Lout of order

It has taken me a couple of weeks to write this post because I am struggling to come to terms with how I am feeling. But there is no point in denying it any longer: I am embarrassed to be a West Ham fan.

This realisation was brought home to me in the aftermath of our home defeat by Chelsea a couple of weeks ago. The following day, the back-page headlines in most of the papers were dominated by Hammers fans’ abuse of Frank Lampard and John Terry. Variously described as ‘spiteful’, the reports focused on our ‘unacceptable’ taunting of the England pair, accompanied by pictures of fans’ faces contorted with rage. The Mail on Sunday asserted: ‘West Ham fans have developed a reputation for being among the most vile in the country.' In The Sun, the on-field action took up only the final fifth of the match report, with the article featuring such opinions as ‘even by the vile and hateful standards set by West Ham “fans”, the abuse meted out to Terry and Lampard was a disgrace’. The following day, PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor asserted that West Ham fans had ‘overstepped the mark’.

For those of you living on the moon, the fans were vilified for continually chanting ‘John Terry, your mum’s a thief’ and, at Lampard, ‘you let your children down’, in reference to a heated on-air debate the player had partaken in the previous morning with a radio DJ who had called him ‘scum’ for leaving his fiancé and children. According to The Sun, there were also chants about Lampard’s mother – although if it’s a subject below even the retard who sits behind me (see ‘Show Racists the Red Card’, 9/12/08), I am sceptical about such claims.

Personally, I don’t have a huge problem with the taunts about Terry’s mum. They are true. She made a conscious decision not to pay for the goods and was caught red-handed. It could be argued that it is irrelevant, but I still think it qualifies as terrace banter. The Lampard situation was obviously seized upon because of the fans’ antipathy towards him, as he has taken every opportunity to slate the club since he left. But do you think he wanted to walk out on his daughters? To bring the subject up, in a week that also marked the first anniversary of his mother’s death, was unacceptable.

There were numerous other ill-informed chants. So ‘Chelsea ain’t got no history’? Well, what about winning the first division title in 1955? At that point in West Ham’s history, our sole ‘achievement’ had been appearing in the first FA Cup final at Wembley – we lost, of course. Then, apparently, Joe Cole is ‘queer’? Does his stunning fiancé Carly Zucker know? And, according to the boss-eyed, overweight, pasty-faced, knuckle-dragging retard behind me, Frank Lampard is ‘fat and ugly’? Well, I train five days a week in the gym, but would still do anything for a physique like his.

Things have changed so much since I started attending matches in 1986. In those days – and it is worth bearing in mind that this was a time when football was it its lowest ebb, with hooliganism at its peak and the tragedies of Heysel and Bradford still fresh in the mind – West Ham fans were renowned for their humour. Many a dull game was livened up by a wisecrack from the crowd. Swearing was reserved for match-changing incidents or horrific tackles – not simply a misplaced pass, as is the case these days. Energies used to be channelled towards supporting the team, rather than abusing the opposition. But now, it is as if spending £45 on a ticket gives 'fans' the right to indulge in the kind of intimidatory behaviour that would get them arrested if carried out away from the confines of a football stadium. Do the idiots in the stand think that winding players up puts them off their game? On the contrary, it inspires them to play better.

At least I’m not the only one who is becoming fed up with the way Irons fans are being – deservedly – portrayed in the national media. A couple of days later, the Express featured a letter from a West Ham supporter expressing exactly the same sentiments, who after attending matches at the Boleyn Ground for 30 years, now wondered whether he wanted to be part of such a hate-filled environment. I know where he is coming from. After having missed only about 25 home games since March 1986, I very much doubt that I will be renewing my season ticket.

Loyalty slouchers

The only loyalty displayed by footballers these days is when it suits themselves. The astronomical wages and signing-on fees that they earn mean players no longer have to depend on a testimonial match to see them though the first few years of their retirement. They can kiss the badge on their shirt as often as they like, but as soon as they get a better offer, they’ll be out of E13 as quickly as their Porsches will carry them.

The fact that we will never again see a Billy Bonds, Trevor Brooking or Steve Potts at the Boleyn Ground was brought starkly into focus by two players during last month’s transfer window.

Craig Bellamy reportedly stormed out of the training ground, insisting that was going in strike until he was allowed to join either Spurs or Manchester City. With Scott Duxbury refusing to do business with Spurs, the Welshman was soon on his way to Manchester for £14m.

Paid handsomely for missing most of his first season with injury, you might think that he feels that he owes West Ham something, after starting only 22 games and scoring nine goals. He might have been of the opinion that Spurs or Man City offered him a greater chance of honours, but would he even get into their sides? His transfer may be big news at the City of Manchester Stadium right now, but if the richest club in the world starts splashing out on the likes of Kaka, the petulant striker will find it difficult to secure a place on the subs’ bench.

Bellamy claimed that he was never going to strike. But he has been a troublemaker throughout his career and is hated at almost every club at which he has ever played (and he has had eight by the age of 29). Apart from several bust-ups in pubs and clubs (which, to be fair, are par for the course for many footballers), Bellamy’s crime sheet is long and varied: he threw a chair at Newcastle’s first-team coach; called his manager Graeme Souness a liar; sent abusive text messages to Alan Shearer; publicly criticised his manager at Liverpool, Rafa Benitez; and attacked team-mate John Arne Riise with a golf club during a ‘team bonding’ session in Portugal. To make a profit of £6.5m in 18 months on an injury-prone player who has clearly got ‘issues’ looks like good business to me.

On the other hand, Luis Boa Morte turned down a move to Hull after the clubs had agreed terms, insisting that he hadn’t asked for a transfer and wanted to see out the remaining 18 months of his contract. Perhaps there is some loyalty still in the game?

Or could it be that a player who has never been first-choice at the Boleyn Ground and who is derided every time he takes the field, simply wasn’t prepared to accept the huge pay cut that Hull were asking him to take? In my opinion, taking into account his wages, reputation (26 caps for Portugal) and £5m transfer fee, is the worst player I have seen in the claret and blue. A fresh start at a club with lower expectations (he excelled as a big fish in a small pond at Fulham) would have been in both parties’ interests.

The great irony is that Bellamy was abused for wanting to quit West Ham, while Boa Morte was jeered for refusing to leave. When it comes to loyalty, nowadays it is only the fans who are even on nodding terms with the concept.

Show racists the red card

Amid another torpid display last night, I had the most unpleasant experience in my 23 years as a regular at the Boleyn Ground.

IBM (Idiot Behind Me) was at his obnoxious worst. He was twice as loud as usual and his level of aggression had to be witnessed to be believed. Every other word was a swear word and pure hatred poured from every pore of his gross body.

He had been using the word ‘yid’ incessantly from the first minute, although there were many others doing the same. Although the Spurs fans use this as a nickname for themselves, he is irrefutably using it as a racial slur. But I can put up with this.

However, when the Tottenham fans started singing ‘Spurs are on their way to Wembley’ and he twice changed the final word to ‘Auschwitz’ – and he was the only person in the entire stand who did it – I couldn’t help but turn round and glare.

‘What the f**k are you looking at?’ he spat in my direction. I somehow resisted the temptation to say ‘a fat, ugly, ignorant racist’.
‘I find that hugely offensive,’ I replied.
‘It’s what they call themselves, you ****,’ he screamed.
‘You referring to the ethnic cleansing of millions of innocent people is what I have an issue with.’
‘It’s different with Spurs. It’s what they call themselves, you ****.’
‘I’m not talking about the word “yid”. I’m talking about your glorification of Auschwitz.’
‘It’s what they call themselves, you ****.’
'Well don’t be surprised if you get reported to a steward.’

I gave up as he ranted on for another 30 seconds. I was absolutely fuming. IBM soon turned his attention back to abusing our players, the Spurs players, the Tottenham fans and the referee and linesmen.

About 10 minutes later, someone used the word ‘yid’ and the ignorant imbecile was off again. ‘Don’t use that word cos that **** down there don’t like it.’
I turned round. ‘It’s not “yid”. It’s Auschwitz I have problems with.’
‘It’s what they call themselves, you ****, use your ****ing brain.’
He repeated this about 10 times. I was probably smirking by the end of his diatribe, as a ‘man’ with an IQ that is probably in single figures (and patently lower than his weight in stones) told me to use my brain. He finished only when the bloke next to me (the only person around me that I regard as a friend) told him to ‘leave it out’. I only wish he told the ignorant slob why he was wrong.

‘He’s always looking at me,’ he concluded. I have certainly looked at him before, despite it being a physically repulsive experience, usually when he’s calling Frank Lampard Junior a ‘fat, ugly, useless ****.’ If IBM knew what irony was, he’d probably laugh himself.

There were no further incidents. I didn’t dare look round again (he’s definitely the sort of person who would hit you from behind). Although his ignorant and vile rantings continued throughout the 90 minutes (and probably throughout his life), he never referred to Auschwitz again.

What disappointed me was everyone else’s reaction. No one said a word, while the stewards completely ignored the incident. The scumbag attends matches with his son (who sits next to me), father (who is a decent chap) and about three friends. The fact that not one of them spoke up on his behalf suggests that they knew he was in the wrong. But there are a lot of decent fans around me (some of them even read The Guardian) – and none one of them got involved.

Although I am hardly living in fear, I will now have to watch my back every time I go to West Ham. I sit at games on my own (my friends are in another stand), while he’s got six people with him. I’ve never had a fight in my life, but I so wanted to give him a slap last night. It’s the only language that such ignorant people understand. I could tear the overweight slob apart – but fighting is the answer to nothing, and would only lead to me being banned from the stadium.

My other option is to complain to the club. There are warnings in the matchday programme every week that racism will lead to a ban from the ground. But if I make a complaint, it will be my word against his and that of his friends. No one would back me up. So he would still be going to the games – and I would be a marked man for having ‘snitched’.

The only certainty is that this is going to flare up again. All I can do for now is rechristen him ‘IFRUMBM’ (work it out for yourself) .

And now, the end is near

Without wishing to put a dampener on our first victory of the year outside London, there was a remarkable quote from vice-chairman Asgeir Fridgeirsson in Friday’s Sun.

‘West Ham is well funded for the remainder of the year and I am convinced the club will go on,’ he asserted.

Now I know that the Icelandic banking crash, recession and lack of a sponsorship deal are having an impact on the club’s finances, but is there anyone who thinks that our position is so precarious that we might go out of business in the next five weeks.

Or is our plight more serious than is being let on?

Always the Run

My first game at West Ham was a 2-1 win against Spurs on Easter Monday 1986. Tony Cottee and Frank McAvennie scored for us, with Ossie Ardiles replying for Spurs. Everything about the day was enthralling – and not because I was 15 years of age and the only previous matches I had attended had been at Brisbane Road.

I could wax lyrical all day about the passion of the crowd and the derby-day atmosphere. But what really excited me was the area of the ground in which I was standing – the East Stand lower tier. The view was incredible (I read somewhere that it was the steepest terrace ever built in the UK, although I don’t know whether this is true) and you were so close to the pitch that you could make out the players’ expressions. There was also a self-assuredness about its patrons, as if they felt superior to those in other areas of the ground. I knew that this was somewhere that I wanted to be.

And apart from a handful of games in the North Bank, two games in the West Stand/Dr Martens Stand, half a season in the South Bank (a rite of passage as a 16-year-old) and one match in the Bobby Moore Stand (and that was for a beam-back from Maine Road), I have been a fixture in the Chicken Run for the past 22 years.

I used to stand on the same crack in the concrete, about 20 yards from the South Bank touchline, three steps from the back. A large group of men used to stand next to us. They were real characters, always ready with a wisecrack. Fat Les (who inspired a column in my fanzine, The Water In Majorca), Paul, the Dennis Waterman lookalike, the short one with the squeaky voice. If the game was rubbish (and with the likes of Tommy McQueen, David Kelly and Allen McKnight in the side, it generally was) the atmosphere and humour took centre stage. But one by one, the characters stopped going, to be replaced by racist and humourless meatheads.

On the sad day that they put seats in the Run, I managed to secure one only a few yards from where I had stood so often. But it was never the same. The atmosphere was lost, the characters gone. Then they raised the pitch and moved it 30 feet away from us. It was as if everything was being done to detract from the unique experience of watching football in the Chicken Run.

I’m still there, in row E. I’m now in my 21st year as a season-ticket holder. But it’s not the same. Consequently, when I recently had the opportunity to watch the game from somewhere else in the ground, for only the second time in a decade, I jumped at the chance.

Unfortunately, rather than the luxury of an executive box, I was going to be watching the Portsmouth match from the front corner of the upper tier of the Bobby Moore Stand. The experience started well enough. I had twice as much leg-room as I usually did, and with an aisle on one side and the disabled enclosure behind me, I was certainly not short of space.

But as the match kicked off, I soon realised what a different kind of experience I had ahead of me. Perhaps it was the distance from the action, but the supporters were so quiet. I didn’t expect any singing or chanting, but there was hardly any talking or even comments. I am used to continual abuse of the referee, criticism and howls of derision at every misplaced pass, and constant abuse of the opposition. Don’t get me wrong, I hate several of the men that sit behind me, who shower me in spittle for 90 minutes as they spew forth their hatred.

But football is a passionate game – and sitting in the Bobby Moore Stand made me feel as if I were at the theatre. We were consumers rather than fans. Roy Keane’s comments about the ‘prawn sandwich’ brigade came to mind a I looked wistfully at the decrepit East Stand.

As a modern stand, at least the facilities would be suitably luxurious. But the concourse was more crowded than that of a stand built in 1968, while only an in-house channel was available on the TVs, rather than Jeff Stelling and his Soccer Saturday acolytes, as could be enjoyed in the Chicken Run.

My brother had a season ticket at Highbury for 15 years, but has now given up, after only a season at the Emirates Stadium. He said it was no longer the game he fell in love with – and from my sanitised experience last weekend, I can see his point. If that’s the future of football, you can keep it. I can’t wait to get back to the vitriolic inhabitants of the Chicken Run – at least they care about what they are watching.

Keeping up appearances

The aspect of England’s victory against Germany this week that I enjoyed most was not having to watch David Beckham being wheeled on for the last five minutes, to add another undeserved cap to his collection. Like a Hollywood star coming to the end of his career, he is suitable only for bit-part roles these days. But should he even be getting those, bearing in mind how far he is behind the likes of Joe Cole, Theo Walcott and Shaun Wright-Phillips (and even Stuart Downing!)?

Fabio Capello said he wouldn’t pick Beckham for the squad if he were not playing competitive football. And at least he was true to his word. But over the first few matches of his reign, the England manager was complicit in Beckham’s vain pursuit of glory, as he desperately sought to become the most capped outfield player in English football history. In England’s past four competitive internationals, Beckham has been brought on for a total of 32 minutes – and on only one occasion was the result in doubt when he entered the action.

Watching Beckham shuffling on for a few minutes when a game is already won, perhaps getting a couple of touches of the ball and taking a free kick, has been embarrassing. Could you imagine Zinedine Zidane or Diego Maradona being brought on in their mid-30s to play three minutes of injury time against Belarus, with the score already at 3-1? They would be adamant that they would run the show or not play at all. It would be demeaning to their status as legends.

But does qualify as a ‘legend’? As a West Ham fan, I’m hardly impartial, with Beckham set to win his 108th cap in a friendly against Spain in February, equalling Bobby Moore’s total. Is he really on a par with Bobby Charlton (106 caps) and Bobby Moore as the greatest outfield players in England’s history? Ask anyone to name a classic Beckham performance and they will come up with the 2-2 draw against Greece at Old Trafford in 2001. No one can argue that Beckham was a colossus in that game, almost single-handedly ensuring that England secured the point needed to ensure World Cup qualification. But name another one? There were obviously some great goals and crosses, but he never again grabbed a game by the scruff of the neck at international level. His most memorable act in an England shirt was to get sent off against Argentina during the 1998 World Cup for petty retaliation. He has been a decent international, but is not fit to lace the boots of Moore or Charlton.

Legends propel their side to success. Take Michel Platini in 1984, Maradona in 1986 and Zidane in 1998. If anything, Beckham has hindered England’s attempts to win silverware. He went to the World Cup in 2002 when clearly unfit. The overall good of the team was sacrificed on the back of Beckham’s determination to be part of the greatest football show on earth. And by creating the media circus that surrounded the England team throughout the Sven Goran Eriksson era, he succeeded in undermining the chances of the ‘golden generation’.

The cynic in me thinks that Beckham not having been put out to grass a couple of years ago is linked to his ability to help the FA secure multimillion-pound advertising contracts from sponsors. Mind you, it could be worse. If Gary Neville hadn’t suffered a long-term injury and consequently not added to his total of 80 caps since June 2006, he might also be approaching Moore’s record. Now that would give me something to moan about.

The Italian job

You can’t help but love Newcastle, can you? However much of a mess your club is in, Newcastle are guaranteed to be more of a laughing stock (even if they didn't turn out for a match with a different-coloured patch of material laughably stuck over their defunct sponsor's logo).

Their fans worship an anachronism of a manager who hadn’t watched a match in the three years before joining them and whose tactics and approach to the job are stuck in the 1970s, as ‘the messiah’. They parade banners proclaiming ‘Cockney mafia out’, despite the subject of their contempt, Mike Ashley, having been born in Buckinghamshire. And when our new manager needs three points to win over the inevitable sceptics, they make us look like world beaters.

The only downsides to a fantastic performance were IBM (idiot behind me) and his chip-off-the-old-block son IBM Junior (idiot beside me). From the first minute, they were slating David di Michele’s every touch of the ball. Apparently, he was awful on his debut at West Brom, refusing to pass the ball. No matter that this was his first 71 minutes in English football, it was enough for them both to unleash a string of racist expletives every time he went near the action. They even refused to celebrate his goals. Luis Boa Morte’s two late howlers didn’t even invoke such invective. And he hasn’t put a foot right in 20 months, despite costing £5m and earning probably twice as much as di Michele.

Gianfranco Zola must have dreamed of such a start. There has been enough newsprint on Curbishley’s departure and the ensuing recruitment process. All I’m going to add is that I think the plan was to axe Curbishley from the minute Gianluca Nani was brought in as director of football in the spring. I wasn’t particularly a fan of our ex-manager, but neither was I desperate for him to leave. But I admire his principles for walking out in what had clearly become an untenable situation. If he had stayed, he would have walked into training the following morning and had to introduce himself to two of our three new signings of September 1 (Herita Llunga had apparently been on trial at the club, but the decision had been made not to keep him). Surely directors of football should be working in tandem with the manager, rather than buying and selling players behind his back?

It was interesting that the club insisted that George McCartney had handed in a transfer request, while the player himself and Curbishley were adamant that he had not. I know who I believe. After the previous regime, I had hoped that our new owners were going to return us to the days of respectability and integrity. But it appears that duplicity is still prevalent, particularly with one senior member of Terry Brown’s entourage still on the payroll.

My only other comment on Zola’s appointment was that if we had to opt for an inexperienced Italian, could we have not chosen Paolo di Canio, the only West Ham legend of the past decade, rather than a man voted Chelsea’s best-ever player?

Talking of di Canio, his two goals in the Soccer Aid match at Wembley were sublime. As much improved as Carlton Cole undoubtedly is, it certainly put his finishing into perspective. Yet Cole gets a standing ovation every week from IBM and IBM junior. Now imagine if he was Italian…