A March to the Music of Failure

"There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear"

- Buffalo Springfield, "For What It's Worth"

My apologies. Once upon a time this used to be a place you could come for match reports and to shake your head at an xG map and the odd Simpsons quote and that was your lot. But what I have realised over time is that if the article isn't up within forty eight hours of the game, nobody really reads them. And lately there have been a few things preventing me from writing about West Ham in a timely fashion, which means I write less about the games and instead deliver these more polemical pieces about the wider goings on at the club.

Those dark times when we had loans at usurious rates and the team was terrible and wait a minute

In my defence, this time I've been bedridden for the best part of a week with labrynthitis and trying out that Dean Martin quote about not being drunk if you can lie down without holding on. It sounds funny when Dino says it, but when you're supposed to be at work in an hour, hardly drink and you can't stop the world spinning it sounds a bit trite, let me tell you.

So anyway, Saturday came and went and was, in it's own way, brilliant.

I wouldn't say the performance was a classic, but perhaps that's the point. The thing I really like about Moyes is that we feel more like a proper team with him at the helm. So what if Watford were coming off a fantastic 4-1 win over Chelsea, and so what if we have loads of injuries and so what if it's the kind of day where the wind whips up the canals around the stadium like a razor blade - we're West Ham, and here's our well organised defence. All the best.

And so it proved, as Watford turned out to be quite depleted themselves and never really looked like they would threaten us after Javier Hernandez found himself an inch at the back post and headed home a Michail Antonio cross. The Mexican had already had a similar looking first incorrectly ruled out for offside, and Marko Arnautovic had missed a chance so good that it should have come wrapped in a bow. But while it stayed 1-0 there was always a risk, as Watford dominated possession without creating all that much, and we continued to be dangerous without quite having the necessary cutting edge ourselves to fashion a second.

So it was entirely apposite that we would eventually do so via a godawful corner that Aaron Cresswell overhit to Antonio, who in turn fell over, leaving Cresswell to smash the loose ball across goal, only for Orestis Karnezis to spill it straight back to him, and the ball to then ricochet back off Cresswell to Arnautovic to score a very nicely taken second just after squirting the keeper in the face with his plastic flower. Sometimes it is indeed better to be lucky than good.

But for all that, we were well worth our win, and after everything shook out we are five points off the relegation places and six points off seventh. This season doesn't really make all that much sense.

***

"It's only been a year, but it feels like a lifetime here

How's it been for you?"

- The Vaccines, "A Lack of Understanding"

What was perhaps the strangest thing about this game was that it was probably the first time that you could point at the awful summer transfer window and see some sense in it. Apart from the ludicrous Joe Hart signing, this is what we were promised when all that experience came through the door, waving at all the wages and transfer monies going out the other way.

Repayment instalment no:7

Pablo Zabaleta was exemplary, nary allowing the dangerous Richarlison a kick and displaying the near psychopathic levels of desire that have characterised his best performances. He remains too inconsistent for my liking, and better teams have tried and succeeded to expose him positionally, but on days like today you can see the short term merit of his signing.

Ahead of him Hernandez and Arnautovic were dovetailing nicely and, crucially, were now running the necessary miles to justify their places in the team relative to the reverse fixture at Vicarage Road. The latter, especially, was splendid and with each passing week you can see his chest puff out a little further and his standing grow with the fans. It isn't so much what he does, but it's almost more the promise of what he might do. One first half run took him past four Watford defenders in a single move and probably cemented him the Hammer of the Year trophy with that one shake of the hips. It should be Angelo Ogbonna, of course, but let's not fall out before I've even said anything remotely controversial.

There were lots of other positives; the way Cresswell and Ogbonna have shored up a leaky back four, the confidence that spreads out from Adrian like water through the roots of a tree and the manner of Mark Noble's resurgence and the way he has grabbed his threadbare team and dragged them through this most challenging of times. I have no time for the concept of the Captain in a football team, but in the last month Noble has changed my mind a little.

Also welcome was the return of Antonio who continues to combine the qualities of a thoroughbred racehorse with those of a buffalo falling down a ravine. Here, he was deployed at left wing back in a return to the darkest days of the Slaven Bilic regime but he did alright except for when he was asked to defend, and then it was like watching one of those home videos of someone painting their roof by perching a ladder on a cement mixer and attaching their paintbrush to the end of a shotgun. For all that, the brilliance of his deployment on the left was the way it matched him directly against Daryl Janmaat who also defends like a man who has never before contemplated the notion in his life.

And there you have it. This was perhaps the perfect example of what Sullivan apparently envisioned when he sat down with Bilic and decided to buy as many old, slow players as they could get their hands on. And so 34 year old James Collins kept Troy Deeney under wraps, 33 year old Zabaleta ran himself into the ground, 28 year old Arnautovic was the difference and 29 year old Hernandez is scoring goals and thus justifying his place. We were supposed to get at least of season of this short term usefulness before they all became dead weight on the wage bill and perhaps it's pretty telling that it took a different manager to Bilic to make this mess of a squad look coherent.

***

"And I would rather be anywhere else

Than here today"

- Elvis Costello, "Oliver's Army"

But if you are a West Ham fan of a certain vintage you will recognise that familiar feeling of impending doom. The uncomfortable sense that what is happening on the pitch is quickly becoming a mere supporting turn to the drama about to unfold around the club.

In my last piece I wrote about the Real West Ham Fans group and their proposed march on the day of the Burnley game. I expressed concerns, but not with a great deal of depth, and as a result I think some supporters think that I am against the march. Therefore, if you will excuse the indulgence I thought I would expand upon my thoughts here. Before I get to that, however, I should also direct you to an interview that David Sullivan carried out with the official site. It is suitably powderpuff with no meaningful questions asked, but I've pasted a couple of the money quotes here:

"You can only sign the players the manager wants and the manager must sign his own players" - Well okay then - thanks for Payet and Lanzini, Slav!

"I'm going to delegate the whole thing to a huge analysis and scouting system with a new Head of Recruitment. We'll have a massive video analysis department, increase the scouting department, every player will be looked at five or six times, we won't be signing a player when the manager's never even seen him play. The manager's going to go and watch him play and we hope we'll spend our money better"

Now if you're anything like me you read that and immediately thought "Well, what the hell was happening before?". Perhaps the most alarming piece of this is that Sullivan is still propagating this idea that the manager must have final say on all new players, and seemingly forgetting that he has parted way with four managers in his eight years here, and that when the new one arrives they all want to buy new players. Sullivan is essentially putting forward a Director of Football role that is so watered down that nobody of any repute would want it. There is no mention of reshaping the culture of the club, or a top down reorganisation of the playing structure and Academy. Instead it is all just vague murmurings that suggest he still doesn't understand the problems.

Managers, however, will be queuing up for the job as they will be racking up millions of air miles flying all over the globe looking at the hundreds of players we're considering signing. Doing that and preparing a Premier League side each week should be a piece of cake.

I shouldn't grumble too much, I suppose, as this is at least a public admission that he is part of the problem, but I'm afraid I can't get that excited. Many wiser men than me have said of this chairman that you have to judge him by what he does and not what he says, and I'm afraid that applies again here.

One last point on this before I digress further still. You could make an argument that the problem hasn't completely been about identifying good players in the last few years - it's been about signing them. The club at least floated the names of William Carvalho, Leander Dendoncker, Keita Balde, Carlos Bacca and Alexandre Lacazette but failed with their bids because the financial side wasn't up to scratch.

A new Head of Recruitment will have no impact whatsoever if he is still given an insufficient budget by Sullivan. The reality is that however far Sullivan thinks he is backing away from the process, it won't be far enough. We need him to recuse himself from the day to day running of the club and leave it to the professionals. Until that happens, this is all just window dressing.

Succinct

Which leaves the march.

Sometimes I think that as West Ham fans we have got too cosy with failure. We are too forgiving and too accepting of falling short, generally sucking it up with a phlegmatic nod to our mums and dads and granddads and telling ourselves that it has always been this way. The more glorious, the more we embrace it. The FA Cup in 2006, finishing third in 1985/86 and even the doomed Champions League hunt of 2015/16 - just to name the most recent examples. In each case we celebrate these things but know we could have grasped higher and gone further if we'd got luckier or been slightly better prepared.

But what we have experienced in the last eighteen months doesn't fit into that narrative. Losing 4-1 at home to Swansea when you have fourth place in your grasp isn't the same as being told that you're moving to a world class stadium and arriving to find that fans in the first row have to courier the ball back to the pitch when it goes out of play.

We have been failed, and that is the sound to which our fans are marching. It's a march to the music of failure.

Personally, I would build up to a march because this is a long game now, and a march is a blunt force instrument that doesn't seem all that well suited to achieving the disparate aims that exist within the fanbase. Some want the board gone, some want them to step back, some want us to find a new stadium and some want a new badge. And that is the problem - I don't know what the march is for. I want to back it, but I'm not marching for a new badge because that's mad.

I've been discussing this with some other supporters and their thinking is that it doesn't matter whether the march has coordinated aims but instead it's there as a show of strength and a statement that enough is enough. Something has to change and here are twenty thousand people in support of that position. And fair enough - God knows I've spent long enough outlining why I agree.

But here's the thing - a march of twenty thousand people is an incredible endeavour. It's a seriously impressive piece of organisation, and not least because there is money behind it too, pledged by the people involved. But you can't waste that firepower by setting off with no aim in mind. If you march for lots of things, I think you march for nothing. Sullivan and Gold will draw the curtains and ignore it. And while the eyes of the world will be on the march I'm not sure it's going to really take hold in the public consciousness when the protest song is:

"What do we want - quite a lot of stuff really and some of it is quite contradictory
When do we want it - NOW!"

I'm not trying to undermine or belittle anyone marching - genuinely - but when this appears in the media it's not going to make sense to anyone outside West Ham, and while we might not think that matters it's actually pretty important. Each of Sullivan, Gold and Brady are desperate for public approval. An incoherent message hurts us and strengthens them.

Personally I would have built up to a march. A red card protest, a black balloon protest, some well placed newspaper think pieces about those accounts when they come out, a turning the back moment from our away following - suddenly these things are in every match report and instead of the West Ham board, they are the "embattled" West Ham board, the "under fire" West Ham board, the "besieged" West Ham board. At that point it's not whether change will come, it's what change will come.

But that's gone now and the march is the way forward and I support everyone on it, I truly do. My own view is that regime change is a very risky proposition because, incredibly, there are owners out there who make Sullivan and Gold look like Sheik Mansour, but I accept that the vast majority disagree with me. And if that's the case - then make that the aim of the march and let the cards fall where they may. Their handling of the stadium move alone means they deserve every bit of opprobrium that comes their way.

And whatever anyone thinks of the march, it can't be denied that these owners have failed us and we do deserve better. West Ham deserves better. We might have been allowed glorious failure to be baked into the DNA of the club but it doesn't always have to be that way. We can and will achieve more than these owners have allowed us.

***

"She'll carry it on through it all"
- The Stone Roses, "Waterfall"

But amidst all this gloom, I should also say that I see light. I was given a small reminder of that before this game, as my ten year old and I were running along the various impenetrable waterways that protect the London Stadium as though designed by the architect of a medieval castle. We were delayed by TfL, as usual, and the rain was pouring in sideways and reddening our faces as the familiar pre match music was creeping like mist over the stadium roof.  Then "Bubbles" came on as we jogged up to security, and in that moment my daughter turned to me and started singing along, hands in the air and a big grin on her face. Not for her any worries about the lack of pace in our defence, or the rates of interest that we pay on our loans, or the badge that adorns the front of her Cheikhou Kouyate shirt, but a simple expression of joy at the fact that the next two hours were loaded with possibility.

And of course, that's how it should be. The fight that we are in as fans is just as transient as those who own our club. West Ham will prevail because it always does, and because our club exists not in balance sheets or Premier League money tables or even the London Stadium. It lives instead in the side streets and school playgrounds, and hospital wards and pub saloon bars and on bedroom walls and in the arms of ten year old girls who hear "Bubbles" and immediately start singing it, even in the teeth of a howling gale. 

And that is what our fans are marching for.

The acknowledgement that our club exists for reasons other than to make money for people who don't have the ability to take the club forward, but are instead content to leave us in a state of failing inertia in order to pad the growth of their investment. And while I might not completely agree with the tactics of those fans, I absolutely understand and empathise with their frustration. To dismiss it as the actions of hotheads is to fail to understand the tinderbox atmosphere that exists between us and the owners. These latest noises from Sullivan and Gold are therefore too little too late. They ignored us for too long and at their peril, and we will take our club back because we will outlast them. For that reason I don't object to the leaders of the Real West Ham Fans group meeting with the Board before the march. That was the whole purpose of the group in the first place, I thought.

But the wider concern I have is what exactly it is that some people seem to think they will be getting back. Which of the fifteen versions of the club badge is the acceptable one? If wishes were plastic seats we still won't be able to raise the ashes of the Chicken Run from the Upton Park dirt. Pray as we might, but Geoff Hurst isn't going to lead the line at Liverpool.

West Ham fans have to start looking forward and asking for things that are actually achievable and meaningful. Off the top of my head:

- The immediate installation of a fully qualified Director of Football, who is given complete control of the playing affairs of the club. The current chairmen will step down from whatever day to day involvement they have in the football side of the club.

- Elected supporter representatives on the board to hold the club to account.

- Those loans fixed at commercial rates and no higher.

- Regular dialogue with supporter groups to address the myriad problems with the stadium and an end to this fiction that everything is ok while the roof is literally leaking over our heads. Everything at present is reactionary and coated in the gleam of self denial.

- If fans believe that the club has lost touch with it's past then it really isn't that difficult to fix. Celebrate better the achievements of our past: Pick selected matches to specifically cherish and promote any of the following:  the first three black players in a top flight English side - Clyde Best, Clive Charles and Ade Coker; the 1975 European Cup Winners Cup Runners Up; Ron Greenwood; Vic Watson; Steve Potts; the West Ham Academy - whatever, really. In some ways it doesn't matter what you remember, so long as you're remembering.

There is a difference between endlessly looking backwards in the hope of recreating a mythical past that didn't even exist then and standing on the shoulders of giants to move the club forward. I'm not advocating a weekly nostalgia session to distract ourselves from what's in front of us, but more an effort to make our rented accommodation at least seem a little more like home. It really wouldn't be that tricky to get giant banners of Watson, Lampard Sr, Bonds and Greenwood in the four corners of the ground would it?

So you might agree with all that or none of it, but the point I'm trying to make is that an effort to make the London Stadium seem like home, and pulling our history closer to our fans shouldn't be that difficult. In fact, none of this stuff really feels that difficult if you've truly got the interests of the club at the centre of your agenda.

And as for the march, I hope it yields some positive results. And as always, perhaps the best advice comes from Diamond Joe Quimby:

Watford 2 - 0 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

Let's not fuck about. We're in desperate straits. I'd love to tell you that I saw the green shoots of recovery in this game, but in reality it was the same show we've all been watching for two years, with merely a different conductor. And, by the way, it didn't take David Moyes long to look like an extra from Full Metal Jacket did it?

I. What. How. Jesus H CHRIST

So let's examine the anatomy of this relegation battle, because that is where we are right now, irrespective of the pie in the sky nonsense that is being spouted by the club. What are the key areas we need to address?

***

Refusing to accept we are in a relegation battle

In 2010/11 we were relegated bottom of the league having allowed Avram Grant to manage the team all season because of *spins wheel* <incriminating photographs>. At this exact point of the season our records can be compared thusly:

2010/11

Played: 12 

Goal Difference: -11 

Points: 8

Position: Bottom

2017/18

Played: 12

Goal Difference: -14

Points: 9 

Position: 18th

It should be noted that with their current record this year's team would be bottom of the 2010/11 league as well. They are only presently being saved from that fate by the fact Swansea and Crystal Palace are so bad. 

So, by any definition of the term we are knee deep in shit, and yet the team and hierarchy are parading around with the familiar overconfidence that we have all come to know and love. "Look at our attacking options" they say, "That squad is way too good to be down there" I hear, and even as that misplaced bluster floats out into the ether, we continue to lose games like this. 

For shitty 2-0 defeats at Watford are the building blocks of relegation. It happens, we deserved to lose, Watford were the better side and we move on, but the problem with that is one then looks up in February and such defeats are scattered everywhere throughout the season. 

We have managed just three away draws so far this campaign, and when you play your home games at an abandoned nuclear bunker you don't get much home comfort. I'm really beginning to think that Karren should have put "Too Good To Go Down" on the new club badge, given I hear that said an awful lot more about West Ham than I ever hear the phrase "London".

***

Civil War

Ah yes, the third rail of West Ham politics. The board. The fans. The players. The bloggers. The flags. The stewards. The poisonous atmosphere that hangs over the club like our own private ozone layer. As soon as we fell behind yesterday the "Sack The Board" chants started up closely followed by "You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt". I'd heard something similar at Spurs when we went 2-0 down, and other more regular away followers may be able to pinpoint earlier instances too. 

I will defend to the death the rights of football fans to protest about their club. I despise the patronising "well what do they expect, they should be grateful" media types who parachute into clubs for brief moments, shake hands with the owners and then disappear again like weekend tourists. The prime difference between the fans at the game yesterday and those talking heads is that the former have paid to be there. Both literally and emotionally. So if West Brom fans want to be entertained for their entrance fee then they are entitled to say so, and if West Ham fans want to understand exactly why we gave up our ground to actually get worse on the pitch then that is also perfectly reasonable. 

"But Zabaleta used to be good for City so how could he be bad for us?"

But I will also say this - such division never ends well for us. I was there for the Bond Scheme and the anti-Cearns protests and all it does is transmit a "get the fuck out of Dodge" vibe to the players on the pitch. It leads to fearful, nervy performances like we saw yesterday where a team bereft of confidence look petrified to get on the ball, and eliminates any synergy between the crowd and the team. And ultimately all any of us want is for the team to do well. 

For those who were at Spurs you will know what I mean when I say that there was a sense of inevitability to that comeback once the first went in. The fans abandoned their pursuit of the Board and instead turned to the team and a force of millions couldn't have stopped us. I'm not suggesting it's as straightforward as everybody going all Harry Potter and thinking positive thoughts to make bad things go away, but I'm also certain that history tells us the team cannot win while there is an open war between fans and the Board. 

So, as we go into Leicester at home on Friday the risk is that we let in a an early goal again, Jamie Vardy gloats again, and suddenly all that vitriol is on display once more. All of which might serve to make us feel a little better in the very short term, but with every game that we flush down the drain and with every point we let slip away, we stumble a foot closer to the trapdoor. And the ultimate sad truth is that if we go back down, the future makes for very grim reading. 

Now before anyone accuses me of being a stooge for the Board, let me say this. I'm not saying don't protest, I'm simply saying that protesting while the team is playing is just about the most self defeating thing we can do. I take a back step to nobody in holding up a spotlight to the failings of our Board, but whatever you are thinking about the value of getting your message across while we lose on the pitch, I'm here to tell you it isn't worth it. Inevitably what happens is that the message loses direction and starts going toward those on the pitch, and if you think we're getting out of trouble as sixty thousand of us slaughter Andy Carroll for 90 minutes then I don't know what planet you're on. 

So how do we protest? Well, there are quite a lot of ways. First among them has to be to join the West Ham Independent Supporters Association (WHUISA). It is a minimal cost of £3 that is charged not to make money, but to cover running costs and to give leverage to the group, and takes you all of about two minutes. 

Giving them numbers gives them credibility as they engage with the club, and the WHUISA board are all West Ham lifers with the best interests of the club at hand. If you don't like the cherrypicked nature of the SAB or the Bloggers Meetings then join up and demand that the club engage with your elected representatives. 

At this point I cannot understand why any West Ham fan would not have joined WHUISA. I hear those who say that they think it's pointless, but the group are already building links with the club and have succeeded in getting a platform with them too. From little acorns and all that, but you only need to look at the success of ISA's at places like Spurs to see what a force for good they can be. Don't sit outside the tent pissing in - sign up now. An ISA representing fifty thousand fans is a hell of a lot more credible than one representing a few hundred. 

Secondly, those other meetings that are run by Karren Brady are also platforms to air views. I know that Graeme Howlett of KUMB and Geo Mackie of Hammers Chat have attended past meetings and will willingly put forward questions on behalf of their readers. Engage, contribute, participate - standing in the away end and calling Karren Brady a tranny really isn't the Wildean contribution to this debate that you think it is. 

And on that very point - don't make the attacks personal. I really struggle to understand how Brady gets the same abuse as the Chairmen. She didn't choose to move the club, they did, and she has no involvement in on the field matters. Every time someone calls her a slag or a bint or a dyke or any other misogynistic, homophobic term, I tune out and ascribe it to the fact that lots of men don't like women. When you resort to attacking her gender, you're really showing you have nothing at all to say. 

Equally, let's refrain from going to peoples houses and hanging up flags, especially when there are young families inside. It's a nonsense. 

Sacking Karren Brady will definitely sort out our defence

If you must protest, and I'm not denying there are plenty of reasons to do so, then do it after games, or boycott the clubs commercial activities or do everything you can to get the media to acknowledge the depths of feeling, but ultimately I would suggest steering clear of anything that harms the team. To put it bluntly, we've got a better chance of winning on Friday with the Spurs atmosphere than we have with the one from yesterday. If we splinter now - we are done for. 

***

Incompetence

So, yeah, digging out the Board while the team flail away on the pitch isn't all that helpful but it sure is deserved. 

The frustrating thing that continues to drive me to despair about our Board is how they seem so impervious to outside forces. Having moved the club to the London Stadium they still seem to want to be judged as if we are at Upton Park, and scrabbling around for a few spare pennies from the Sky table. It is as though the clock stopped for them the moment they took over in 2010 and football has remained static ever since. So while English clubs have established a financial dominance over European clubs due to our TV deal, West Ham have shied away from dealing with overseas teams and instead tethered ourselves to the English market where everybody else gets the same bloody income and we have no advantage. That way Robert Snodgrass lies. 

The best thing we could do would be to buy a right load of old shit in January

Similarly, while other clubs look to scoop up promising young managers and snaffle their prime years, we instead look backwards to the distant past. I don't necessarily know if Moyes is a busted flush but he was last good about five years ago, which coincidentally is a rough match to where David Sullivan seems to think we currently are. From the transfer policy to the youth setup to the recruitment process to the interaction with fans - everything is retrograde. 

And people are swift to mock David Gold and his tweet about Champions League football but, to my mind, it's the only sensible thing they've ever said. It is, after all, the one time they've actually shown a scintilla of the ambition needed to match moving to that stadium. 

It was perhaps fitting that this game was against Watford, who seem to be a maelstrom of chaos but are actually a progressively modern organisation with a far better idea about where managers should fit into the structure of a football club than we do. So while Marco Silva is one of those young, progressive managers he is also fairly disposable within the Watford way of working. They have acknowledged that managers have a short shelf life and that asking them to spend all the clubs money is a short cut to having exasperated replacements on the touchline bemoaning the lack of pace in the team they have inherited. 

By contrast, we seemingly put the manager at the epicentre of everything. Truthfully, our transfer policy is opaque so it's impossible to know who is buying the players - a massive problem in itself - but if rumours are to be believed, then this is a Bilic team. But Bilic doesn't work here any more so what fucking use was it to give him £40m to spend ten weeks ago when this risk was always there? And watching this painfully slow team play in exactly the same manner as they did under Bilic, just highlights even more the lunacy of not having a proper Director of Football in place. 

When we moved from Upton Park, we were stepping up a level. A London club with fifty thousand season ticket holders, plenty of money, a playing staff good enough to have made the Champions League the season before. And what did we change off the pitch to match our newer, broader ambitions? Nothing. We persisted with the same structure and set up, meaning that our Director of Football was the man who led Birmingham to being a yo-yo club. That's it. That's his sole qualification for the job. I have said it repeatedly but it must be said again now - David Sullivan would not get the role he currently has at any other Premier League club, just as I cannot envisage any other top flight outfit employing David Moyes. 

For a club so desperate to break into the Champions League, we seem remarkably reluctant to employ any people who've actually done it. 

Consider this. When Sullivan took over in 2010, the following clubs were in the Championship or lower - Brighton, Huddersfield, Newcastle, Swansea, Leicester, Bournemouth, Southampton, West Brom, Palace and Watford. Burnley were also four months from relegation. 

So in the intervening seven years these clubs have all had to climb to the Premier League. We had an advantage over all of them at that point, simply by virtue of our loftier position. And yet, what has happened in that time is that smaller clubs have been forced to become smarter to bridge the gap to the monied elite. And while the smaller teams have got more intelligent, those larger beasts who have refused to adapt - helloooo Aston Villa - have fallen by the wayside. And once those smaller teams get here, and start making proper money, then they start to outperform us because they simply have better people making crucial decisions for them. 

So, look, we may go down this year or we may not, but until we show some desire to drag ourselves kicking and screaming out of the 1970's and into the modern world of professional football - where the chairman sits in the Director's Box and stays out of the managers office, and where we have proper scouts and not agents - we are always going to start every season on the back foot. The panic hiring of Moyes simply reflects the tearing up of yet another plan drawn up on the hoof, when the sad reality is that they should have been planning every aspect of the stadium move from the day they won the contract. But they weren't, and they didn't and this current mess is what you get when amateurs mix it with professionals. 

***

Bad luck

So with all of that whinging out of the way, I can honestly say that this was a very strange game to watch. I don't think any West Ham fan would dare suggest that we we deserved to win, but if you worship at the altar of xG then you would have to at least acknowledge that we really did create some outstanding chances. The Caley Graphics model below displays that rather nicely, and doesn't even adjust for the fact that the second Watford goal should have been ruled out for handball. 

Cheikhou Kouyate was deployed in an advanced role and had the kind of movement one usually associates with a bee trying to get out through a closed window. And yet for all that wasted energy, he had two glorious chances. The first produced a wonder save from Heurelho Gomes and the second was skied into that poisonous ozone layer like he was wearing a pair of flippers. 

In between Marko Arnautovic forced an incredible double save from Gomes, and when it's not your day you may as well give up and go home. Sadly, the Austrian didn't and instead broke his thumb and David Moyes is about to find out that every Christmas West Ham get a nightmare run of fixtures and every Christmas West Ham get a nightmare run of injuries and as such I'm already counting down until we hear his first "I've never known anything like it". 

But while we may have been a bit unlucky with our finishing there was precious little else to get excited about. What was most disappointing was that our tactical setup looked pretty much identical to that under Bilic, which rather begged the question of why we bothered to make a change. Andy Carroll was still isolated up front, displaying the temperament of an irate toddler denied his lunchtime Calipo, and should have been sent off before half time. Behind him we essentially deployed a flat midfield five, wasting Lanzini on the left and even then, didn't manage to offer up any more cover for the defence than usual. 

So the team ran the furthest they had all season, and Arnautovic sprinted about a bit and it still didn't make any difference because Watford still scored twice down his right side and running about a lot in and of itself, is actually fairly meaningless. Players need to be running with a purpose, to press or to harry or to get back from attacking positions into a tight defensive shape. I can't say that I noticed any of that - it just looked like the same thing I've been watching for months. 

But that said, we are probably due a bit of luck. A sending off or a penalty or a deflected goal or just something to cling on to. Because although all football fans collect examples of misfortune like coins in a purse, I feel like we've been on a bit of a tough run lately and when I think back to those relegation seasons of years past I can't help but think that there was quite a bit of ill fortune along the way. 

***

Confidence

Which brings me, mercifully, to the end. And I want to talk a bit about confidence because it's so hard to define but it's so clearly important, and we are a team demonstrably lacking in it. When assessing football games it's wise to remember it's a game played by humans. They behave weirdly and are affected by different things of which we know nothing. 

Who among us knows which player is suffering with injury or is playing in fear of losing his place in this team and then maybe his World Cup place? None of us knows who is an alcoholic or going through a divorce. I've made all these points before, but this is simply to reinforce that there is an awful lot going on that we don't see. Andy Carroll named his new born son Wolf Nine during the week, so it's safe to say that he probably has a lot on his plate just now like maybe a visit from social services, and he played like it. 

But confidence springs from lots of different places. Self confidence is one element, obviously, but there is confidence in your team mates too, or your manager, or the recruitment team who will provide you with some help in January, or in your home stadium where you simply know you will pick up points. And yet, as I lay all of that out in black and white it's pretty easy to see why our players might be on the floor right now. 

So many of them are out of form, playing for a manager they probably don't trust a great deal given his chequered history and knowing that there isn't any help coming in January because there never ever is under Sullivan, and playing at a stadium they all hate. That's the worst combination I've seen since some monster decided to put pineapple on pizza. 

Confidence can also come from believing in your team structure or tactics, or knowing that you are a fit team who can outrun any opposition. And I'm drawing a blank again. 

So for all the running that Moyes may have them doing, it's worth noting that fitter is not faster. And while there may be a lot of work getting done on defensive shape, that isn't going to make our midfield suddenly creative. And for all those four managers on the bench, if you just play 4-5-1 and get no service to your striker and your goalkeeper can't save anything low to his left, then it's hard to see change there either. 

Which brings me rather neatly back to where I started. I think us fans have a part to play here. Things are pretty desperate and it feels like it might get worse before it gets better. Plenty of you tell me that these columns are too negative and that's fine but your negativity is my reality. And I would call upon all fans to pull together now and forget that other shit. The team needs us. West Ham needs you. We need an atmosphere to pull the team up on Friday night and not force them back into their shells. 

I want a change in structure at West Ham but it's not going to happen now, and the most pressing matter we all face is beating Leicester. And if you don't do it for me, well, do it for poor little Wolf Nine. 

Watford 1 - 1 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

1. Save Me

One of the joys of having children is watching them grow into confident young people, with their own opinions and thoughts on the world.

It should also be said that one the downsides of having children is watching them grow into confident young people, with their own opinions and thoughts on the world.

Gone are the days when I could simply put my own music on the car stereo or watch what I wanted on the TV. Now I have to listen to Capital and watch drivel like "The Voice" because when you tell children to think for themselves you can't really ignore them when they do, or it sort of defeats the purpose.

I'm sure he's very talented

One such demonstration of their independent thought has been an insistence on introducing me to the music of Ed Sheeran. I have welcomed this new element in my life with roughly the same level of enthusiasm as Native Americans greeting the Pilgrims turning up on their lands, riddled with leptospirosis. 

His latest tune is an eight hour form of Chinese torture called "Castle on the Hill" which takes us on an autobiographical tour of Ed's childhood in Suffolk. He tells us of the time he broke his arm, his first love, his first trip to the dentist, his ongoing love for the music of Sid Owen, the trouble with biscuits and their packaging, the time he took a city break to Budapest and somewhere around this point I began to wonder if at any point Ed was planning of introducing any more traditional elements into the song like, say, a melody. 

But Ed is not old fashioned like that and on he went, reciting his grandmothers twelve favourite Psalms and then including the name of every person who died on the Titanic before telling us the exact life situation of his four closest friends followed with the lovely line "but these people made me", with that use of the word "but" really being quite telling. 

Anyway, at half time in this game I was thinking to myself - "This is like that Ed bloody Sheeran dirge. I'm 45 minutes in and I keep wondering if a game of football is going to break out". 

2. Out Of Nothing

Looking back now, it seems impossible that we nearly lost this game. 

We dominated most aspects of the match, although in fairness to Watford that is largely because they simply stopped attempting to attack after they scored. This actually happened in the second minute of the game after Cheikhou Kouyate ran straight into the back of Mauro Zarate in the style of a dog who hadn't seen this owner in about three months, and gave away a penalty that Troy Deeney stuck away with aplomb.

At this stage you might expect me to make a sarcastic comment about our ongoing determination to play an entire season without a right back, but I have decided to engage myself in less frustrating endeavours such as arguing global macroeconomic policy and UK interventionism with Sue's husband Roy on Facebook. 

Of course, Kouyate is a professional footballer and therefore it might be reasonable to expect him to make a better fist of tackling than he did, but for the second game running we were behind to an early goal as a result of our porous right sided defence. 

For the remainder of the first half we huffed and puffed ineffectually, with our sole threat coming whenever Michail Antonio got into the inside left channel and sliced through the Watford backline. As Bilic said after the game, "Antonio was our best player but he can't get the ball, run down the wing and cross it to himself. Well maybe someday, but not today". 

At this point I'm almost tempted to suggest that perhaps a good idea might have been to therefore give Antonio someone to cross to, but I'm not sure that would have fitted Bilic's preferred option of picking seven midfielders and playing them all out of position. 

So after a fruitless forty five minutes spent creating opportunities for us to create opportunities without actually managing to create any opportunities, we simply steamrollered them for much of the second half. Lanzini, pointlessly marooned out on the left again in the first half, was moved inside to great effect after the break. Flitting in between the lines, he was a constant menace and finally provided a bit of worthy support to Antonio, who by this stage was looking like John McClane in Die Hard, wondering when a bit of help might turn up. 

In the end it was these two who created the equaliser, as Watford made the fatal mistake of looking vaguely offensive for a moment, and Lanzini burgled a midfield ball to release Antonio one on one with Younes Kaboul. That's like leaving Sam Allardyce alone with a pie, and Antonio duly gave him the full Yippee Ki-yay before somehow hitting both posts with quite possibly the most West Ham shot of all time, and briefly convincing me that this weeks article was going to consist of only two words. Thankfully the ball rebounded to Andre Ayew, in one of his brief appearances on our plane of existence, who cushioned it nicely back in for a thoroughly deserved equaliser. 

This seemed to remind Watford that it was possible to venture past the halfway line and the closing quarter was a duly helter skelter period. Both teams had chances to win, and despite our superiority in the overall statistical analysis, it's hard to say that a draw wasn't a fair result. Watford sub Isaac Success went especially close as he barely failed to nudge in a winner with the last kick of the game, after some set piece defending that came straight out of Aliens.

Some nice looking shot locations here, courtesy of @11tegen11, with the most glaring miss being Antonio's second half header from a glorious Cresswell cross, that really should have got us back on terms. Watford, meanwhile, didn't manage an attempt on target apart from their penalty. Jose Fonte Baby. 

3. Come Back To What You Know

I have no issue with the team going away for four days of warm weather training in Dubai. In true West Ham fashion, they didn't actually get any warm weather but the principles were sound. Get away, bond, train more frequently and use the opportunity to reenergise for the run in to the season.

All of that is logical, which makes it even more bonkers that upon returning we went straight back to the system which had failed us in the first half against West Brom. Lanzini was stuck uselessly out on the left like an Argentine Jeremy Corbyn, Snodgrass looked lost in the middle and Kouyate was once again wasted at right back because Bilic seems to prefer that to choosing between his three central midfielders.

Putting Lanzini out wide is particularly egregious as his footwork and ability to take on and beat a player is invaluable against pressing teams. In this game alone he successfully did this on seven out of eight attempts which was as many as the Watford team combined, and he led the game with twelve ball recoveries. In short, the Jewel is now our leading player and the odd decision to play him wide of Snodgrass deprived us of his proper influence in the first half.

What was brutally apparent, however, was that our attacking options are criminally limited at present. With Carroll and Sakho absent once again, it fell to Antonio to strive manfully on his own up front. Whilst he did a good job, his best position seems to me to quite clearly be as the wide player in a front three, joining at the back post to win headers and bully full backs. As Bilic alluded to, he frequently got into positions to put dangerous balls into the box and found no targets to aim for. It seems a little curious that Calleri isn't being used more frequently for no other reason than we ought to be finding out what we have with him, before he goes back.

He was actually due to come on in place of Noble just as Ayew equalised which suggests that, if nothing else, Bilic knows which of his three central midfielders is most vulnerable should he ever choose to make a change. As it was, the skipper stayed on as Bilic looked to protect a point that means we have now lost just one of our last seven away league games.

So, in short, it was a half decent performance with lots of nice things about it and at the same time lots of frustrating nonsense, far too much of which is being caused by a steadfast refusal from Bilic to stand up and pick a team of players in their correct positions. 

4. Gravity

The day when Bilic addresses this may come as soon as next week, as Antonio was latterly sent off for a brainless handball and will now miss the Chelsea game. In truth, he'd been on thin ice for a while as he totted up fouls all over the place. I have no complaints about his dismissal, although I can barely believe that M'Baye Niang didn't join him as he did exactly the same thing all night and somehow managed to not even pick up a yellow card.

Referee Craig Pawson seemed predisposed to trying to allow the game to flow, but Watford are managed by an Italian and pulled off a masterclass in professional fouling. I haven't seen a team so cute at breaking up play since Ranieri's Leicester, who also adopted a "Thou shall not pass" approach to defending that one rarely sees outside of Serie A.

I'm not entirely convinced that Pawson was going to book Antonio immediately for the handball - if you squinted your eyes you could (wrongly) argue it was accidental - but Tom Cleverley didn't play all those years at Man Utd without learning a thing or two about shithousery. He was straight on to the ref as if Jose Mourinho was whispering in his ear, and out came the yellow and we'll now have to face the league leaders without a fit striker. If only there was some way we could have anticipated this and potentially planned for it, but sadly that sort of thing is just impossible.

Where Pawson did screw us was in not giving us at least one of two decent penalty shouts. Kouyate was wrestled to the ground by Niang in the second half in what seemed to be a fairly clear instance of foul play. Pawson simply waved it away rather than make a decision, although Bilic can't complain about that as he currently doing the same thing with his midfield.

Earlier, Antonio had got on the wrong side of Britos who thudded into him from the side. Had he fallen it would have been a strong shout, but instead he stayed on his feet and Gomes saved smartly. I'm really unclear as to how we're supposed to eradicate diving if players never get awarded fouls unless they fall over. I mean - we're all agreed that Joey Barton is in the wrong here, yes?

5. Happiness Will Get You In The End

You might remember that after our defeat in the reverse fixture in September, noted moral philosopher Troy Deeney declared that he felt "West Ham were trying to mug Watford off", which duly inspired their marvellous second half comeback.

He was especially aggrieved about the Rabona cross which Payet put in for Antonio to score his second. Now you and I might think that a Rabona is a particularly good bit of skill, but Troy informs me that it is in fact an attempt to mug someone off, and therefore cannot be allowed.

Let's look at Payet here:

This painting by Raphael is called "Zaza the Optimist"

I am not entirely clear that I know what "mugging off" really entails but I think the general gist is that you shouldn't be attempting to embarrass your fellow professionals, which I think is a reasonable stance to take, but is perhaps fraught with danger. For instance, someone like me, who is not as attuned to the Byzantine rules of "mugging off", might think that mimicking the dance move of a fellow professional could be construed as a bit of mugging, and indeed, offing. 

Here is Troy Deeney doing exactly that to Paul Pogba a week after that very same game. 

This is definitely not mugging someone off

Now you probably don't care about that, because a footballer having his own dance move is just about the worst thing in the world, but I'm really more interested in the elusive understanding of what truly constitutes a proper "mugging off". I'm concerned that I'm missing something, if I'm honest with you.

I could also point out that in 2012, Troy Deeney was sentenced to jail for ten months for kicking someone in the head during a brawl, and maybe his idea of what constitutes the appropriate way to play football is really a bit fucking redundant. But I won't. I might be mugging him off.

6. Even Smaller Stones

With twelve games to go, we have no chance of going any higher than our current ninth position and no risk of being dragged in the relegation battle. The remainder of our season is like a Robbie Wiliams album - pointless, but unavoidable.

One would think that in that scenario, there would be quite a lot of licence for Bilic to experiment with his squad and give a nice ten game trial to some players he needs to know a little more about.

Sam Byram is the obvious example here, but instead he sits marooned on the bench as all of our midfield, two wingers and three lads from the ticket office get a game in front of him. I'm not convinced that Byram is the answer, but it concerns me more that Bilic isn't even asking the question.

I say again - these games don't fucking matter.

On a similar note, the Club have decided to loan out some of our more promising youngsters. Reece Oxford has gone to Reading, Reece Burke and Marcus Browne went to Wigan and Toni Martinez is at Oxford.

As part of the Gang of Four who were involved in the Tevez affair, we should never be lending Wigan players, but both of them have been injured so my hope is that they are having to subsidise the wages of two squad members who won't play for them again. We'll get that £20m back somehow.

Reece Oxford is in the most frustrating situation of all, as he is just sitting on the bench at Reading, although Toni Martinez is getting a fair bit of playing time.

I'm not actually in favour of throwing youngsters straight into the first team, which is the usual default position of certain fans whenever results take a turn for the worse. Premier League managers aren't in the habit of leaving out players who could make their team better, so if a youngster isn't in the squad it's because he hasn't proven himself yet. Loans to lower league teams are a much better idea as they bridge the gap between youth and senior football much quicker than a season of five minute substitute appearances.

All of our golden generation bar Joe Cole went out on loan and came back better for it. Ferdinand and Defoe went to Bournemouth, Lampard went to Swansea, Johnson survived a stint at Millwall and Carrick was at both Swindon and Birmingham. These loans are a good idea, but only if they play. Truthfully, if Jaap Stam can't risk Oxford because he's in the play off hunt that's fair enough, but then the Club should recall him and either get him some first team games with us, or arrange another loan.

I'll admit that I don't know if another loan is allowable under the rules. I'm as familiar with them as I am with those of "mugging off". The broader point here is that if Oxford is indeed a miniature John Stones, destined to be a ball playing centre half, then he is going to make a few mistakes and we'll have to suck that up. I'd rather we started that education now, when the stakes are low, but I accept with Fonte having arrived that is now a dead duck. All of which combines to leave our brightest prospect playing no football. This seems...sub-optimal. 

7. Higher Sights

Having said that about the meaningless nature of this season it seems reasonable to ask what exactly we are looking to achieve between now and May. What are we aiming for?

Of course everyone will pay lip service to finishing as high up the league as possible, but we have no chance of making up the seven point gap to West Brom, which is just about the most depressing sentence I've ever had to type.

So, if we aren't going to use these games to work toward next year I suppose it's fair to say that we'll have to look at what we have. Look out for Cresswell, who improved dramatically in this game, which was perhaps not unrelated to Masuaku being back on the bench. Andre Ayew got some games at the AFCON and looked a bit sharper last night - understanding what position we are going to use him in would be a big help.

All of that is fairly prosaic though. I'm thinking it's been a while since we've done anything barmy. Sure, we're currently playing all our midfielders out of position but that's small beer. I think we have us in it to do something properly bananas. Enter Wayne Rooney, England captain.

Let's be honest - he'll fit right in

I think we're going to try and sign Rooney in the summer. I have absolutely no sources telling me this and this is purely a theory, but stick with it for a minute.

This would, of course, be a terrible idea which sadly increases the likelihood of it happening by about 800%. Unfortunately, the Manchester United all time leading goalscorer is like an angry, balding Scouse Christmas present for David Sullivan. He's in decline, he's famous, he's waaaaaay overpaid and he'll be literally useless in two years time.

If one assumes that Rooney isn't going to China because they don't do big enough lollipops, then that doesn't leave too many options. I don't see him playing in another European league, which leaves the MLS or a fucking lunatic team in England. Do you see where I'm going with this?

No proper teams will be interested, which means we start to get into mid table teams with money. With Payet off the books and Sullivan desperate for a marquee signing, there is some wiggle room for wages at West Ham just now. I'm not sure that Everton could afford it or are that stupid, although I suppose that Rooney might offer them a small discount to go home. No other mid table team fits either financially or in any other sense.

Most likely of all is that he goes to LA Galaxy and fades into irrelevance there, thank Christ, but do not be surprised if we are heavily linked once the silly season begins. 

8. Fireworks 

Watching Slaven Bilic on the touchline during this game was to see a man on the edge of madness. He looked like I do when I write these articles on my Mac and then after I've posted it, I notice all the various little improvements that Steve Jobs' gang of lunatics have made to my prose. Bilic has become Billie, Lanzini becomes Lansing and hearsay becomes heresy which is at least quite clever I suppose.

Anyway, after a year of keeping his cool under remarkable provocation, Bilic has suddenly become incredibly animated on the touchline. I wonder if there is a little link here to the story which emerged in The Sun, the Sullivan organ of choice for formal leaks, stating that Bilic was history unless he managed a top eight finish. Once the board start briefing against a manager it's very hard for him to turn it around, albeit Bilic is a far more popular incumbent than the previous victims.

All of this is hearsay and speculation, but it is a quite remarkable change in demeanour for a manager who has never previously got too involved with commenting on referees. Maybe it's nothing, maybe he's completely on edge at the prospect of getting the chop or maybe he doesn't subscribe to my line of thinking that these games are essentially meaningless. He seems a bit....different to me though.

Airborne microphone just about to land on the lino's head

9. All You Good Good People

If you would allow me a moment of self indulgence, I would like to thank all of you who read, shared or commented on the piece I wrote last week about my old youth team coach, Steve Cowley, and his sons Danny and Nicky - currently plotting to defeat Arsenal in the FA Cup quarter finals with Lincoln. I was greatly touched by all the kind words, and the lovely feedback.

As an addendum, I thought you might like to know that I received a really nice message from Nicky, sent at 3am after he just got back from a game at North Ferriby, thanking me for writing the piece. Given that he and his brother are currently being inundated from all sides for interviews and comments, I am well aware that he didn't need to do that and indeed scarcely had time to do that. A measure of the family, I think.

I also made a couple of comments in the piece about my own playing ability. Three people got in touch to tell me I'd been too harsh on myself - Steve, Danny's wife Kate, and my sister. I think that sort of proved my point.

10. One Big Family

Last week I was a guest of Phil and Jim at the Stop! HammerTime podcast. We chatted about the West Brom game, the late lamented and brilliant Fortunes Always Hiding fanzine and Donald Trump sorting out our right sided issues. Phil forgot to introduce me so the first five minutes are sharkless, a bit like Deep Blue Sea, but with less Saffron Burrows.

The podcast can currently be found here and on iTunes here.  

West Ham 2 - 4 Watford (And Other Ramblings)

1. Fool's Gold

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

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

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

2. Here It Comes

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

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

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

3. Something Burning

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

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

4. Standing Here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. The Hardest Thing In The World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Tears

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

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

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

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

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

6. What The World Is Waiting For

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

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

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

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

7. Going Down

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

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

— SimonNRicketts (@SimonNRicketts) August 5, 2016

8. Don't Stop

Lots of people are writing about this.

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

West Ham 0 - 1 Watford (And Other Ramblings)

Some people are so predictable. There are those who might go to New Zealand for a month and come back with a deep golden tan and many tales of derring do. Not me folks. I have plumped instead for two weeks in bed with the flu, eating one slice of toast a day. Interestingly, during that time I have managed the not inconsiderable feat of putting on weight. When I die there's going to be one hell of a scrap for my metabolism.

Anyway, even from my sickbed a million miles away, I can hear the clanging chimes of doom for the Hammers. The home defeat to Watford surely signals the end of what I laughingly refer to as our relegation "fight". Many thanks to Ralph for the match report. The dog ate his preview, unfortunately.

1. An Apology For Abject Incompetence

I don’t get it. I paid a bunch of dosh for the necessary equipment to write the preview for the Watford match (admittedly a while ago although my recently acquired new Livebox doobie doesn’t seem to work as well as it should). I type stuff all day along and have done for years without incident and then when the time comes to step up to the plate and perform to a larger audience, it all goes wrong, the screen goes blank and all my work disappears in a brilliant glare of white that passes so slowly as to make Christian Dailly look like Marlon Harewood’s car travelling down the Barking Road on Saturday evening.

Ultimately it turned out I’d chosen entirely the wrong method to type out my preview. I had executed it poorly and had no back-up plan for when it all got formatted in .pear. Of course, the problem was an underlying one with my machine and webmail and, had I known, I would not have chosen that method of execution; you could almost say, it was broken when I found it. As it turns out I could not have executed a more accurate preview.

2. Science Fact

We had more possession and more shots and all that stuff but the ultimate statistic is 0-1 x 2. That against a side employing a man who hasn’t scored in twenty-nine games as their marksman. That said, we seem to employ at least five of those so who am I to criticise?

Obviously their chap Mahon should have walked for his Championship challenge on Reo-Coker who finally seems to have decided to start playing again but he did not and frankly, so what? Are we really so terrible that we can’t beat Watford unless they have a man sent-off? Yes, we are and that is about all you can say.

3. Neill? He Can Barely Stand

Another thirty minutes on the clock and now another month off. Why will my firm not pay me thousands a week to do that? They would even save money in the process through the spurt in productivity caused by my absence. Is there another reason beyond wage structure that Liverpool did not pursue their interest in Neill with the same verve that we did? Quite possibly. I am starting to wonder how much scouting Curbishley and his mate Lurch Day actually do. Apparently he still seems to be "having a look" at our squad and he barely seemed to know anything about them when he joined. For a club that he and his nearest and dearest seem to be so desperately passionate about that seems a bit peculiar.

That is the behaviour I normally associate with Chelsea fans who own season tickets in the expensive seats. Next time you meet one, see if you can get him to name his favourite Chelsea side and see how many names apart from Zola and "that chap Brabhook – the one that pegged it" they can name from before Ranieri was in charge. Anyway, I digress but you have to wonder how much time he spent in Lancashire and the Midlands (including Tottenham) watching his new charges.

I am starting to suspect that he has picked these guys with same amount of skill that most people pick their fantasy league teams. Upson: used to be at Arsenal, cleaner sheets than the Persil Nun Display Team. Lucas Neill: something about penalties in the World Cup – probably excellent. Boa Morte and Quashie: saw them once against Charlton and I think one of them may have scored and look, Quashie’s down here as a defender so that’s extra goals potential and now I just need a cheapo defender to use up my budget with… ah, Calum. Mascherano? How many points did he get last season? No thanks.

I guess Neill needs a run of injury free football before it is fair to judge him but at least we have our home grown Anton back now. Oh, hang on…

4. From Cornrow To Zero

Known for their ball skills but not their intelligence or attention span, Ferdinand the Younger once again highlighted the family trait with his new interpretation on the drag back idea. Unfortunately such pioneering new forms, as in any artistic medium, are rarely appreciated first time out and thus Henderson fell to the floor his face screwed up in disgust at Ferdinand’s vulgarity and Alan Wiley did what any self-respecting critic had to do and found against the accused.

It looked like the sort of offence that would have been similarly regarded at Twickenham and you have to wonder just what, if anything, our man was thinking.

5. Meanwhile Up The Other End

Marlon Harewood. Why on Earth was a man clearly on the verge of disappearing into a black hole of ineptitude allowed to take that penalty? Against Liverpool the other week as the game wore on he looked more and more timid and the minute the penalty was awarded it was clear we were going to miss had one of the regulars taken it. There were more miss vibes around the place than at an Ann Summers convention.

Surely that was the perfect moment to let the lively Tevez notch his first goal? The guy seem to have done everything but score and surely this was the moment but once again, as you would expect with a team full of players who seem more interested in fighting for their place under the protective tortoise shell than retaining their league status with the club they are at, innovation and clear thinking proved even rarer than three points away from home. It was like putting an alcoholic in front of an off-licence with a blank chequebook in its cruelty.

Gillian McKeith would not have visited this on one of her subjects and Harewood’s cupped hand to the ear "celebration" was put back on ice until the next time (inevitably the winner in a 1-0 win at Old Trafford after we’re already down on the last day of the season).

More and more this resembles the last relegation season. The "lift-off" never arrives and we go on losing games meekly, beating the odd giant at home whilst failing to use our best players properly (admittedly Ashton is not really going to achieve much with one leg even if he would still have made a better job of the penalty than Harewood… and that sitter from six yards out by Zamora... and... sod it, it is too depressing). At least Tevez is getting a game whereas Di Canio was barely getting a sniff under Roeder I suppose.

That said, that time round I distinctly remember some consistently rousing performances from Joe Cole that earned him Hammer Of The Year but could this be the year when nobody wins it? At the moment I think I’ll be voting for Mark Noble just for his consistency, goals to games ratio and victory ratio. I cannot think of anyone else who has done anything consistently above and beyond to warrant it. Every week we reach a new seemingly cathartic nadir but then the next week always brings that extra depth of weak surrender and depression.

An away trip to Charlton now just looks like another opportunity to disgrace ourselves. I think if West Ham were our parents, when we lost at Reading we heard them doing it whilst we had a friend to stay, this week we caught our Dad sniffing our Mum’s underwear on the sly and next week we could well be about to see the footballing equivalent of our Mother performing what the redtops would term "sordid acts" with next door’s spaniel on grainy video to pay for her crack habit. After this, relegation almost seems like sweet relief.

6. Managing Expectations

There was an excellent article in the Observer Sport Monthly about the "new breed" of scientific managers and how they have taken their lead from American sport. Pardew was among them as was Saturday’s victorious Aidy Boothroyd. The point made was that these guys came unstuck in the Premier League because principles that work in America and in the Championship where competition is much closer and there is a lot more scoring do not work in the Premier League where the quality is much more diverse and you cannot legislate for Gerrard notching one from forty yards in injury time or Kuyt sticking it in the back of your onion bag from somewhere deep in E6 right after you’ve finished your half-time tea and, oh, I dunno, say Daniel bleeding Agger also finding your top corner with a right-foot originated leather exocet launched from somewhere next to your striker. You know, those things just don’t happen with any familiarity, right?

So, what does work in the Premier League? Well, clearly Curbishley managed pretty well with his brand of nonplussed shoulder shrugging (notice he does not even bury his face in his hands any more when we concede) at the Valley but clearly he should be upping his game with us. If you take a look at the top three or four managers in the league, Mourinho, Ferguson, Wenger and I guess Benitez then they all possess that megalomaniacal streak, the control freakery to run their club from the players’ lunches to the colour of the carpets in the changing rooms, tactical innovation and, as everyone always points out about disgustingly successful people, attention to detale.

What encouragement then to see our man in the bench jacket playing, in recent games, a drink sodden gambler alongside a coke fiend whilst trying to figure out who plays where and seemingly having tiffs with the few members of the squad he appears to have managed to learn the names of in his first few weeks. Not to mention the complete tactical wonderment of Nigel Quashie starting every week come hell or high water (usually it is the former) whilst Mark Noble is put on the fast track to clinical depression in the stiffs or in Suffolk so that he can fit in with the rest of the squad and, to top it off, a complete inability to change any of that around when the wheels come off. Obviously I’ll be the first to two-facedly herald Curbs if he keeps us up but at this rate, that seems a distant dream.

Token Michael Dawson Slaughtering

Even we didn’t try and sign him in January.