Arsenal travel to the London Stadium

December 3, 2016

Today’s pre-match is written by a long suffering West Ham supporter, hope you enjoy the read.

Towards the end of last season, the vertically challenged of the porn brothers was asked whether the club were about to offer Slaven Billic a new contract, given his impressive first season.  In classic Sullivan style, he said not yet as the owners wanted to make sure Slav wasn’t a one season wonder.  Many pundits thought this disrespectful and just plain wrong.

But over in East London, we have a bit of history in this area.

In 2001 Harry Redknapp was replaced by Glenn Roeder.  The supporters were rather perplexed as he hadn’t achieved anything from a managerial standpoint but by the end of that season Roeder led the club to a respectable 7th place .

Unfortunately his second season was nothing short of an unmitigated disaster culminating in relegation.  Quite a feat that with a team boasting David James, Jermaine Defoe, Michael Carrick, Paulo Di Canio, Joe Cole, Trevor Sinclair and Freddie Kanoute to name just a few.  Incidentally, many fans believe the first home game of that season set the seal on what was to come when 2-0 up with 30 minutes to play, goals from Wiltord and Henry denied the Hammers a winning start.  By the time of the return fixture in mid January – won via a skanky hat trick by Henry – we had failed to register a single win at home.

It took 3 seasons and two play offs to make it back to the promised land.

Fast forward to 2008/09 and early in the season, Alan Curbishley threw his toys out the pram following the sale of George McCartney to Sunderland and was replaced by the flair, but managerial inexperience, of Gianfranco Zola.  A respectable 9th place finish was achieved playing an attractive brand of football.  Although there was turmoil off the pitch with the Icelandic owners checking their bank statement and discovering they were more likely to be shopping at Iceland than at Harrods, supporters looked forward to the following season with great anticipation.  Incidentally the Gunners took 4 points from us that season with a 2-0 win at Upton Park followed by a hard fought 0-0 draw at The Emirates.

Sure enough, a combination of off field turmoil, second season syndrome and the arrival of the Porn brothers created enough instability to take the club spiralling back towards the Championship.  The only thing that saved them (and their paltry 35 points) were three worse teams in the shape of Portsmouth, Hull and Burnley who finished with 19, 30 and 30 points respectively.

That season also saw a reverse of the 2003 fixture between the giants of North and East London as The Hammers came back from 2-0 down (Van Persie and Gallas) to draw 2-2 at Upton Park.  Zola was dismissed at the end of that season but it was hard not to feel sympathy for him as that genius football club chairman David (Dildo) Sullivan weaved his magic wand in the January transfer window.  Desperate for a goal scoring forward he recruited Mido and Benni McCarthy who legend has it both signed their contracts at McDonalds on the A13 where they’d been holed up for 6 months gorging on Burger and Chips.  Unsurprisingly, neither registered a goal during their short but ill-fated stay.

Having failed to ensure relegation that season, The Porn Brothers recruited Avram Grant and sure enough, got the job done 12 months later.

So, fast forward again to now and what does the future hold following another successful first season for a new West Ham manager?  Well, to be honest, it’s not looking good at all.  Once again we have ‘off the field’ turmoil, this time between the club and supporters, who have now realised they’ve been sold 2 pups.

The first in the shape of an athletics stadium masquerading as a football ground.  The atmosphere at times is toxic and promises made a year ago by The Duchess, in a video promoting the new ground, have been proved to be outright lies.  A recent survey on popular forum ‘Kumb’ suggests only 35% of season ticket holders are certain to renew their season tickets next season. There is even talk of a protest tomorrow in front of the cameras.

Secondly, the move was sold as our chance to challenge the Premiership big guns by attracting world class players.  At the end of last season, buoyed by a seventh place finish and a prospective European campaign, Sullivan boasted about getting ready to sign a top quality goal scorer spending £25 million plus in the process.  But despite repeated attempts to entice Carlos Bacca and Arsenal target Alexander Lacazette to East London, we have ended up with a promising but untried striker from Man U, a promising but untried young striker from Argentina and a loan (with an option to buy) joke of a striker from Juventus.

Coupled with the obligatory Andy Carroll injury before the second Premiership game of the season (he may be on the bench tomorrow) and a sulking Diafra Sakho who came back to pre-season in a shocking physical state (is now injured again and out for 6 weeks having only just made his seasonal bow) we have had zero cutting edge.

We also failed to solve the problem right back position and managed to destroy the confidence of one of our best attacking players, Michael Antonio, by playing him in a back four where he clearly struggled. (and NO – we don’t want Jenko back).

Payet, without a target man to find, has failed to reach the heights of last season (there is actually a feeling that he has pretty much thrown in the towel and will be off in January), Ayew, who the club had a chance to sign for free last year, but stupidly paid Swansea more than £20 million at the start of this season has been out for pretty much the whole campaign.  Creswell has only recently returned from 4 months out only to get injured again at Old Trafford on Wednesday night (and also looks like missing out tomorrow).  Mark Noble, outstanding last season, has been poor and Lanzini, also injured before the season began has struggled to recapture last seasons’ impressive form.

We sit in 17th and with matches against you boys and then Liverpool away, we could soon be sitting in the bottom three as we head towards Xmas (and we all know what that means).  So the prospects for tomorrow are not great.  Our defence are unable to keep a clean sheet and we have no one to put the ball in the back of the net.

Big Raddy tells me he has a bad feeling about the game but I’ve known him for close to 50 years and he’s one of the worst predictors of a football match I’ve ever come across – I’m expecting a 2 goal win for The Arse with Walcott getting one and Ozil the other.

I also think Bilic will be gone by the end of the season (sadly) and the Porn Brothers and The Duchess still there (a bigger shame) but we will retain our Premiership standing (just).

Enjoy the game.

Written by WestHamBob

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The Best Ever Football Stadium Migration – You’re ‘Avin a Giraffe, Love

October 12, 2016

 

When the porn brothers announced their intention to move from one of London’s most feared stadiums to an athletics and concert venue, I like most regular fans felt a certain degree of unease.  Surely we didn’t need a 52,000 seat stadium especially one with a bloody great running track between the players and the old east side chicken run.

But then the spin began – 85% of supporters canvassed were in favour of the move, a new cantilever system would place seats where the running track would be, football would be once again affordable for the ordinary man (or woman) in the street, the transport links would be second to none, it will catapult us into the upper echelons of the premiership and challenging the traditional top four incumbents.  Oh and by the way, we’re gonna pay sweet fanny adams for the privilege – how could you possibly say no.

The final season at the Boleyn was so very West Ham.  For quite some time it looked like we could break into the top four and begin life at the Olympic Stadium with Real Madrid, Bayern, Barcelona and Juventus as regular visitors.  But of course, just like our dreams we faded and very nearly died only to deal Man United a third crushing blow (having denied them 2 Premier League Championships) and consign them to a season of Thursday night football.  Still 7th place was good enough to secure a place in the Europa League 3rd qualifying round and having re-configured the Man United team bus we said an emotional farewell to the old girl.

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The summer approached and we got to see images of our new ‘home’ – oh and by the way, it’s now called the London Stadium. Yep that’s right and oh, did we forget to tell you, we’re going to have a bit of a re-brand and our new badge, which all three of you who we consulted just love, also encompasses the word London, coz that’s where we’re from see!

In the meantime, the club announced we’d miraculously found an extra 5,000 seats and sold the lot.  But not to worry if you’ve not got a ticket, coz we’ve also found another 9,000 on top of that so now we’ve got London’s largest stadium and with a season ticket waiting list in excess of 50,000 we’ll have no trouble selling out every game.  Sounds too good to be true?  You bet.

You see, in The Duchesses excitement to do the deal of the century, she forgot some of the basics.

Now you’d think they would have tried to move/migrate like-minded fans to the same part of the ground.  You know, the 9,000 or so supporters who stood behind both goals together with those who stood in certain corners of the ground.  You know, the ones who got the singing going, gave the opposition players and fans untold grief – made Upton Park a cauldron of noise, overcame the sterilisation of all seated stadium and all that.  But know, they mixed the whole bloody lot up.

Secondly, you’d think that the club would want control of the security and stewarding so the customer experience was under their auspices.  But no, The Duchess got the deal of the century you see.  So she insisted the stadium owners handled that.  Which they sort of did by outsourcing these areas to the stadium operators who guess what – outsourced it to a French organisation who run the Stade de France.

Now you’d think they would look to re-hire all the stewards from the old ground.  The ones who know how to control football and in particular West Ham supporters.  But no – some went with but the majority have now resigned in protest at the atrocious methods being used.  You see those wanting to stand and those wanting to sit aren’t able to co-exist.  So what happens is the stewards wander around with clip boards, writing down seat numbers and those standing ticket holders receive warning letters and are told their tickets will be rescinded.   The more vociferous of these ‘stewards’ go after small pockets of standers and actually remove them from the ground and take their season tickets away.  As you can imagine, it doesn’t make for a very happy home.

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And then we have the home/away supporter segregation.  As has been reported, for the first few games, apart from a few seats, there was none.  The stewards had no experience of football fans, being mainly involved in keeping Elton John fans under control on a balmy summer evenings. At The London stadium it’s not just Saturday nights that are all right for fighting!  But surely the police sort these problems out I hear you say?  Nope, in her haste to seal the deal of the millennium, The Duchess decided to overlook the fact that the police stated they were unable to operate inside the stadium as it was currently configured.

And that’s just inside the stadium.  Outside and around the concourse there is absolutely no segregation and no plan for what to do at full time.  It is, as the saying goes, just one great big cock up.

But I’m afraid that’s not all.  To try and beef up the Elton John brigade, the outsourced, outsourced security have added a few night club bouncers – you can guess the rest!

On the other side of the away fans (think lower chicken run and upper east side at The Boleyn) we have the real hard core fans – that’s right 750 tickets sold via Thomas Cook to overseas ‘fans’ and anyone willing to also buy a night at a London Hotel.  Just doesn’t bear thinking about when certain teams come to visit.

But what about the views and the cantilever seating I hear you say.  A bloody joke I reply.  Billic spends half the match screaming 30 yards behind him at his coaching staff.  The pitch is ridiculously far from the pitch on all sides.  In short, this is not a football ground and never will be.  My heart truly aches for Upton Park and I feel the very soul of my club is being eroded.

And then, a couple of days ago, The Duchess appeared at ‘Leaders’ a football conference aimed at the good and the great of the game.  Much was made of her comments surrounded the lack of culture at the club when she arrived, however I’m prepared to overlook that as she was really referring to the ‘business culture’.  What didn’t get so widely reported, but was far more upsetting were her comments regarding the opportunity to ‘re-brand the club’ which is where the London nonsense comes from.  You see, The Duchess doesn’t want the traditional support turning up at ‘The London Stadium’.  She’s got a whole new plan in place, for pop corn munching, Coca Cola swilling ABC1’s to fill up all 66,000 seats and shout “Horrah, well done old chaps, jolly good play”.

So, Arsenal fans will have to wait until 3rd December to make their own minds up, unfortunately I won’t be there as I have decided to stay away until The Duchess decides to hang up her robe and get out of my club.  I still love West Ham United, but you can stick West Ham United London up yer a…….

written by West Ham Bob

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