October 18, 2011
It was with huge pleasure that I saw my theory that West Ham are the first Championship team in history ever to be affected by the International Break come to superb fruition. While the rest of the country was worrying about Wayne “Bumble Bee” Rooney (I am currently reading an autobiography by English comedian Stewart Lee (fantastic, especially his skit on the Big Brother Racism Scandal—YouTube it if you want to see it), and he finds it amusing to give people nicknames a propos of absolutely nothing in their life or history, so I am shamelessly stealing that idea this week) and his three-match suspension, Hammers were anxiously waiting to see if Baker’s Law of Championship International Breakage (BAKLACHIB) had any legs. Read below to see if it had.
Firstly on the news radar, we sent David “Astronaut” Bentley back to Tottenham. Or he hopped back on crutches. This is not of course the first time this has happened. I immediately think of Mauricio “Dingle” Taricco, who played for West Ham after being signed from the Spuds for a whole 10 minutes. You might remember he ripped up his contract and received the gushing praises from then West Ham manager Alan “Green Bean” Pardew. I had high hopes for Bentley, and it is a shame not to see any of his potential, but then again Bentley was supposed to be the Complete Future of English Football for the Next Generation, if you remember, only a few years ago, and none of that came true either.
He is not the only thing to be taken away from West Ham this week. The Olympic Stadium (to be named the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Stadium when the athletes depart) suddenly is not going to be our new home, the Powers at Be deciding that ongoing legal challenges from both the Roosters of North London and Leyton Orient meant that it was inconceivable to continue negotiations with…or some such legalese. I thought it was a done deal, and I thought I heard all politicians of all stripes saying that their previous decisions were final. As you might have read today, Spurs have now come to an agreement with whoever it was they were fighting with (not Arsenal this time), which translated, I believe, means We’ve hemorrhaged another moolah, let’s finish this now and concentrate on our own Walthamstow expansion plans, and—shock!—Leyton Orient in the last few hours have put together a bid asking if they can now move into what I will now abbreviate as QEOS…but as long as QEOS will have no running track.
Unbelievabubble, as my older brother used to say when he was young, and might still do.
Now, I know many Hammers will be happy by all of this. I am still not sure. I have always had the idea that to be a truly big club, you need a truly big stadium, but then it is the interim supporters who come to watch games week in, week out (before this Golden Age that I am naïvely suggesting might happen, happens) who prefer the intimate atmosphere that is part and parcel of the Boleyn. A tricky conundrum.
The other interesting general footy news is that there is this “campaign” by certain “foreign” (although what does that word mean any more in international business and multicultural Britain?) owners of Premiership clubs to scrap relegation and, thus, more importantly to West Ham and us (the two are indivisible, I know, before angry letters reach me), promotion. This is a nonstarter, which would take the very soul of the game, our national game, away. It also is interesting in that to me it suggests another facet of the Idea of Money protecting itself. Who wouldn’t want a Premiership club that could not be anything but a Premiership club, with the sacks of TV cash that come with it? Of course, many of us live in a country (the US of A) where many people stare blankly at you when you mention the concepts of relegation and promotion. (“Well, it’s like this, Chad and Kasey, you have a job right, and now I am taking that job away from you. Now you have no job. No money. That’s a perfect analogy to being relegated, or as you might say, demoted. In football-, sorry, soccer-speak, that’s Bad D, not Good D. Now say I make a million dollars for myself and I need you again to shift widgits from Peoria, Illinois, to Lafayette, Louisiana, then I would offer you a new job (at less pay, of course), and that is called being promoted, but we do not say Good P because there is every chance that the three newly promoted employees will go straight back down again.)
Championship; Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011; Upton Park, East London
West Ham Utd. 4 Blackpool 0
So my BAKLACHIB Theory proved unerringly correct, as the Hammers put their home games jinx firmly behind them. We have two new heroes, Sam “Jimbo” Baldock and John “Paperclip” Carew, neither of whom are loans but real signings from Milton Keynes Dons and Aston Villa, respectively. We took the game by the scruff of the neck in eight second-half minutes, in which Baldock scored twice and Jack “Pasta Lunch” Collison hit home once, which is nice to see, as Collison represents the Old Guard.
I could not follow the game as it was not on TV (surprise), and there was no reception in Gallatin, New York, where I spent the weekend at my friends’ (one of them a Spud) home they have just finished fixing up. It was only as we came home on the Taconic Parkway that a signal wafted to us and I saw the great news.
And I only managed to see the Carew goal via a grainy, wobbly, handheld video posted by a fan on the Internet. It was a fine header, but many Blackpool supporters blamed their manager Ian Holloway’s choice of having a 5’8” defender mark 6’5” Carew. But this is what I do not understand. When asked about if the Hammers had found a new deadly post-International Break combo in Baldock and Carew, Sam “Fiery Boots” Allerdyce commented that there would not always be the situation in which West Ham can play this formation. Why not? This is not Manchester where they have to continually think of European games and thus have some degree of rotation. I am hoping that this is not Allerdyce thinking beyond his means, believing that whatever he does is ingrained in his own weak concept of football genius. Just win the dame things, Sam, okay!
The Next Matches
Championship; Tues., Oct. 18, 2011; St. Mary’s Stadium, Southampton, Hampshire, Southampton vs. West Ham Utd.
So, suddenly, this might be the Season Defining game, where second-place West Ham overtake first-place Southampton on a Tuesday night where I’ll probably have to leave the office before the final score. Remember (and I am reminding you) of my season-beginning prediction that West Ham would be six points clear at Christmas. This game is not on the TV as far as I know, certainly as it also is a Champions League night.
Championship; Mon., Oct. 24, 2011; Falmer Stadium, Falmer, East Sussex
Brighton & Hove Albion vs. West Ham Utd.
This will be another tricky away game, although Brighton, which started out so well this season, have skidded slightly of late. I mentioned Taricco earlier. Did you know that he is now the assistant manager at Brighton? After injuring himself in his debut game for West Ham, it really was the end of his top-class career, for he then played for a few seasons at A.S. Villasimius, a nonleague Italian club right at the bottom of the island of Sardinia, before playing five games for Brighton. He obviously liked it there, and now his relationship with Brighton manager Gus Poyet must be the only occurrence of an Uruguayan-Argentine football partnership anywhere. Can you prove me wrong? Let’s make this Monday night miserable for them both.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Carlos Tevez Returns (Almost) While Illunga is Shipped Out
October 7, 2011
I am trying to get the newsletter to you a little earlier this week, as I will be jetting off to the Turks & Caicos Islands on Friday. The TCIs are not the most exciting destination on Earth, and I—like Kieron Dyer sitting on the Upton Park bench—get restless very easily; apparently, the most exciting thing about the place is that its former Prime minister, who took full control of a newly created autonomous department within the Commonwealth, supposedly decided the island’s money was indistinguishable from his own, which led the United Kingdom to taking full control again. This sounds like West Ham’s relationship with Iceland, I thought. Do you remember when we were a billionaire's club/toy thing? This lasted for, oh, a week, between Barnie Barnsson Barnstormisson buying the club and the largest single fall ever in the Dow Jones Industrial. Sort of fun while it lasted.
I wrote a few weeks ago that I would not have been surprised if Carlos Tévez returned soon to the Hammers, and it almost turned out to be true. I almost felt smug. As is Paolo di Canio—who called his Swindon Town players “chihuahuas” this week (Why? They have short legs? Small brains? Both?)—Tévez would be awarded a huge cheer if he were to come back to his original British home, but apparently Manchester City are not interested. It’s a common theme nowadays when players get the “strop” to explain to them that the intended course of action is to let them merely rot on the sidelines. Our offer was, however, somewhat usurped by another offer from another football team for the Argentine’s silky services—Northern Irish Premier side Limavady United, whose average attendance is 100 and, so pitiful is its history, the Carlos Tévez “saga” (City did not respond) take sup half of its Wikipedia entry.
In other news, Henrita Illunga, our defender (remember him?), has been shipped out on loan for three months to Doncaster, which at the beginning of Sept. 24 was rock-bottom of the Championship but has since decided that winning is better, with seven points from nine to take them to eight and fifth from bottom. That’s far better than West Ham have done, but of course with the inclusion of Illunga, expect Rovers to catapult back down. Illunga is a curious thing, so good in his first season for us, so bad since. He reminds me of Sebastian Schemmel, who I believe won Hammer of the year one year. I’d be interested to see your other selections for players who were electric one year, the dog’s thingymagigs the next?
Championship; Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011; Selhurst Park, South London
Crystal Palace vs. West Ham Utd.
Another game with absolutely no television coverage. I missed following online the first half, but saw that we were 1-1; then—because I had been for a run—I was sitting there at 2-1 down, thinking, yes, really I should have a shower before the game ends, so when I emerged, I saw that John Carew had scored his first for us. From one shower to the next, you might say, but a point is a point. In his weekly newsletter, Big Sam used up a column to say very little of anything, although this gem—“Now having tested the squad, I am getting more and more confident that people can drop out and others can come in and deliver a performance as good as the lads they've replaced”—depresses me on both linguistic and footballing levels.
John Carew’s goal was very good, and George McCartney’s cross was brilliant. In fact, McCartney was involved in both games, so he takes the plaudits as the Hammer of the Day. I say all this having analysed 51 seconds of Russian-broadcast highlights.
The Next Match
Championship; Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011; Upton Park, East London
West Ham Utd. vs. Blackpool
After our disappointing run of games after the last international break (four games, 1 win, 1 loss, 2 draws, 5 points from 12), it must bode well that we have another global pause for when England get the one point it needs against Macedonia to secure plane tickets and iPod bans in the Ukraine and Poland next year for the Euro Champs, when we can all once again salivate over the Steven Gerrard-Frank Lampard question and as to whether John Terry is too old.
Blackpool hammered five past poor Bristol City, who are rock-bottom, last week, and David “Calamity” James was not even to blame, now keeping his upper thighs warm on the bench. Two points behind West Ham is its current spot, but we will put an end to its brazen race upwards.
Goals—Mark Noble, John Carew and Matty Taylor, 3-0
I am trying to get the newsletter to you a little earlier this week, as I will be jetting off to the Turks & Caicos Islands on Friday. The TCIs are not the most exciting destination on Earth, and I—like Kieron Dyer sitting on the Upton Park bench—get restless very easily; apparently, the most exciting thing about the place is that its former Prime minister, who took full control of a newly created autonomous department within the Commonwealth, supposedly decided the island’s money was indistinguishable from his own, which led the United Kingdom to taking full control again. This sounds like West Ham’s relationship with Iceland, I thought. Do you remember when we were a billionaire's club/toy thing? This lasted for, oh, a week, between Barnie Barnsson Barnstormisson buying the club and the largest single fall ever in the Dow Jones Industrial. Sort of fun while it lasted.
I wrote a few weeks ago that I would not have been surprised if Carlos Tévez returned soon to the Hammers, and it almost turned out to be true. I almost felt smug. As is Paolo di Canio—who called his Swindon Town players “chihuahuas” this week (Why? They have short legs? Small brains? Both?)—Tévez would be awarded a huge cheer if he were to come back to his original British home, but apparently Manchester City are not interested. It’s a common theme nowadays when players get the “strop” to explain to them that the intended course of action is to let them merely rot on the sidelines. Our offer was, however, somewhat usurped by another offer from another football team for the Argentine’s silky services—Northern Irish Premier side Limavady United, whose average attendance is 100 and, so pitiful is its history, the Carlos Tévez “saga” (City did not respond) take sup half of its Wikipedia entry.
In other news, Henrita Illunga, our defender (remember him?), has been shipped out on loan for three months to Doncaster, which at the beginning of Sept. 24 was rock-bottom of the Championship but has since decided that winning is better, with seven points from nine to take them to eight and fifth from bottom. That’s far better than West Ham have done, but of course with the inclusion of Illunga, expect Rovers to catapult back down. Illunga is a curious thing, so good in his first season for us, so bad since. He reminds me of Sebastian Schemmel, who I believe won Hammer of the year one year. I’d be interested to see your other selections for players who were electric one year, the dog’s thingymagigs the next?
Championship; Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011; Selhurst Park, South London
Crystal Palace vs. West Ham Utd.
Another game with absolutely no television coverage. I missed following online the first half, but saw that we were 1-1; then—because I had been for a run—I was sitting there at 2-1 down, thinking, yes, really I should have a shower before the game ends, so when I emerged, I saw that John Carew had scored his first for us. From one shower to the next, you might say, but a point is a point. In his weekly newsletter, Big Sam used up a column to say very little of anything, although this gem—“Now having tested the squad, I am getting more and more confident that people can drop out and others can come in and deliver a performance as good as the lads they've replaced”—depresses me on both linguistic and footballing levels.
John Carew’s goal was very good, and George McCartney’s cross was brilliant. In fact, McCartney was involved in both games, so he takes the plaudits as the Hammer of the Day. I say all this having analysed 51 seconds of Russian-broadcast highlights.
The Next Match
Championship; Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011; Upton Park, East London
West Ham Utd. vs. Blackpool
After our disappointing run of games after the last international break (four games, 1 win, 1 loss, 2 draws, 5 points from 12), it must bode well that we have another global pause for when England get the one point it needs against Macedonia to secure plane tickets and iPod bans in the Ukraine and Poland next year for the Euro Champs, when we can all once again salivate over the Steven Gerrard-Frank Lampard question and as to whether John Terry is too old.
Blackpool hammered five past poor Bristol City, who are rock-bottom, last week, and David “Calamity” James was not even to blame, now keeping his upper thighs warm on the bench. Two points behind West Ham is its current spot, but we will put an end to its brazen race upwards.
Goals—Mark Noble, John Carew and Matty Taylor, 3-0
King of Pop and Childish Folly
Picture the scene. I was walking along the glorious Thames between Putney and Hammersmith one beautiful, warm August day a month or so ago while on a 10-day visit back to England. The chiffchaffs were singing boldly in the trees, the blackberries were dripping off the branches in sweet acquiescence and the Harvey Sussex Best was pumping purposefully from the riverside public houses….when…when I looked up to see the horror that is Fulham Football Club, the team that has so little history (yes, I know Bobby Moore went there, and yes, Alan Mullery came from there and yes, they are the oldest professional team in London) that it felt an ardent desire to erect this monstrosity.
It is at the back of the club, so most supporters cannot see it or, very sadly if this is the case, have to make a concerted effort to visit it, but as I walked by and stared at it through Nikon binoculars, I saw 14 seagulls crash into it in collective disbelief or a shared lemming-like death pact. Probably the latter. London’s lost it, they must have squawked.
Much better to have put up a statue of Bobby Zamora scoring the winning Play-off goal against Preston North End in 2005, I would have thought. I think you will notice that the statue shows less the supposed King of Pop (although I would elect David Sylvian for that role), but rather a nonplussed man suddenly being terrorised by a gang of leaping sticklebacks.
Championship; Saturday, Sept. 24, 2011; Upton Park, East London
West Ham Utd. 1 Peterborough Utd. 0
Championship; Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011; Upton Park, East London
West Ham Utd 0 Ipswich Town 1
Can you name me one other team plying its trade in the Championship that has been so aversely affected by the International Break? Usually that honour is reserved for Premiership teams, but how else can one explain 14 goals scored in four Championship games before the break and none scored in the three Championship games after it, at least goals scored in open play? The only goal recently has been Mark Noble’s penalty (and three points, mind) against Peterborough—a win is a win is a win—and it is a little depressing to see us once again capitulate in the last few minutes, as much as it was to see that it was Lee Bowyer who inflicted the damage. Did he ever score for us? I seem to remember him only scoring for us against rubbish teams where someone else in the team no doubt would have done so if he hadn’t, and I also remember him being in the team during that painful afternoon in which we was beaten 6-0 by Reading. Reading!
The commentary that dismal day stated that “this West Ham side has three main problems: a jittery defence, a non-existent midfield and a miserable excuse for an attack.”
Pray that that is not the case, too, now.
It’s too early to panic, and we are where we want to be, but come on, chaps, stuff the holes with cotton wool and stop making it easy for Robert Green to walk away dignity intact come January.
Was Matty Taylor being rested? Apart from Winston Reid not playing, the team against Ipswich (home: 0-1) was the same as that of us against Nottingham Forest (away: 1-4), with the exception of Taylor and Jack Collison, so what was the special, missing or present ingredient? A continual fear of home matches?
A need for Sam Allardyce to make some drastic announcements?
The Next Match
Championship; Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011; Selhurst Park, South London
Crystal Palace vs. West Ham Utd.
A drastic announcement from me would be to publicly confess a dire admission that I might have whispered already on occasion, that occasion being three pints in. Here we go: I once was a supporter of Crystal Palace F.C.
Yes, a very sordid affair. Back in October 1972, my dad asked if I wanted a football kit for Christmas, there also being a need to order these things early to avoid disappointment. I said I did. What team, he asked? I don’t know, I said. So, looking along my Shoot magazine league ladder (in which you collected and repositioned team tabs every Sunday depending on that weekend’s Saturday results) I came across a combination of pretty words (ever the writer, I guess) that said “Crystal Palace.” Crystal Palace, I said, and along came the shirt that had a round neck and a stripe of claret and also one of blue on a white background. I used to wear this to play football on Dartford Heath.
Six months later, Palace was relegated along with West Bromwich Albion. Oh, the shame! I had to glance again at the Shoot league ladder, at which point I saw that there was another team with the same colours (yes, I know Palace today have brighter reds and blues, but back in the day of Alan Birchenall, Mel Blyth and Dave Swindlehurst, their colours matched those of the Hammers.
Added to the pain (I was not quite seven years old then), my primary school teacher mentioned in assembly that he, John Evans, was not the only Palace supporter in my Northwest Kent school, because also there was now new pupil, fresh up from infants school, Terry Baker, who also I have learnt from his father supports…. My head sunk low, low, low.
I do not seem to remember receiving ridicule, perhaps because I was not that year boasting of many Palace wins and we all had moved on school, even though it was for nearly everyone a case of going from Barnehurst Infants to Barnehurst Primary in the same building more or less. So, quickly, I chose another team with the same colours, and maybe by this time I knew something of the geography of England and was in no way likely to choose Aston Villa, Burnley or Scunthorpe. I support West Ham I boldly announced that same week, the first week of Big Boys and Girls School, “I ‘ave no idea wot the ‘eadmaster’s on about, inn’t, silly git!”
West Ham finished, you might remember, sixth in that same year, although 18th the next, which might have sobered me up a little.
Of course, the season after that we won the FA Cup, and that was it, and you are still lumbered with me. Please forgive me my childish folly.
My prediction: Crystal Palace 0 West Ham Utd. 2…Nolan and Tomkins.
It is at the back of the club, so most supporters cannot see it or, very sadly if this is the case, have to make a concerted effort to visit it, but as I walked by and stared at it through Nikon binoculars, I saw 14 seagulls crash into it in collective disbelief or a shared lemming-like death pact. Probably the latter. London’s lost it, they must have squawked.
Much better to have put up a statue of Bobby Zamora scoring the winning Play-off goal against Preston North End in 2005, I would have thought. I think you will notice that the statue shows less the supposed King of Pop (although I would elect David Sylvian for that role), but rather a nonplussed man suddenly being terrorised by a gang of leaping sticklebacks.
Championship; Saturday, Sept. 24, 2011; Upton Park, East London
West Ham Utd. 1 Peterborough Utd. 0
Championship; Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011; Upton Park, East London
West Ham Utd 0 Ipswich Town 1
Can you name me one other team plying its trade in the Championship that has been so aversely affected by the International Break? Usually that honour is reserved for Premiership teams, but how else can one explain 14 goals scored in four Championship games before the break and none scored in the three Championship games after it, at least goals scored in open play? The only goal recently has been Mark Noble’s penalty (and three points, mind) against Peterborough—a win is a win is a win—and it is a little depressing to see us once again capitulate in the last few minutes, as much as it was to see that it was Lee Bowyer who inflicted the damage. Did he ever score for us? I seem to remember him only scoring for us against rubbish teams where someone else in the team no doubt would have done so if he hadn’t, and I also remember him being in the team during that painful afternoon in which we was beaten 6-0 by Reading. Reading!
The commentary that dismal day stated that “this West Ham side has three main problems: a jittery defence, a non-existent midfield and a miserable excuse for an attack.”
Pray that that is not the case, too, now.
It’s too early to panic, and we are where we want to be, but come on, chaps, stuff the holes with cotton wool and stop making it easy for Robert Green to walk away dignity intact come January.
Was Matty Taylor being rested? Apart from Winston Reid not playing, the team against Ipswich (home: 0-1) was the same as that of us against Nottingham Forest (away: 1-4), with the exception of Taylor and Jack Collison, so what was the special, missing or present ingredient? A continual fear of home matches?
A need for Sam Allardyce to make some drastic announcements?
The Next Match
Championship; Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011; Selhurst Park, South London
Crystal Palace vs. West Ham Utd.
A drastic announcement from me would be to publicly confess a dire admission that I might have whispered already on occasion, that occasion being three pints in. Here we go: I once was a supporter of Crystal Palace F.C.
Yes, a very sordid affair. Back in October 1972, my dad asked if I wanted a football kit for Christmas, there also being a need to order these things early to avoid disappointment. I said I did. What team, he asked? I don’t know, I said. So, looking along my Shoot magazine league ladder (in which you collected and repositioned team tabs every Sunday depending on that weekend’s Saturday results) I came across a combination of pretty words (ever the writer, I guess) that said “Crystal Palace.” Crystal Palace, I said, and along came the shirt that had a round neck and a stripe of claret and also one of blue on a white background. I used to wear this to play football on Dartford Heath.
Six months later, Palace was relegated along with West Bromwich Albion. Oh, the shame! I had to glance again at the Shoot league ladder, at which point I saw that there was another team with the same colours (yes, I know Palace today have brighter reds and blues, but back in the day of Alan Birchenall, Mel Blyth and Dave Swindlehurst, their colours matched those of the Hammers.
Added to the pain (I was not quite seven years old then), my primary school teacher mentioned in assembly that he, John Evans, was not the only Palace supporter in my Northwest Kent school, because also there was now new pupil, fresh up from infants school, Terry Baker, who also I have learnt from his father supports…. My head sunk low, low, low.
I do not seem to remember receiving ridicule, perhaps because I was not that year boasting of many Palace wins and we all had moved on school, even though it was for nearly everyone a case of going from Barnehurst Infants to Barnehurst Primary in the same building more or less. So, quickly, I chose another team with the same colours, and maybe by this time I knew something of the geography of England and was in no way likely to choose Aston Villa, Burnley or Scunthorpe. I support West Ham I boldly announced that same week, the first week of Big Boys and Girls School, “I ‘ave no idea wot the ‘eadmaster’s on about, inn’t, silly git!”
West Ham finished, you might remember, sixth in that same year, although 18th the next, which might have sobered me up a little.
Of course, the season after that we won the FA Cup, and that was it, and you are still lumbered with me. Please forgive me my childish folly.
My prediction: Crystal Palace 0 West Ham Utd. 2…Nolan and Tomkins.
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