The Slow, Dissolving Dream

"What's left for you and me?

I ask that question rhetorically"

- Alvvays, "In Undertow"

McNulty!

The West Ham board have been doing stupid things. It's The H List bat signal.

I am, I suspect, quite a long way behind the rest of you, but I have stumbled upon something that has rather simplified my life. Much like the brilliant, multi faceted Showtime drama "The Affair", this required alternate viewpoints and an ability to stop seeing only one side of the story, but after a decade of smashing my head fruitlessly against the wall of Sullivanism I have finally seen the light.

For those of you who have read The H List for a while, you will know that I have spent years battling against the way West Ham has been run. Why, I pondered, would a football club that has ambitions to break into the Champions League be managed this way? What logic was driving the baffling sequence of decisions that have been the hallmark of this decade of ownership? What, assuming you weren't a blackmail victim, would convince you that signing Carlos Sanchez was a good idea?

My repeated conclusion has been fairly straightforward; the people in charge of West Ham don't know what they are doing.

And, in fairness, the results have tended to back that up.

But after a while, I began to slightly question my logic. People do not tend to make billions while being idiots. They are certainly capable of poor decisions, but they aren't generally stupid. Now, there is the wrinkle that our owners made their fortunes in an unusual way. The requirements of making lots of money from porn are not exactly the same as those in manufacturing or finance. Sullivan and Gold didn't need a genius design, or fossil fuels or a whizz bang trading algorithim or anything unique like that. No, they simply needed to be prepared to operate in a murkier part of society than others had been prepared to do before them. They needed sharp elbows, a different take than wider society on sex, and a willingness to flirt with the laws of the day. I make no judgement about any of that, but it's also true that once they had that cash they then stuck most of into property and let market forces do the rest.

So those skills don't really translate to running a wider, more traditional business. Filming and selling hardcore pornography doesn't require business acumen so much as having a different view on prurience to the vast majority of the country. 

And so here we are in 2019 with West Ham having lost more Premier Leagues matches this decade than anyone else, and the club is still run and operated in exactly the same way it has been since Gold and Sullivan arrived in January 2010. And the club have duly finished the decade exactly where they started it - 17th in the Premier League, facing relegation and with no discernible plan for the future.

So with that in mind I just couldn't see the point of writing this column any more. How many ways can you say the same thing before it ceases to have any meaning?

Of course, following West Ham in the Olympic Stadium era has been an even more frustrating experience than any of us could have imagined. Rather than catapulting the club on to greater heights, it has instead become a test of strength. How much do you really love West Ham? Enough to give up the vast majority of the things you used to enjoy about football to continue watching them? Do you want to watch the same shit football but just from further away? Well, unbuckle and despise the ride because that's what you're doing.

And so my analysis of the club's owners still seemed pretty sound; they don't know what they're doing. I'm right, aren't I? Consider the league finishes of the club under the ownership of Terry Brown and then under David Sullivan:

Terry Brown	Finish	David Sullivan	Finish
1992-93	2nd (Div 1)	2009-10	17th
1993-94	13th	2010-11	20th (Relegated)
1994-95	14th	2011-12	3rd (Championship)
1995-96	10th	2012-13	10th
1996-97	14th	2013-14	13th
1997-98	8th	2014-15	12th
1998-99	5th	2015-16	7th
1999-00	9th	2016-17	11th
2000-01	15th	2017-18	13th
2001-02	7th	2018-19	10th
2002-03	18th (Relegated)
2003-04	4th (Championship)
2004-05	6th (Championship)
2005-06	9th

Five of the top six West Ham Premier League finishes happened under Terry Brown. So yeah, how good can you really be when you're demonstrably worse than a caravan park owner who thought we once got relegated because it was our turn. I say again (and again and again) - they don't know what they're doing.

Right?

But that just didn't sit easily with me. Wealthy people aren't always smart, and smart people aren't always wealthy, but unless you inherit your money the truth is that billionaires are likely to be smarter than the average bear.

So, what if my analysis was fine, but I was simply asking the wrong question?

"Why do they keep failing?" is a perfectly reasonable question to ask, and "because they don't know what they're doing" is a very reasonable answer. But then I was hit by a notion not unlike Morrissey's double decker bus...

What if they're not failing?
What if this is fine?

What if the things that you want for West Ham are not the same as the owners?

And that, my friends, was when it all began to make a lot more sense. We had made the mistake of assuming that success for them was the same as success for us. And with every misplaced pass, every abysmal signing and every short term bodge job it came became ever more clear that this was simply not the case.

***

"I thought it started as a daydream

But I'm not dreaming anymore"

- Mattiel, "Keep the Change"

Same

Firstly, I want you to click on this link and read the attached story, for it is key to everything I am about to posit.

For those of you with the work rate of a West Ham wide player, let me summarise. This link tells the story of how investment firm Silver Lake recently purchased a 10% stake in Manchester City's parent company for $500m. For those paying attention at the back, that values Manchester City at a cool $5bn. Now, this might seem as relevant to West Ham as the stock price of Waitrose to your local second hand car dealership, but sadly it's not.

Booming valuations of sports franchises have a knock on effect, and an astronomical valuation like this has the consequence of helping to raise the price of teams like West Ham. It matters not that City are run by an oil rich state and we are being run into the ground by snake oil salesmen - we occupy broadly the same real estate and that is all that matters. Call it trickle down economics, or call it a symbol of how fucked up the world is, but you can probably value West Ham somewhere around $500m nowadays assuming - and this is the kicker - that they remain a Premier League club.

And thus I began to view West Ham a little differently.

Us fans may pore over u23 score lines, scout Belgian central midfielders on YouTube and look longingly to the Bundesliga for a sexy young saviour, but the sad truth is that none of that matters. West Ham is not a club with aspirations about floating - West Ham is a club determined not to drown.

Now let me be clear about what I mean by this because I think this could be prettily easily construed as me suggesting that the owners are asset strippers or uninterested leeches, and I don't think that's really true. I believe that David Sullivan and David Gold would like West Ham to be successful, and I can even allow myself to be convinced that as supporters they feel the highs and lows just as we do. 

But their primary driver is simple; in summer 2021 the club can be sold without any of the proceeds needing to be repaid to the public purse. (*) Assuming that West Ham are still a Premier League club at that point and that $500m valuation holds, then Sullivan and Gold will be free to sell up and bank the kind of profit that one does not usually see when you flog an asset based in a leased building, constructed to last a fortnight.

So while I accept there is a nice spot in the Venn diagram where the things we want overlap with the owners, we can stop kidding ourselves about the wider dream. We aren't going to see £100m plans for training facilities or substantial investment in a new scouting and analytics set up, or a tonne of money being thrown at the women's team, because these things just cost money and depress the amount of the money the owners will trouser in a sale. You don't stick long term expenditure projects on a balance sheet when you're preparing to sell up. 

I don't doubt for a moment that the owners would like West Ham to be successful but that is a secondary consideration to avoiding relegation. Champions League football would be a wonderful boon to the valuation of the club, but it's a very long shot. As such, you are seeing a football club run more to avoid finishing 18th rather than with the intention of finishing 6th. And I have found that once I started viewing things through that prism, it all made a lot more sense.

Sullivan has always been prepared to spend money - and let me be clear here when I say that this is primarily because it's the clubs money and not his - but there has been a distinct lack of any kind of cohesive plan in any of it. Think of the endless words written on this site crying out for strategy, forward thinking purchases, better facilities, investment in the marginal things that might eke out the odd point here and there and then remember that the club is valued the same whether we finish 14th or 9th.

It's not that they don't care - they just don't care about what we care about.

***

"Anybody with a worried mind, could never forgive the sight
Of wicked snakes inside a place, you thought was dignified"
- Vampire Weekend, "Harmony Hall"

Just a fabulous group of people

I suspect a decent number of you are wondering what took me so long. This is all probably fairly obvious stuff. 

Perhaps I always realised this too but never wanted to admit it to myself. But let's be clear, the realisation that your football club isn't primarily concerned with winning football games is actually quite a hard thing to type in black and white. 

It is the end of the slow, dissolving dream that moving to Stratford was done to enhance the fortunes of the club, and instead is the realisation of a long gestating nightmare that the club can sit and fester until a buyer can be found who has the cash and wherewithal to try and do anything other than just exist. 

You see, all of those articles and those conversations and arguments about who to buy and sell were all had in good faith. They were all held by fans assuming that the owners were wanting the same thing as them. And while I don't doubt that Jack Sullivan really does love West Ham, and that David Gold would really like us to beat Palace instead of allowing Jordan Fucking Ayew to waltz through our defence, they have a hundred million reasons not to demand change.

The visit of Leicester was, in many ways, the perfect send off to this decade for West Ham. Here is a club who have climbed through the divisions, won the league, made a Champions League quarter final, weathered the death of their owner and most recently sold their best player for £80m while replacing him with a home grown kid and simultaneously improving their squad. They have plans for a monumental training ground and can attract top managers because it is seen as a premier place to work. They are, by any definition the antithesis of West Ham.

The owner of StatsBomb wrote this Twitter thread on Friday and while I broadly agree with him, he really should be using Leicester and not Liverpool to illustrate his point. But the wider issue that he correctly identifies is that the Premier League will leave teams like West Ham behind. We have survived so long because of our relatively higher income, and the general stupidity of those around us. In a couple of years that advantage will be gone, and while we may survive this year the writing is certainly on the wall for the near future. The current iteration of West Ham has the same bright future as the gramophone.

If the Premier League were like North American sports, there would be a monster analytics revolution in progress right now.

Teams would look at what Liverpool have done, follow the breadcrumbs of how they have done it, and hoover every smart analytical mind into the sky.

— On an Island (@mixedknuts) December 27, 2019

But I digress.

So, we play Leicester in the final game of the decade at 5.30 on a Saturday evening. The game isn't televised but kicks off late to allow Westfield shoppers to spend their cash in the daytime. You and me can wait. West Ham were, by pure coincidence, away on Boxing Day once again.

Our best player is Michail Antonio, who made such an impact when he arrived in 2015 that David Gold was tricked into tweeting a picture of him with a missing persons report. Having settled in, he was then used by the fans favourite manager of the decade - Slaven Bilic - as a right back, and fucked our only chance of ever making the Champions League.

Years later, he is by some distance the most effective player in a team featuring four £20m+ signings, and without him we look like Destiny's Child sans Beyonce. He starts on the bench here having crashed a £200k Lamborghini into someone's house on Christmas Day, while dressed as a snowman.

And that, my friends, is pretty much the only three paragraphs you will ever need to explain your support of West Ham to a non believer. 

Not even close to being the biggest car crash of this Christmas

So Leicester arrive, play their reserves and beat us so comfortably that Manuel Pellegrini just gives up and lets some small children in the seats behind him make the substitutions. The crowning moment came in the second half when Issa Diop produced a piece of defending that looked suspiciously like when I play my kids at FIFA and I press all the wrong buttons and my player does a goal celebration instead of a sliding tackle.

And after all that, and since the time I started writing this piece, Pellegrini was sacked.

***

"Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes

You'd know then what a drag it is to see you"

- Bob Dylan "Positively Fourth Street"

He will, one assumes, be followed by David Moyes, who ought to have been given greater consideration two summers ago and we will begin the now customary annual bailing of water in the hope of making it through to the summer where we can, ahem, rebuild.

People will be upset about Moyes and see it as a regressive, uninspired choice without putting the pieces together that this is a regressive, uninspiring club. The team is listless and without direction because the club is too. There is no culture of success or excellence anywhere at West Ham and that is reflected in everything that happens at the club. There is a reason that every interaction with supporters is seen as transactional; there is a reason that kids don't want to go the to Stadium; there is a reason that the Academy doesn't produce good players. The culture is one of abject mediocrity that even hard working, dedicated employees cannot transcend. It hangs over the club like a shroud and is Karren Brady's great bequeathment to us. Not bad for someone who is hardly ever here.

Managers have to be paid outrageously to come, because they must work within the restrictions laid down by the Board. No long term planning, no vision and nothing to harm the balance sheet. For this privilege Pellegrini took home £8m a year, and it's why I have no sympathy for him. He came back from a retirement in China and changed absolutely nothing about the club. He took that money and shut up about what was needed for West Ham. He deserves nothing and can't piss off soon enough, what with his main achievement being to transform Sebastian Haller from pretty good to Priti Patel.

And in that vein, why do we think so many of our players clearly don't give a shit about West Ham? What linked Payet, Arnautovic, Diame, Sakho, Hernandez, Carroll et al was that they all fundamentally understood that they were playing for a club with no ambition. And thus, when the chance came for them to better themselves or enrich their fortunes they took it. And I don't blame them one bit. We paid Javier Hernandez more than Harry Kane, but look at what Spurs were able to offer their player. It is no wonder that the team so frequently look like they'd rather be anywhere else than here. After all, so would half the crowd.

So Moyes will come, and this time he will have more leverage and I suspect that he may wrest a little more control away from Sullivan. I don't have any particular issue with appointing Moyes as he has a vision and some semblance of an idea about how to build a stumbling club. And frankly, who do people think would be better who would realistically come? Frankly the appointment of Moyes or Chris Hughton or Danny Cowley is all a bit moot. Nobody is going to be able to thrive under these circumstances.

Either way, I think it's likely that Moyes will be paid an eyewatering amount and given a contract up to that magic 2021 date and then everything will be reassessed. Yet more treading water and frantically hoping not to drown, and all the while ensuring that the balance sheet is kept pristine.

In some ways I don't even really blame Sullivan and Gold for their stance. They have, correctly in my view, decided that success in English football would require an amount of cash and intellectual heft that they do not have. Young players with resale value require scouting, higher transfer fees outlaid on less sure things, and giving up control to others. Sullivan won't do that, and instead prefers to sign the likes of Yarmolenko or Hernandez because he thinks he knows what he is getting for a shorter, controlled period of time. In much the same way as Mike Ashley, the owners are simply sitting in and waiting for someone else to come and make the investment that they cannot.

But what an impact that is having on the club. This is starting to feel terminal. Everywhere I look there are empty seats and apathy is starting to take the deepest root I have ever seen amongst our support. I still feel there will be one more Burnley incident before the whole thing goes full Wimbledon, but it's not an exaggeration to say that "I just don't care any more" feels like the new refrain from the terraces. Maybe it's me, and a reflection of my own ennui, but I don't think so. Fans aren't stupid and watching a club be transparently run for the benefit of two individuals has poisoned the experience. And that stadium. That fucking stadium.

My own view is that fans have been extraordinarily patient with these owners, and far too willing to forget old mistakes in the face of a brand new fixture list and a couple of sunny pre season friendlies. But that's a part of the great set of lies we mid-table fans must tell ourselves. We have to pretend that these new signings are the ones, or that the chairman really is trying to produce a younger, faster team even as he extends Pablo Zabaleta's contract, because otherwise what is the point?

Well, once again we're forced to ask that question - what is the point? Nobody believes in the slow dissolving dream anymore, and we can't go back to what we had before. I don't have the answer but I'm happier now I don't have to try and pretend that the club are trying to win. Moyes is fine because it doesn't matter who they appoint. It's all about drifting and listless nothingness. It's about hanging on until something better comes along. It's the fading and dying of dreams.

Happy New Year everyone.

(*) This article contains a link to a City AM piece that incorrectly states that the earliest date at which the club can be sold without a slice going to the public purse is 2021. This date is actually 2023 (thanks to Mark Inskipp on KUMB for picking this up). It doesn't change my thoughts about any of the above - it's just a longer period of purgatory for us. 

West Ham 1 - 4 Manchester City (And Other Ramblings)

"I don't want to spend night after night with you

While you figure it out"

- She and Him, "I've Got Your Number, Son"

A LETTER TO DAVID SULLIVAN

Dear David

This is one of those open letters. God, how tedious of me. I've become one of "those" people.

I know, I know - I should be better than this. But then again, so should our team after eight years of your ownership and instead we're going to either go down or survive with fewer than forty points. Neither of us have much to shout about.

First question - where on earth do you get your jackets?

I should be writing about this game, but to be honest, I've got nothing left to say about West Ham capitulating at home. I've seen this game a dozen times already at the London Stadium since you moved us there. I don't know how many more times I can say that Cheikhou Kouyate is no longer in control of his own legs, or describe Javier Hernandez nearly breaking out into a walk.

So let's just talk, you and I. Two seriously pissed off West Ham fans with an eye on the future.

I'm guessing that this weekend was tough for you. Perhaps I'm naive but I still believe that you are a genuine supporter, albeit one with a remarkably high tolerance for the team you support being abysmal. I suspect it must be galling for you to sit in Director's Boxes with the officials of clubs like Burnley, Swansea and Brighton and have to offer up polite chit chat while the team you have assembled at such great cost gets destroyed in front of you. I can't believe that at least a couple of them haven't at least leaned over and whispered something along the lines of "David, old chap, not to pry but exactly how incriminating are the photographs that Patrice Evra has of you?".

You're not a quitter, you say. You're not walking away from a job half done. Fair enough, I suppose, although I think you might be pushing the limits of the word "half" there. It's the standard rhetoric of people in jobs that are beyond them, but which remunerate them handsomely. And rest assured, I think we are all aware that the several million pounds of interest that the club pays you each year probably helps to while away the hours on those long drives back down the M1 after yet another Northern shellacking. 

I happen to think that people who refuse to quit when they aren't up to the task are selfish. People mocked Kevin Keegan mercilessly but by resigning as England manager in 2001 he helped England to reach a World Cup, by admitting he wasn't up to it. I find that infinitely more courageous and honourable than sticking around despite all the evidence being that you don't possess the ability to do your job. I'm. Just. Saying. David.

***

But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. For our story begins some time ago. 2010, to be precise, and West Ham was a club on the precipice. We were, according to the BBC, "in 16th, in a season plagued by injuries and off field distractions". Seems a little outlandish, I know, but that's what they said. 

You described the situation thusly - "We have a short term goal to stay in the Premier League, and in the long term we'd like to be challenging for the top four and the Champions League....the club has such an unbalanced squad. We will be honest with the fans about the books and the crazy wages the Icelandic owners paid out that has brought the club to its knees". 

I won't lie, David, that last one is my favourite.

You finished up by saying "We're taking on a huge task at a club with enormous problems. It will take time for us to turn it around.". Remember what we were saying about a job half done? Time travellers from 2010 might wonder if you've even started at all. 

I should also add that there was also some stuff about how you always supported your managers, right before you fired Gianfranco Zola and replaced him with Avram Grant. For a bet, possibly. Anyway, we're five managers in now so I always figured that one was probably a joke. 

Plus ca change and all that, but I wonder if you ever sit at home, looking at those life-size waxwork butlers of yours and wonder whether you are in some mythical Greek hell?

I know I do.

In the same way that Tantalus is forever doomed to stand in a pool of water that recedes whenever he bends down to try and drink it, you seem destined to sit in the bottom half of the Premier League and watch poorer, smaller, but smarter, clubs breeze past you. 

It puzzles you, I'm sure, that fans aren't more grateful to you for saving us. I suppose that can be put down to the fact that a lot of fans don't really think you did. They saw a very wealthy individual swooping in and picking up a distressed asset that was always likely to produce a return with even a modicum of investment. Harsh, I suppose, but there you go.

There can be no denying that the clubs finances look an awful lot healthier now than they did in 2010, but of course this is largely due to the explosion in television rights. While Karren Brady might like to brag about turning around a failing business, most of us are a bit nonplussed by all that. The single best decision you made was to employ Sam Allardyce, at obscene expense, to ensure the club was back in the Premier League when the gravy train rolled into town. And if ever there was a man unlikely to miss a gravy train...

And a pint of fucking wine

***

I have no doubt that you are perplexed as to why exactly a home defeat to Manchester City would inspire all this angst among supporters. After all, City beat everybody, have unlimited funds and scored a couple of flukey goals. Their dominance says an awful lot more about the job being done by the men who run the Premier League and UEFA than it does about you. And, in isolation I'd agree with you. 

I don't understand why so many fans are upset about a supposed lack of effort when it seems clear to me that David Moyes had instructed the team to sit off and hold their shape to try and deny City space behind our defence. We did this at the Etihad to great effect, and I suppose you could say it sort of worked here for about ten minutes. City scored through a deflection and an own goal, both of which were unfortunate but exactly the kinds of goals that you let in when you are shit. And David, before you protest, we are absolutely fucking shit.

But I'm not sure it's this particular defeat that's really the point here. It's the fact that every single one of us knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. You knew it was coming too. I know you did. 

Since moving to the London Stadium we have played the current Big Six on thirteen occasions. We have won three (God bless London derbies), drawn once, and lost nine. In those games we have scored ten goals and conceded thirty four. Holy Shit, Dave! THIRTY FOUR. It's not just that we're terrible, it's that we're reliably terrible. 

We've never once scored four goals in a game at our home ground, and yet Manchester City have done it three times. Once upon a time you could judge a teams title credentials by how they fared at Upton Park, but under your watch, we now get to see how they would play in testimonials. I honestly thought Kevin de Bruyne was going to fall asleep yesterday.

I am incredibly bored!

Whether you accept it or not, the fact that we don't even remotely compete in games against one third of the division is a pretty good reason for the widespread apathy that is surging through your core support like poison through a bloodstream.

***

But I'm sure, you're sitting there fed up at having your efforts ripped to shreds. What of Dimitri Payet? What about that season of finishing seventh? And you'd be right. That was a great season. You should have bought a decent striker in January, of course, but instead did it on the cheap and missed out on a Champions League spot that was begging to be taken. I often wonder about that, and I'm sure you do too. Some better refereeing and Charlie Austin instead of Emmanuel Emenike and who knows where we would all be right now. 

But if wishes were horses, I'd be dragging Nigel Farage through the streets of Calais behind my carriage. We blew it and then returned immediately to the stagnant mediocrity that has been the hallmark of your ownership. Barring that one marvellous season when the Premier League went crazy, big teams fell and little teams rose and bloody Leicester won the league, we have been unrelentingly boring to support. I can describe it in no other way. West Ham on the pitch are generally one of the most tedious sides in the land.

We've got a live one

We just...exist. Drifting aimlessly through seasons, lurking in the bottom half of the table leaving nary a footprint in the sand. All of our impact is on the back pages, as we lurch from crisis to crisis, amusing the world as we go. We are irrelevant on the pitch and shambolic off it, and there is nobody to be blamed for that other than you. I resent being asked to give you my season ticket money before the end of the season because I feel like I will just be endorsing you to go out and waste it once more.

Let me ask you a question, David, if I may. Is there any challenge in your role? By which I mean, does anyone ever tell you that what you're doing is wrong? If not, perhaps you ought to ask yourself why.

Once, many years ago, I worked for a brief time at a place that had a "hands on" owner. The company had two security guards, one of whom worked from 5am until 1pm, and the other from 12pm until 8pm. They had a handover period of one hour in the middle. One day the owner turned up for an operations meeting and noticed them both at reception. Troubled by such an unnecessary display of manpower, he told his operational team to fire one of them because it was ludicrous to waste money like that. Given how long ago it was, this might have saved the company around £25,000 per year.

The problem with this was that it meant we had one security guard to cover fifteen hours. In the end, he did the early shift and the company paid the landlord of the building to have someone come and lock up. The cost of this service? £40,000 per year.

Whether that is apocryphal or not, I don't know, but it was told around the corridors as being true. And nobody was surprised because the distinguishing characteristic of that business was that anybody close to the owner just mumbled in agreement and told him what he was saying was great. It led to a very well paid senior management and a very poorly run company.

Challenge is a good thing, David. People disagreeing with you is healthy, because it introduces some rigour to your decision making process. Getting people into positions of seniority who have a backbone and some vision is a really healthy thing for a company to do. I understand that long term strategic thinking wasn't a huge part of your success in porn or property, but it couldn't be more vital to the industry in which you currently operate. You keep telling us that the manager must have the final say on transfers despite employing five in eight years. Any player signing on anything longer than a two year deal is likely to outlast the manager he signs for. Can you not see that this is a nonsense?

If nothing else, please look around. Examine what is working for those other smaller clubs who have gone skating past you so easily. You need some help. You've done your best, no doubt, but there is so much more intellectual horsepower in those clubs it's not even a fair fight. They have long term business plans that allow them to think further ahead than the next transfer window, and they don't lurch alarmingly from one crisis to another. It's pretty tough to admit, but when your business is failing and you've changed the staff, the place you do business and the management then perhaps it might be time to admit that the only thing left to change is...you.

***

But before you get too excited about making lots of changes, David, I'd like to ask one more thing of you. When you come to make those decisions - please don't do anything for public approval. I know it's been your preferred method to road test ideas by disseminating them through various social media outlets and then gauging public response, but this highlights everything that is wrong with your leadership. Your job isn't to satisfy fans before the season, it's to do it at the end.

I know fans are a nightmare. How can you appease people who scream that they want a high energy pressing game and then scream even louder for Hernandez to be on the pitch? What hope do you have of reasoning with people who insist on playing 4-4-2 without acknowledging that we don't actually have anyone who can play wide in midfield? Where do you go with supporters who criticise Moyes for not instilling a sense of organisation and professionalism into his team and then side with professional waster Andy Carroll because he didn't walk straight back into the team after being out for months? What is up with people who plaster pictures of themselves in the San Siro all over their social media accounts and then tell you they're giving up their season tickets because they're sick of the number of tourists in the stadium?

But that's the point, really - fans are emotional and illogical and moody, but the simple thing we all want is success. Produce a better team and we will fall in line. You need to stop taking short cuts and start working to some semblance of a plan. Or better yet, employ some people to design and implement that plan, because this current squad you have assembled is one of the worst I've ever seen and fans have every right to be pissed off about it.

Not that logical, shockingly

None of which is to say that fans aren't important. We're crucial. But we need you to listen to us on other things, because you've currently got it the wrong way round. And so you stay silent when our fans are threatened, when the stewarding is unsafe, when we are campaigning for safe standing and when that godforsaken fucking stadium turns out to be a total disaster, but find the time to canvas opinion about whether we should sign El Hadji Diouf. This is madness.

Any business making strategic decisions to gain short term approval from their customers is doomed to fail. If you had any belief in your own vision, you wouldn't care remotely for public opinion. Instead we have this strange briefing against Moyes now to prepare the ground for letting him go in the summer. I happen to think Moyes would be a poor appointment, but still the best you could realistically manage, although either way that's not terribly important.

What's important is your long term plan. How do you want to play? What type of team are you trying to build? What profile of player are you targeting and how do you plan to attract them? If Moyes is your ideal candidate then back him and commit to the plan. The problem is that you and I both know that no such template exists. Instead, everything is geared to short term survival and kicking problems down the road until you eventually sell the club and can leave them for the next guy to resolve.

And there's the rub. When you took us from Upton Park you ripped the soul out of the club. But crucially you didn't replace it with anything. I would suggest that the only thing that could really have worked is to have replaced it with a brain. A razor sharp, young, progressive, cutting edge managerial set up that could have bridged the gap between us and the elite. I can't tell you how often I daydream of West Ham Red Bull, David, because it would be no further removed from the West Ham of my youth than your version, and a damn sight more successful.

Instead...nothing. Just the same unimaginative approach that you have always employed, and in the end it has led us to where you have always ended up. At the bottom.

I should add that none of this is personal. I think you're a businessman who saw an opportunity to profit and you took it. But the issue is that you haven't given us anything. Absolutely nothing. Not the stadium, not the team, not the managers, not the Academy, not even any glimmer of hope for the future. And if your plan is to just hang on to the club until the restrictive covenants are lifted and then sell for the biggest profit possible, then you need to be aware of what that will mean for your legacy. And perhaps you won't care, and perhaps your sons won't care, but you'll be forever known as the guy who destroyed West Ham.

I hope it doesn't come to that, David, I really don't. It doesn't need to. We have attributes that other clubs would kill for. Stand aside and let people who know what they are doing utilise them. Look to Kevin Keegan - admit you're not up to it. There really is no shame in it.

Yours sincerely,


HeadHammerShark
Disgruntled of Block 256

West Ham 1 - 4 Liverpool (And Other Ramblings)

"When your heart is black and broken 

And you need a helping hand

When you're so much in love you don't know

Just how much you can stand"

- The Stone Roses, "Ten Storey Love Song" 

***

There is, in Greek mythology, the story of Sisyphus, a man condemned to roll a boulder uphill for eternity due to his trickery and deceitfulness. I don't think we can reasonably ascribe either of those two characteristics to Slaven Bilic, but I think the Croat would identify with the frustration and futility of the punishment. 

Given that Hollywood are gradually rebooting every story ever told by man, I suspect that when they eventually update Sisyphus he will be a Croatian Premier League manager doomed to play in a cursed graveyard every week, with the slowest team ever assembled, and a Chairman determined not to sack him but at the same time, never support him either. He'll be played by Gerard Butler because a thing that happens sometimes is that people pay Gerard Butler to be in films. I do not know why.

Wait, did we just concede from....our own corner?

So let's briefly address this game. 

We were destroyed. 

The thing is, you don't need me to tell you anything about it because you've seen it so many times before. Would you need me to describe for you the plot of a horror movie? Why bother - you know that some of them won't make it out alive, nobody should go into the forest and going downstairs is a bad idea. Well, spoiler alert guys - we went downstairs, in the forest, drunk, lost sight of our chainsaws and only Lanzini made it out alive. 

So this game didn't particularly move me in any way because it doesn't even crack the top 5 of worst home defeats under Bilic. The Board have made it perfectly clear over the last fifteen months that these kinds of results were not a problem for them. It can be dressed up in terms of wanting to support the manager but the reality is that so long as he didn't steer us into a genuine relegation battle, getting beaten 5-1 at home was an acceptable price to pay for mid table mediocrity and another £100m cheque from the Premier League. 

People might scoff at that and think I'm being too harsh on the Board, but what other conclusion is there to be drawn from how long this has been allowed to continue? If you think the image of everyone being hacked apart with a chainsaw is distressing, I should warn you now that I am getting ready to hit you with some STATS once I've finished fleshing out how truly Greater Anglia Rail we were in this game. 

***

"Nobody said it was easy, it's such a shame for us to part

Nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be this hard"  

- Coldplay, "The Scientist"

Things didn't start terribly as the East Stand did an excellent job of holding up some claret and blue plastic bags prior to kick off to create a moving tribute for Remembrance Day. I sound like I'm being sarcastic there but I'm not - it was genuinely lovely. 

We weren't totally shit

Sadly, that was the most coordinated move that anyone in a West Ham shirt would manage all day, as we were soon two goals down for the TWENTY SIXTH time under Bilic. We actually started with a slight spring in our step and Lanzini soon set up Andre Ayew to hit the outside of the post. This created a film of optimism around the ground that had all the rigidity of a Fairy Liquid bubble and was soon popped when Liverpool opened the scoring. 

The manner of the goal was a thing to behold as we somehow managed to turn our own corner into a three on one breakaway for the visitors, which ended with Mo Salah easily beating Hart at his near post. My daughters U10 team played a game this morning where they lost by so many that nobody had any idea of the score at the end and I still didn't see any defending as bad as for that goal. 

Here is Aaron Cresswell attempting to repel that particular attack, for anyone who missed it:

We then defended a corner by having all our players close their eyes, hold hands and offer up a prayer to Sauron, and somehow that didn't work either and Liverpool scored again and now every time I see Joe Hart I can only imagine how much he must hate his agent. 

So even as Manuel Lanzini briefly dragged us back into this game with a splendidly taken goal at 2-0 down, and then when we blew all of that up by conceding a third one fucking minute later, I couldn't even muster an angry epithet. This has happened so frequently, with such predictability and regularity that it simply doesn't register anymore. And truthfully I don't believe the Board are that fussed about these games, which in turn bleeds over into the crowd who can't get up for matches that we all know the team can't win, as well all accept that there is nothing in the running of the club which can change that. 

None of which is to say that the players and manager don't care, or didn't try to win but only that if these massive home losses were of any relevance to the decision making at the Club they wouldn't have allowed so many to pile up. I think it's fair to say that right now the Board don't think that we can compete with the Top Six (we can't) and that the gap between them and the rest is so large (it is) that those results can't be a barometer of how well a manager is doing (here we disagree). 

Truth be told, as I saw £35m Salah combining with £34m Mane, £29m Firmino and £35m Oxlade-Chamberlain I found it hard to disagree. Other clubs have managed it, of course, but then again we are not Burnley.

I say again - we are not Burnley, and the Burnley manager isn't going to leave them to come here. Ayew carumba indeed. 

Quite how all of this led to the Board deciding to vote to give Liverpool a greater share of the Premier League television money is a question for another day, but right now we are in the same league as these teams in only one way and it isn't in a playing sense. 

The visitors added another somewhere towards the end, when people in hockey masks and torches appeared and the walls started bleeding, and could have had several more but for Hart and the fact that most of the chances seemed to fall to James Milner. On another day I would probably attempt to describe how Liverpool didn't actually seem to play that well in this game but, you know, 4-1 does send something of a message. 

***

"Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings 

But you push too hard and even numbers got limits" 

- Mos Def, "Mathematics"

So, about those stats. Let's dig into the records of our time at the London Stadium, which I think we can all agree has unquestionably been built on the only Indian Burial Ground in Britain ((c) @LeBigHouse).

Let's start with our overall league record (I've ignored the Cups as this article is going to struggle to get an 18 rating as it is):

London Stadium Record
Played	24
Won	9
Drawn	4
Lost	11
For	25
Against	41

Before you all lose your shit over that, please remember that this doesn't include any adjustment for the size of our digital screens.

How about goalscoring:

Teams to have scored 4 goals in a game
Manchester City (x2)
Liverpool (x2)
Watford
Arsenal

We're not on this list. Watford are. The athletics were fun in the summer though.

Teams to have score 3 or more goals in a game
West Ham (x3) - Domzale, Crystal Palace, Bolton
Manchester City (x2)
Liverpool (x2)
Southampton
Leicester
Spurs
Brighton

So, to be clear, we have scored three times in a league game at our current ground as many times as Brighton have and fewer times than Liverpool. We are top of this list though, so let it not be said that we have been totally hopeless at our new home.

And lastly, a little look at a particular bugbear of mine, namely our first half performances:

Half Time Record
W	2
D	12
L	10
For	5
Against	20
0-0	11

And just to put this little lot into perspective, what this is showing you is that West Ham have had a half time lead at the London Stadium as many times as Liverpool have.

***

"I don't feel bad about letting you go, 

I just feel sad about letting you know"

- Billy Bragg, "A New England"

While those tables might make for worse reading than Andy Carroll's medical records, they do unfairly discount Bilic's first season when we were still at Upton Park, Payet was still here, the sun used to shine and there was nothing wrong with the world. But, the sad truth is that his tenure has to be split into two halves - there and here. The first bit was an amazing glimpse into a brighter world, that now seems like it was about two centuries ago. When I watch video clips of those games I an amazed that they aren't in black and white with visible film breaks.

Who else remembers when we were good?

But no matter how great all of that was, the sands of time continued draining away inexorably and we've all paid for new season tickets, the owner has a new stadium and what have you done for me lately, Slav? And the sad answer to that question is...nothing but oversee decline.

Even the most ardent Bilic fan would have to accept that the team look listless and lacking in structure. I understand the flares of hope that go up when we win at Wembley or play well at Burnley with ten men, but that cannot be enough for a team with sixty thousand fans, the 18th highest turnover in world football and a squad that has so many of the 2014 Fantasy Premier League's top performers.

As I write this, Bilic remains in a job, but by the time you read this that may change. In many ways, I don't see why he is losing his job now given that this defeat was no different to the similarly lame capitulation against the same opponents at the end of last season. But if this was the end, then I will breathe a sigh of relief. There would be some, admittedly faint, sense of comfort that perhaps we might now improve and also for Bilic himself who will no longer have to stand alone on the touchline at the Terrordome, hands on knees, flicking his jacket out behind him in frustration as Mark Noble looks up again to find none of his teammates want the ball off him.

Can it be as simple as Payet being responsible for everything good that happened in 15/16 and once he left that was that? Can a manager who took his tiny country to two European Championships really have been solely reliant upon one player? We'll find out when the inevitable book comes out and Bilic reveals the true horror of what West Ham is really like behind the scenes, but I struggle to believe that. Whatever happens, he has carried himself with dignity in the face of working for people who have used him to mask their own failures.

In the end, the fault lines were too wide and too pronounced and we are now in a highly precarious position, bereft of confidence and with no discernible pattern of play. We're up shit creek without a boat.

But even if Bilic gave us all those two goal deficits he also gave us lots of high points too, and he deserves to be remembered for that. It's a shame that one of those - the Spurs 1-0 victory last May - was enough to convince our hopeless Board to stick with him into the new season. That mystifying decision has now left us adrift, with nothing to attract in any managers of high regard who have so far taken one look at the ageing playing staff, the board room interference and the fact that they will have little chance to reinforce the squad and all suddenly remembered that they have an urgent appointment but will definitely call Mr Sullivan back when they get a minute.

***

"There is a wait so long, you'll never wait so long

Here comes your man"

- The Pixies, "Here Comes Your Man"

So against the backdrop of all this turmoil, one man has emerged confidently into the spotlight.

My defence is how old?

As I write this David Moyes is the odds on favourite to succeed Bilic tomorrow, leaving us all with the thrilling prospect of having Darren Gibson and John O'Shea in the fold come January. There is so much about this which is odd, but not the least of it is that our Board searched the entire globe and decided that Moyes was the answer. And when I say the entire globe I of course mean the contacts list of British managers represented by whatever agent is in favour with Sullivan today. What a stultifying lack of imagination, and what a hospital pass to a manager who will get no honeymoon with a disbelieving fanbase.

Still, Moyes worked wonders at Everton on a mid sized budget, which in turn led to the Manchester United job. That's a significant achievement and whilst he didn't last long, with the benefit of hindsight I'm not sure his tenure was the failure it was deemed at the time. Thereafter he did what so many Brits do and decided to take himself off to Spain, where Real Sociedad were waiting to hammer another nail into his coffin shaped reputation.

Having left La Liga he decided to give up professional football management altogether and instead took over at Sunderland. There he presided over an absolutely shambolic campaign which ended in relegation as Moyes tried his best to reassemble his Everton side of 2009, which might have worked better if any of them still had their own hips.

There are those who would defend Moyes and say that Sunderland are a joke club with no direction, a ludicrous board, an ageing and uninterested playing staff and systemic off field problems that run far deeper than anybody knew. To which I say - yeah, does any of that sound familiar?

However, Sullivan is an apparent long time admirer of the Scot and we know that he has neither the wit, self confidence or ability to pluck a young up and coming manager from overseas or the lower leagues. He prefers the safety of getting a known quantity, meaning that we will forever be subjected to the known quantities of the British manager threshing machine. This same decision making process has delivered us to 18th in the Premier League, which is two places lower than we were when they took over. Ho fucking hum.

But worse than that is the news tonight that Sullivan is now reconsidering his decision in the face of a social media backlash from West Ham fans to the leaked news of Moyes arrival. This is not something that professional organisations do. They ignore the wishes of fans because fans do not have access to the information that would allow them to credibly form those opinions. That might include details of finances, availability of other targets and even things like the health of the candidates. Why on earth would Sullivan be taking into account the views of a crowd who, two weeks ago, were booing the team for smashing aimless long balls at Andy Carroll and then booed any players who declined to do that on Saturday and instead passed it backwards? Why listen to a crowd who were booing Mark Noble for being the only player brave enough to actually get on the ball in the middle of the park?

Fans are fickle, emotional, easily swayed and the last people who should ever be considered when making choices such as this. No other team does it. No other team is so insecure in their decision making processes that they subject it to the whims of Twitter. Indeed I would suggest that the very suggestion of doing so is evidence enough that those people shouldn't be within a million miles of a decision of this importance.

Properly run teams can trust the process of their selection and analysis, and put faith in the talents of the people making the decision, meaning they can ignore public sentiment because they are sure of what they are doing. The West Ham board (correctly) realise this doesn't apply to them, but instead of changing those people, they instead farm the decision out to bloody Facebook, with the seeming aim of blaming the fans if it doesn't come off. What a joke. What a Tyrannosaurus Shambles. What an embarrassment. Consider for a moment if Southampton Twitter would have wanted Mauricio Pochettino and then realise what a nonsense this is.

What's somehow even worse is that I do object to Moyes joining the Club on the grounds that at Sunderland he threatened a female reporter. "It was getting a wee bit naughty at the end there so just watch yourself. You might still get a slap even though you're a woman. Careful the next time you come in" he said, charmingly, to BBC reporter Vicki Sparks, and though he apologised to her the fact that Moyes can seemingly stroll into a job like ours just shows how little professional football cares about domestic violence or misogyny. What message does this send to our female supporters? What message does it send to our female employees?

Naturally when he was interviewed on TV this weekend about the job it was by Richard Keys on BeIN Sports in Qatar. Tell me, how's the sisterhood these days, Karren?

So, Moyes may join, most likely because he's cheap and he's prepared to work for Sullivan, which in itself probably suggests that he's going to struggle. Anyone decent would tell them where to go. And indeed, they frequently do, by all accounts.

***

"But there is really nothing, nothing we can do

Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew"

- MGMT, "Time To Pretend"

One viewpoint that tends to gain prominence at such times of crisis is that somehow getting relegated wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. It's hard to overstate how untrue this really is. Going down decimates clubs as they lose their playing staff, support staff, recruitment staff, community staff, youth coaches and so on all the way down to match day employees. None of that is worth the fleeting thrill of winning a few more away games, which will quickly lose it's lustre the first time you see Lanzini or Antonio score for Spurs.

If you want a real life example, the England U17 World Cup winning star player Rhian Brewster hails from Chadwell Heath and plays for Liverpool. This is what happens when you have to reduce your scouting and development network as we did after our last relegation.

One way to make sense of all of this madness is to begin viewing all decisions made at the Club through a very specific prism. Assume the club has no money.

I have no inside knowledge here, no smoking gun and no knowledge of things unseen but merely a simple theory that I've been working on for a while. It was Sherlock Holmes who once said that when all possible solutions to a problem have been eliminated whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. Now Holmes was a fictional character so he should shut up really, but it kind of works here.

Why was our net spend so low in the summer? Why would we have resisted firing Bilic despite all evidence suggesting he should have gone in the summer? Why would we now be looking to avoid paying compensation for a replacement? Why bring them in on a short term contract that leaves the club in limbo yet further?

All of these can be answered logically in a number of ways, but one way to cogently explain them all is to assume we're broke. And don't forget to sign me up for your company annual seminar as a motivational speaker, folks.

"And no, Toni Martinez ain't the answer either"

I'm truly sorry to end up writing such a negative and gloomy piece but I suppose that's the reality of supporting the House of Sullivan these days. I hope they prove me wrong.

***

On a final, cheerier note (for me) I was thrilled to be nominated for "Blogger of the Year" at the Football Supporters Federation annual awards. This is a prestigious award ceremony, which offers up the pleasing prospect of me having to attend a formal dinner where my place setting will say "HeadHammerShark". 

Anyway, if you would like to vote for me, I'd be delighted to accept and if you wanted to get your family, extended family, neighbours and tarot readers to do the same that would be just dandy too. You can just click on this link and do it in 30 seconds. Many thanks in advance. 

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.