A comedy club without the laughs
- by Paul Walker
- Filed: Thursday, 17th October 2024
We used to be a circus, now we are just told we are the most laughably impossible club to run in the Premier League.
Some survey or other that happened across my screen this week reckons we are a load of laughs for everybody else but us.Firstly I was annoyed - it’s my club they are talking about - but when you are intentionally watching from the outside, during an international break and away with family on the Kent coast accompanied by a few bottles of wine to help the healing process after 'Anfield covid', you see West Ham from a different angle. Like everyone else sees us. A box of frogs, as the saying goes.
Where do you start? Balloons, it seems, are ballistic missiles in the minds of our wonderful owners. Over 20,000 signatures on the petition to reverse the concessions ban but they don’t seem to be bothered.
Our board’s idea of sensible negotiation is to treat their patrons like Victorian mill owners treated their staff - by ignoring them and threatening them with heavy-handed stewards if they dare to gently pat a balloon into the sky in protest. Hard to make that up with the local authority thinking they are nuts.
And then there’s the new-ish ‘sit down, shut up’ view about safe standing and then another load of nonsense about singing areas. Let’s get this clear, nobody needed singing areas at the Boleyn, nobody needed them last season for that memorable night against Bayer Leverkusen.
But orchestrated singing, no doubt with song sheets handed out for the tourists who don’t know the words? You sing when you are winning, so it goes, or at least when there’s something to sing about. OK, I’m being irrational as the heart and soul of my club is being organised for me.
You know, I even heard myself saying at the Ipswich game this wasn’t my club anymore, not the one that my dad and his brother guided me down Wakefield Street to see back in the 1950s and '60s. Now my long-suffering son guides me over bridges and canals and into security queues.
I always say ‘good afternoon’ to those lads, and they always check my little bag of spare hearing aid batteries just in case I try to launch them at the referee some 100 yards away.
What else? We’ll there’s been another painful debate with the club’s grifters - a description I’ve only heard from my other, irrational obsession with politics - over whether the club is for sale or not. More of that later, but if the price was met then David Sullivan would sell, it’s been that way for a while.
Karren Brady has been out to the Middle East looking for buyers, meanwhile Vanessa Gold is still trying to knock out her shares. Of course we are open for business, as they say.
We’ve seen one of Sullivan’s sons wheeled out to tell us how a Premier League club is run. Blimey, he’s 24, has only worked for his dad’s firm, and if the old boy pops is clogs one day (he’s 75 like me) young Jack could be running the place. I leave you to think on that one.
And I haven’t even got to the football yet. The usual catalogue of internationals have been away with their countries. We’ve had Edson Alvarez being unable to convince Mexican journalists that he’s not in line for a move to AC Milan. Lucas Paqueta is going to be hauled in front of Brazilian government officials keen to learn about spot fixing while being linked with a move to Real Madrid. I'm not sure if pigs fly over Madrid, but you get the point.
And then there’s Mo Kudus, criminally played on the left this season when that’s not his position. Ghana have failed to qualify for the ACON finals, our Mo is captain and obviously to blame and has got it in the neck from Ghana officials. Oh, and he’s going to Liverpool and he knows it.
And all this in a couple of weeks that should have seen our heroes busting a gut in training ahead of the trip to Spurs while the rest of us do important things like organising house maintenance, ordering carpets and sorting out all those issues ‘indoors’ that we have to get a grip of during the international break.
You know, I didn’t realise until recently that my wife of 50 years knew all about our fixtures, TV changes, international breaks etc. I’m sure you all realise my shock. And all this in what should be a ‘quiet’ fortnight. Blimey, England have a new manager and we are bothered about balloons, no wonder football views us as something of a basket case.
In the midst of all this, our Technical Director Tim Steidten has been back in Germany comparing us to Dortmund at a conference, saying ”We don’t have the time” as he discussed the new Julen Lopetegui regime that has not got off to the start we all hoped.
I’ve been banging on about that for a while, a return to Europe is the minimum requirement, and Tim Steidten is spot on with that remark. It’s Spurs next and then Manchester United, with Arsenal at the end of November. Not the fixture list you would want as you try to gain some consistency and structure to the new regime.
Lopetegui has the usual issues with players away on international duty ahead of the trip to north London. Alvarez with Mexico - who achieved a great win over the USA, Michail Antonio away with Jamaica, Kudus with Ghana, Paqueta with Brazil, Alphonse Areola with France - where he seems to be third choice ‘keeper these days - and Andy Irving a little unfortunate to stay on the bench for Scotland.
Vladimir Coufal and Tomas Soucek, as usual, starred for the Czech Republic and Dino Mavropanos played out of his skin for Greece against England.
What state of fitness they will bring back to east London is debatable, but Jarrod Bowen - unluckily it seems - not selected by England while Guido Rodriguez wasn’t selected by Argentina for this squad, will have benefited from a full fortnight of training with our squad. And then there’s the Niclas Fullkrug issue, with the German some way from fitness. I don’t blame our big German in the slightest.
He doesn’t want to be out injured, a problem he acquired while training with Germany. The questions have to be asked of our recruitment department and Niclas’ old mate Tim. Fullkrug has been injured for over 1,000 days in the past decade, 23 various injuries and 144 games missed. You have to ask who decided that was a sensible purchase, even in the ensuring panic after the collapse of the Jhon Duran deal?
So a nice quiet week then? No chance. The potential sale of the club keeps rearing its ugly head and one of our old scouts Mick Brown has been stirring the pot. Comments about the sale as well as David Sullivan’s role have been amusingly planted in the public domain by, it seems, Brown.
Now they may be right or wrong, but it’s been entertaining to see the grifters in action decrying any hint of such a thing. Brown, we are told, has never spoken to Sullivan. I’m not sure that’s the insult it was intended to be.
Brown is one of those long-standing group of scouts and coaches that see everything, know everyone and have been working away in that group for decades. Brown, like his ilk, knows more than a few.
Assistant manager at West Brom and Manchester United under Ron Atkinson, he’s no fool and is quite capable even at over 80, to stir things. I would be amazing if he wasn’t a good pal of Sam Allardyce and David Moyes, who do an amusing podcast now and play a lot of golf together.
A modern version of Sam and Dave, the great soul double act of the 1960s, a bit of northern soul if you like. From a distance, well Kent, this is all be highly amusing. I’m obviously easily pleased.
On a more important and serious note it’s sad to hear that Geoff Pike, an absolute legend of the 1970s and '80s, has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Geoff was an unsung hero of the Bonds and Brooking era. I’m sure you will all wish him well.
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