Today is the day that West Ham United will prove that they do not live up to their name. West Ham yes, United no. I written so many times before about the appalling lack of leadership at the club that I am bored by the whole thing and cannot wait for this season horribilis to end. It has been a slow, but inevitable death right from the very first game of the season. Next week, I will go to Upton Park to say goodbye to Scott Parker, one of the few who has risen above the nonsense at the club and played his heart out week in, week out. If only others had shown the same approach we may have shown a bit of fight.
‘This is a game we need to win. It doesn’t only depend on us, but what depends on us is the need to win. We are also playing against a team who also need to win, so this will be interesting.’
‘We need to do what depends on us, which is to win against a very difficult team in their home. If we don’t do it, we don’t have any chance’
‘In my experience of football it is not over until it is over. It has happened to me in the past. I was not in this situation – a relegation fight – but I was in the top in a situation like this when it didn’t only depend on us. I don’t want us to miss this chance, I want us to do what we need to do. That is all.’
And so the drivel goes on and on. Soon it will stop and I for one hope our leaders learn and then think long and hard before appointing their next manager. Time to put the helicopter back in the garage Mr Gold, close your mouth more often Mr Sullivan and take a tip from SirAlan Ms Brady and say ‘you’re fired’ a little earlier next time. One thing is for certain, you will no longer get my season ticket money until you have proved there is a vision, after all a fish always rots from the head.
And finally the grand total of 14, yes 14 people pressed their Facebook ‘LIKE’ button on Avram’s reported words on West Ham’s website, proving there are only a few idiots around, despite all the rumours.
I woke up this morning at 6am and just could not get back to sleep, no matter how tired I thought I was. Nothing unusual in the Spring or Summer months, I am usually so keen to get up and get outside into the garden, I think I just wake up with the sunrise. But today is FA Cup Final day and it used to be a very special day, especially when I was younger. Today could still be a special day given that there are 2 teams in the Final neither of whom have won any silverware since the 1970’s, Stoke City and Manchester City. Stoke have never been in the Final in their 140 odd years of existence, so their fans will be experiencing a mix of emotions, anxiety right now and maybe, just maybe ecstasy at about 5pm tonight. Or their fans and players will feel flatter than a pancake if they lose to their big money rivals, the Chelsea replacements in light blue. To both sets of fans winning will be everything today and losing, well just not worth contemplating. To both sets of supporters, may the best team win.
My how the game has changed though. This is the first time ever that the FA Cup Final has been played before the end of the Football League season (or indeed the Premier League) has actually finished. Worse than that, a stack of Premiership teams actually play today, all be it at 12.45pm. And even worse than that, the FA Cup Final is no longer on the BBC! Without being dewy eyed. things ain’t what they used to be.
FA Cup Final day was always special. Outside of World Cups and the occasional European Championship ( I say occasional that was because there was only 8 teams who took part, even up to 1992, and the home countries were rarely involved) and the much loved and much missed Home Internationals, which featured England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Island in a round robin tournament played over a week of 2 Saturdays and a Wednesday nigh match, there was no live football on TV.
I remember watching my first Final in 1970 – Chelsea vs Leeds which went to a replay the following week, which was great becasue it was another match live on TV. Chelsea won it and also won a legion of new fans, all about 6 or 7 years old. At school on the Monday after the Saturday draw, I remember getting punched by some bigger kids because when they asked me ‘who are you for the replay, Chelsea or Leeds’ I simply replied, ‘neither, I amWest Ham’. I think the die was cast even at an early stage in my life that I was never one to follow the crowds and certainly never one to support anyone else bar my beloved Hammers. In 1971 we saw Arsenal do the Double in colour for the first time and Charlie George lay prone after scoring the winner against Liverpool. Then in ’72 it was Arsenal back again, this time against the mighty Leeds, Mick Jones with a bandaged shoulder which looked like it had dislocated as he crossed the ball for Allan Clarke to nail the winner. I remember that year collecting the Esso coin collection celebrating 100 years of the FA Cup, and pleading with Dad to make sure he always bought Esso petrol and thus got more little blue printed paper packets with a precious silver coin inside. In ’73 it was that legendary game, Sunderland of the 2nd Division beating the mighty Leeds! No one could believe it. In 74 Liverpool thumped Newcastle 3-0 and Alec Lindsay scored a scorcher which was ruled out as offside. In ’75 it was West Ham against 2nd Division Fulham. Bobby Moore, the legendary number 6 played, but not for West Ham but for Fulham. In then end all my dreams came true when our FA Cup hero, Alan Taylor scored twice again and Billy Bonds lifted the FA Cup and I was happy as a happy thing for months. The following year, it was Southampton’s turn for a day in the sun and they beat hot favourites Manchester United with a solitary goal by Bobby Stokes. And so every year the memories just built. I have only ever been to 2 FA Cup Finals, 1980 when a 2nd Division West Ham beat 1st Division Arsenal and in 2006 when a 2nd Division (now rebranded Championship) West Ham took Premiership Liverpool to penalties after a 3-3 draw in 120 minutes, not at Wembley but in Cardiff. A great day and all that, one I will never forget, despite us being on the losing side.
Not only was the match live on TV in the old days, but the whole day seemed to be about the Cup. I think the BBC and ITV used to kick off about 9 or 10am and we would have Cup Final themed ‘SwapShop’ (BBC) and something else on ITV, and the day was about one thing and one thing only. But these were different days. Yes the game meant everything, but it was played by players who earned good money, but not daft money. The gap between the fans and those players was not enormous. We were all working class people, joining together on the big day. We all wanted to win, but we all had a laugh or a cry and above all there was a feeling of a national togetherness. Even the managers were relaxed and full of banter. Nowadays it is all conflict and hype. Take a look at ‘Big’ Ron Atkinson and Jimmy Melia who were interviewed by the legendary David Coleman on the morning of the Cup Final. They are laughing and joking and at complete ease with each other. How refreshing that is when compared with some of the nonsense we see today.
Ok, we were younger and we had more vivid memories, but who could forget the FA Cup finalists, the players, the heroes and the villians. The sea of colours, the banners, the terraces at Wembley stacked with true fans paying fair prices and the perfect pitch, green and cut with what must have been nail scissors. Who also could forget the players, putting absolutely everything into a game, often played in blazing sunshine. Those same players with rolled down socks, discarded shin pads and fantastic 70’s and 80’s hairstyles, exhausted, many crippled by cramp and all connected to their fans and to the nation as a whole. Above all, the nation would tune in in to 1 of 2 channels and watch the game, ‘Abide with Me’ would bring tears to the eyes of the older ones, and us youngsters would be so excited we were also close to tears.
And then to the game. Everyone, and I mean everyone would be watching the game. It was just like Christmas Day, but without all the presents. Once the game was over, we would all go outside and then play football for hours, until the very last chink of sunshine allowed us to see an old rough ball. I will always remember that Sunderland team, managed by the man in the hat, Bob Stokoe, who really could not believe that they had beaten the best team in the country. These were the best of times and there were simply no ‘worst of times’. Today is a tale of two cities, Manchester and Stoke and let’s hope the best team on the day, the one who wants it most, wins. I have no fear that both sets of fans will be singing their hearts out as it will mean loads to them. Indeed one of my very good friends is an ardent Manchester City fan in his 60’s and he is taking his family and his mother a lifelong fan. Another old school friend will be there, hoping that his beloved City will win something at last. That for me is what football is all about.
I must admit I do like to see nature weaving it’s influence in our every day lives. Spring is an amazing time, after months of dullness, we all get a lift when the days get longer, the temperature rises, the sun shines more, the plants start to grow and the dickie birds start to
tweet. You just know that things are changing and the world is literally growing.
I also like that phenomenon called entropy. I have always been fascinated by the constant battle between man, and the animal kingdom in general, to create structures only for the elements assisted by the plants to fight back to prove who or what really has the power. We build, but if we do not keep our wits about us, those structures start to unpick and return to dust.
Man has constantly learned about the forces of nature, both constructive and destructive, through adversity. The in built need to
survive drives us not only to seek shelter but to maintain it. We have learned though that design and maintenance without savvy thinking leads to failure and that is what drives us forward and keeps us vital as a race. The survival gene also means we are both fearful and greedy in equal measure, but nevertheless it does mean we are forced to learn. Learning is merely adapting to the power of nature
and using it in a way which allows a better standard of survival. Who really wants to struggle each and every day in their lives merely to survive? Some people in this world, through accident of birth or oppression face that hell daily. Most people in the West don’t face a life and death struggle unless they are badly ill. Our struggles are relative, our pain controllable.
So when the established order, namely that order imposed by man on man, becomes subjected to man’s nature, some call it progress and
others chaos. It is therefore rather amusing that the old order can expend loads of energy trying to push back against ‘progress’, when it should embrace change and use the natural energy to enjoy our very existence more. Teachers of the Martial Arts talk utilise their opponents’ energy to defend themselves. In short they think smart and actually aim to avoid conflict. But I digress, getting back to building a house, if you build it in a place that just gets flooded all the time, you don’t build flood defences or even pass a law to stop the floods, you move and find somewhere else to live. Or take the risk that one day nature will take it’s course.
So when I read, hear and see that the law makers are getting in a tizzy about so called ‘superinjunctions’ being broken on Twitter
and the old, established media often known as the Fourth Estate, are equally riled because their right to ‘freedom of the press’ is compromised, I do laugh. After all these ‘superinjunctions’ are seemingly the vestiges of the rich, allegedly costing £50,000 to implement (son if you want to make a fortune work in money or in the law) and seem to be exclusively
used to keep so called celebrities out of the press, gutter or otherwise,
If our society has learned anything then our politicians and law makers will learn to embrace these things rather than fight them. The genie came out of the internet bottle years ago. Social networks have allowed us all to chit chat and gossip and exchange information, a bit like we have always done down the pub, but on a globally connected basis. No longer is the dissemination of ‘news’ the divine right of the media. You could argue that newspapers such as The Sun, The News of the World, The Star, The Daily Express and The Daily Mail have blurred the lines between truth and rumour so much in recent years that citizens cannot be blamed for amplifying these stories or indeed making them up for themselves.
As fascinating however, is that the members of the traditional press and media are all calling for these ‘superinjunctions’ to go away, after all some corners of the media relish the power to ‘report freely’. The constant wrangle between what is in the public interest and what is interesting to the public, have blurred the lines. They really don’t want to be held back the poor loves. Equally, their knight in shining armour is not the law makers or law enforcers, but those very same citizen journalists who are held in contempt by some members of the traditional (and regulated) press.
Through the power of Twitter and those who Tweet for fun not money, parts of the Establishment’s legal system has been made to look out of date and completely out of step. Plenty of lawyers are arguing for the right to privacy and plenty are arguing for the right to freedom of information. You just know that if you leave lawyers in charge, you end up with big bills. Meanwhile, it’s Spring time and the birds are tweeting, nature is using entropy to return our man made laws to dust.
One of my favourite films of all time is the last film Peter Sellers ever made, ‘Being There’. It was a tale of a man (Chance – the gardner) who lived in near isolation, although not poverty, in a busy world and who by chance becomes a confidant to the president of the United States of America and extraordinary influence, yet speaks simplistic nonsense. He is a simple man, naive but innocent and decent, but sadly capable of little. A nice guy.
Chance (Chauncey Gardiner) reminds me so much of the West Ham United manager, Avram Grant. The wrong man in the wrong place for West Ham. I have gone on record, from the start of the season before we conceded 12 goals in 4 games that this was a catastophic disaster of a decision and culminated with me ditching my 2 season tickets in January. Take a look at this, enjoy the ‘movie’ references and marvel at the wisdom.
So yesterday, Saturday May 7th 2011, I decided to go back to West Ham.
The mood of the season has not changed since August last year, the beginning of the season. We have been consistent. A mix of appallingly bad leadership at the very top, ie the owners and their appointment of a manager who has zero track record, highlighted how much our owners really know about football and probably highlighted what the football industry thought of them. Faced with a crippling debt, which they inherited knowingly, they probably had few options in terms of replacements for the man that they undermined last season, Franco Zola. But the option they went with was always wrong, wrong for West Ham and wrong for everyone who is associated with the club. I think the mainstream media knew this and gently highlighted it early in the season. Indeed out very own foghorn Leghorn, co-chairman David Sullivan spoke freely about the manager being on the end of the noose as soon as we had lost our opening 4 fixtures by 3 goals a piece.
Then there was the Martin O’Neill debacle. Clearly the owners knew that Avram Grant’s days were numbered and he was an awful mistake, so they tried to recruit a replacement in January. Here the idiotic two were join by their managing director, Karen Brady who we will see dishing out all sorts of cod advice next week on the BBC when she appears as one of Sir Alan’s helpers on The Apprentice. Brady decided to brief the press on the quiet that O’Neill was all but a done deal. Even hapless Grant knew his game was up and threw his scarf into the crowd after the game with Arsenal which he thought would be his last. Trouble was, Mr O’Neill was a man of principle and knew if you sleep with dogs you can catch fleas. Within a day the deal was off, O’Neill was staying put at home and Sullivan and Gold were left with their tails between their legs. Gold even had the front to appear on Football Focus and state that ‘I would like Avram to be the manager for the next 20 years’. Unbelievable. You have to think this is either rubbish, or err, rubbish.
All this week the other half of Little and Little, Mr Sullivan, has been shouting his mouth off in the press about the inevitability of being relegated and the fact that all of our ‘England’ players will be sold. You really have to wonder if the owners are daft at all. We know they never want to pay high wages to players, just look at their record at Birmingham. How better to get the big earners off your books by a season or two in the Championship? The fans will understand that these players are too good for the Championship won’t they and the club can reduce the wage bill and get a few quid to boot.
You have to look at track records. The one track record we all know is that Avram Grant doesn’t have one, ‘got n Harry Rednapp’s way at Pompey as ‘director of football, took over from Mourinho at Chelsea when they lost the Champions League, and presided over Portsmouth’s relegation last season, before relegating West Ham’ is how I would sum it up. But the bigger question for me is the track record of the Holey (sic) Trinity of Sullivan, Gold and Brady. 16 years at Birmingham – they took over in 1993 with the club in Division 1 (now the Championship) and were relegated to Division 2 in 1994. Eventually promoted to the Premiership in 2002 but relegated in 2006 after just 4 seasons. Promoted again the following season, in 2007, they were relegated the following year 2008 and promoted back in 2009. In short Birmingham were a yo-yo club – 16 years at the helm and Gold and Sullivan presided over 4 promotions and 3 relegations.
But back to Grant. Clearly unable to motivate the players, in possession of unusual tactical nous to say the least, he still, week after week talks absolute rubbish in every interview he gives. He cannot motivate his team, his bosses love to demotivate the team through the press and most of all us fans have become demotivated. Who can blame the players if they just want to get the season over and get the first cab out of Upton Park in search of a new club, with better ownership and with a manager who may just make them feel better about themselves and show them how to win. Messrs Green, Upson, Parker and Cole I personally wish you the very best of luck. I just hope there are no more teams who will think Avram Grant is no more than a simple gardner and I bet you all fear playing for him ever again.
Meanwhile Mr Sullivan and Mr Gold, you need to show proper leadership, take long hard look at yourself, and hope for you own sakes that you can find someone with takent to manage our club. I am not sure how many would want to work for the two of you.
Boy oh boy, Baroness Warsi has made some right old ricketts in her day, but if you are at all confused about the whole Alternative Vote (AV) Referendum this week, invest afew minutes of your time and watch this video. This is absolutley brilliant, and lurches between comedy, pathos and bathos. If we were voting for speaking loudly, trying to make pre-briefed points no matter what the question and not simply not listening, this lady who serves in the Cabinet would get my vote anyday. Except of course, she is a non voted for member of the Cabinet ‘passionately supporting our current voting system. The First Past the Post (FPTP) system has not put her in government, but I am sure if she was in charge of the #N2AV campaign, she would allege AV would give us ‘losers’ in positions of power. You have to laugh.
I have just been looking up the voting percentage splits from previous elections over the last 30 years in the UK and it seeems that there is a recurring theme here:-
1979 the results of the three main parties were:
Conservatives, 43.9% of the vote, 339 seats
Labour, 36.9% of the vote, 269 seats
Liberals, 13.8% of the vote, 11 seats.
1983
Conservatives, 42.4% of the vote, 397 seats
Labour, 27.6% of the vote, 209 seats
SDP/Liberal Alliance, 25.4% of the vote, 23 seats
1987
Conservatives, 42.2% of the vote, 376 seats
Labour, 30.8% of the vote, 229 seats
Alliance (now LibDems) , 22.6% of the vote, 22 seats
1992
Conservatives, 41.9% of the vote, 336 seats
Labour, 34.4% of the vote, 271 seats
Liberal Democrats, 17.8% of the vote, 20 seats.
1997
Labour, 43.2% of the vote, 418 seats
Conservatives, 30.7% of the vote, 165 seats
Liberal Democrats, 16.8% of the vote, 46 seats
So, without any real argument, our First Past the Post (FPTP) system allows a majority (and therefore ‘strong and decisive) government with minority votes – no more than 43.9% of the voters ever voted for the government in the last 30 years!
So, imagine yourselves in a real life situation, where ten of you are in a meeting, maybe at work, at your school, in your local community. After some debate, you take a vote and under half of those in attendance, those who have taken part, those with arguments win the day. Would the other 6 really stand for that? Of course not. There would be further debate until agreement was made which allowed the majority to feel empowered and to feel that their opinions actually count. That is real life.
If there is any doubt, would we countenance any judicial system, and crucially trial by jury, that did not rely on a majority call? Of course we wouldn’t. AV is not that system, but it feels like FPTP is really not that fair, even if it may be a ‘simple’ system that is ‘easy to understand’.
I came across this blog yesterday, written incidentally by a man I met many years ago when he worked in the video games industry. I actually thought this was pretty interesting given it was written not only by a Conservative, but a Conservative who actually works in public service as a Conservative, Mr Andrew Boff. I would encourage you to read the blog and also then cast your eyes down the comment section – the visceral ire is pretty unmistakeable, no surprise there though, given that internet trolls seem to be everywhere nowadays!
It does feel sort of mad that we have a system which sends 440 of the 650 MPs to Parliament without the majority support of their electorates. I mean that just does not seem right, or am I missing something?
Add to this some very simple statistics about the 2005 General Election, where the Labour party won by a landslide using the First Past The Post (FPTP) system :-
Labour won 356 of the seats in Parliament – a majority of seats ie 55.2% , but won with only 35.3% of the votes cast.
Conservative won 198 seats in Parliament ie 30.7% of the seats, but actually recorded 32.3% of the votes cast – only 3% less than Labour but 24.5% less seats!
The Liberal Democrats polled 22.1% of the votes (i.e 10.2% less than Conservative and 13.2% less than Labour) but only won 62 seats, i.e 9.2% of those available.
It looks to me that our voting system, unlike our country, is broken, or certainly does not work. The Alternative Vote (AV) is not going to fix that system however. Indeed, some will argue that it will only help more coalitions come into play and therefore it will be impossible to vote a single party (often branded ‘strong’ and ‘principled ‘) government out. That could well be the case, but it does rather suggest that the people of the UK or either Labour or Conservative voters and everyone else will not get a look in. Surely the 20th century showed that a cycle of Conservative and Labour governments was not great for our nation. Swinging left to right seems like such a waste of energy after all. Can we simply not take a straight path, dealing with issues rather than party politics? The days of empire are over and the repression of the working classes feels less today than it was perhaps in the first half of the 20th century. May be now is the time to embrace change, in a particularly British way – not too radical, not too fast and certainly not revolutionary. #Yes2AV is a small change so does this make it right?
More research and more reading needed on this issue for me. Next up I want to see what the politicians say, so off to YouTube to see what I can find.
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