usually does. The harsh fact remains that he has yet to score, although it's not for the want of trying.

Would be in my side every week as it's difficult to believe that he won't come good at some point, and in this side "coming good" constitutes scoring twice.

Have a look at his hair in the photos flashed up on the big screen before games. Awesome.

Best Performance : Everton (a)

Mark : 6/10

And Finally

I haven't rated Shaun Newton on the grounds that I don't even think he should be in our employ, let alone on the pitch. Mark Noble is a miniature hero of mine so he can have 9/10. Jimmy Walker gets 8/10 for saving that Lampard penalty two years ago and Kyel Reid gets a 10/6 on the grounds that he must be dyslexic.

Welcome to Nigel Quashie, a modern day Jonah, and "Hola" to Luis Boa Morte who came for love of the club and a boatload of cash. God Bless You both.

We have been linked with pretty much every other footballer in possession of all their limbs so I won't comment too much, except to say that we have not one underwear model in our current squad to my knowledge so let's do everything we can to get Freddie Ljungberg.

Oh, and if Jeremy Nicholas plays "The Great Escape" at any point we've had it......