Celebration Day, February 16, 2011

“Celebration Day” was last Friday when West Ham was all but given the keys to the new Olympic Stadium with handy 400-metre running track and a lifetime supply of unwanted, unsold 2012 Olympic mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville, who sound like a couple of West Ham January transfer-window buys that we will not see until late April due to one thing or another.
As you know, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin de la Julian Faubert, visited the Shropshire (Central-West England for those you not from there) town of Much Wenlock in August 1890 (coincidentally, the same month Kieron Dyer got his first hamstring injury) and was impressed with the Sports on the Village Green and thus decided to globalise it a little…anyway, that’s where Wenlock comes from, but Mandeville? As a nipper, I was always hearing about Jimmy “Jim’ll Fix It!” Saville raising funds for Stoke Mandeville Hospital, and apparently, this is where the second mascot gets his name from. Each also has only one eye, and they never look like they know where they are going. If it was up to me, I’d name them Marlon and Harewood. All very strange…but anyway, the stadium is ours, unless Leyton Orient gets its way with its connected friends in the corridors of Parliament.
Orient think West Ham will be the death of them, but we all know West Ham will take less time being the death of West Ham, without the need to cause hardship on anyone else.
I remain in two minds about the new stadium. My actions down the pub when we scored our third goal against WBA—chairs scattered, beer spilt, Sean scattered—speak for my passion for our club, but I never was a regular at the hallowed turf, so I cannot speak for how much that particular patch of grass will be missed, but on the other hand, I do not know enough about football-economics to state categorically that a move has been done in order for us to get to what is—cliché time—the "next level." 30,000 people paying £40 or 60,000 paying £25? That’s if we have these numbers interested.
That all said, this remains our only double of the season—beating Spurs twice now!
And do you know that Thomas Hitzlsperger now is eligible to play!!!!

West Bromwich Albion 3 West Ham Utd. 3 (Premiership), Saturday, February 12, 2010.
The first half was the most abject display of defending I have ever witnessed. Yes, Matthew Upson is injured, and Henrita Illunga is, too, although he has not been on fire this season, but deary me, me ol’ cocker! Winston Reid is a schoolboy. He was so off the pace of the game that when I mentioned to someone he was playing at a Championship level, the immediate reply was that I was wrong—he’s playing at a level of the division below that.
Yes, we came back admirably, but if West Brom striker Osaze Odemwingie was in the form of the beginning of the season, when he was scoring goals for fun, we would have lost that game. He had one chance when he just turned Reid inside out, and only a poor strike straight into the arms of Rob Green saved us from all our resilient work being made undone.
Certainly, Carlton Cole’s goal was also the result of atrocious defending, or at least idiocy on the part of the West Brom defenders not to realise that that black chap lurking all on his own to the right—yes, that Piquionne fellow—has scored 11 Premiership goals in a season and a half and might be a little dangerous. Even Demba Ba’s second goal was made because Ba effortlessly pealed back off his “defender.”
It was interesting to hear Cole’s post-match commentary, in which he was talking about Scott Parker’s inspirational halftime talk (where was manager Avram Grant?). After he explained how all the Hammers started crying (and after a first-half performance like that, I would have been to…actually, I was), he said, “of course, being a professional football player, you should always have that belief in you anyway…” Wow, I thought, he’s actually thinking! Which gives me a little hope for the rest of the season.
Man of the Match—Demba Ba scored two goals, and goals get points, a precious point. His first goal had a hint of handball to it, every time I have watched the highlights, but that said, no one on the West Brom team appealed, so maybe it was just the angle. By far the best of our three goals was the Cole one.
Even when we were down 3-0, I was saying we’d win 3-5, but I have had more than 37 years supporting this madness, so I continue to be optimistic as the alternative is so unimaginable.