Baker's Law of Championship International Breakage

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.