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.