West Ham

[John Simkin]

I would pay good money for two Cup Final tickets (one for the "partial pundit" Simkin and one for myself) should a Liverpool V West Ham final become a reality

That is really generous of you Andy. A football journalist friend of mine promised to get me a ticket. I will tell him not to bother now.

[Guest]

I would pay good money for two Cup Final tickets (one for the "partial pundit" Simkin and one for myself) should a Liverpool V West Ham final become a reality

That is really generous of you Andy. A football journalist friend of mine promised to get me a ticket. I will tell him not to bother now.

Clearly when I made this comment I had no idea just how LUCKY West Ham could be

[John Simkin]

Clearly when I made this comment I had no idea just how LUCKY West Ham could be

Or how unlucky you could be.

[Guest]

Clearly when I made this comment I had no idea just how LUCKY West Ham could be

Or how unlucky you could be.

I am pressing a couple of cousins of mine in Birkenhead for tickets. They are both Liverpool season ticket holders.

If I can get them they will be for the Liverpool end. If it comes off you will have to practice not looking and sounding like Alf Garnett so much

[John Simkin]

My father was a Spurs fan (he had been born close the White Hart Lane ground) and from the age of seven he took me to nearly every home game. However, I never considered myself a Spurs fan. The reason for this was that we had been rehoused after the Blitz and we lived in a series of council estates in Essex (we ended up in Dagenham). West Ham was always the nearest club. Most of my mates supported West Ham. In fact, our dream was to play for the Hammers.

At this time, Ron Greenwood was manager of the club. He developed a scheme where he sent out his players to coach in East End schools. He thought the best way to learn was to teach. This became very competitive as the players were permanently assigned to these schools. It also produced a system where local schools provided a stream of talented young footballers.

My father was killed when I was 11. His brother, also a Spurs fan, occasionally took me to White Hart Lane. However, as soon as I was old enough, I attended West Ham’s home games. I also took my younger brother to these games and he has also become a life-long fan.

At the time we were a mid-table team and Spurs always finished above us. West Ham played attractive football but that was not the main reason I supported them. I supported them because they were the local team. What is more, they were a team that represented the local community. The team was made up of local lads we could identify with. When I went to Wembley to see West Ham defeat TSV Munchen in the European Cup Winners Cup in 1965, ten of the team had been born in London and most had come from the academy (the 11th had been born in Worcester).

Over the years I have remained a staunch fan despite it being run for most of the time by a group of businessmen who have been more concerned with profits than traditions. We were not to see managers like Greenwood or Lyle. Despite the mismanagement of the club, the academy has continued to produce talented youngsters. Unfortunately, these have been sold off to the highest bidders.

Attitudes towards football clubs seemed to change in the 1990s (I blame Thatcher). My students rarely supported their local clubs. Instead they supported the team that was currently top of the league. In other words, they supported Manchester United, Liverpool or Arsenal (now of course Chelsea is popular with the youngsters).

In some ways you can understand why this change has taken place. Football clubs are full of foreign mercenaries and no longer reflect the local community. If that is the case, if you are going to support mercenaries, why not support the successful ones.

I must admit I grew very disillusioned with West Ham under Glen Roeder. He might have been a good coach but he was an incompetent manager. I sometimes felt that he had only been employed because he was cheap and the board knew he would be willing to sell off our talented youngsters. (Interestingly Steve McClaren was offered the job but turned it down when it was made clear to him that the board expected him to sell our best players).

I was therefore pleased when Alan Pardew was appointed as manager (a West Ham fan in his youth). It soon became clear that his policy was to buy young British players who he felt he could improve (he did not have the money to buy the finished article). What is more, he tended to buy London born players and if possible, people who had supported West Ham when they were at school.

I have to admit that I began to have doubts about Pardew by the middle of last season. Most of the players he had brought in had been slow to improve. Nor did they seem to be able to deal with the pressure of playing at Upton Park (West Ham fans are not known for their patience).

This season has been a revelation. Those young players he had brought in now began to make rapid improvement. What is more, they played the kind of attractive attacking football that we had got used to under Ron Greenwood and John Lyle.

Yesterday we fielded a team of ten British born players (Hislop plays for Trinidad and Tobago but was actually born in London). In fact, in many ways it was the most important point of our victory. Pardew has bucked the trend. He has openly questioned the idea that managers should search the world for cheap imports (only the wealthy clubs can afford the real talent that is on offer). He is not only doing a great job for West Ham, he is doing great things for British football. Maybe at last British football can lose this inferiority complex we appear to be suffering from.

I watched the game with my five year old grandson (I did not have a son to take to West Ham games). Hopefully he will remain a fan, rather than supporting the latest team to be top of the table. True he will not get the pleasure that undoubtedly comes with saying that he supports the team at the top of the league. However, like yesterday showed, there is nothing like the pleasure that comes from loyally supporting a club when they achieve success.

[John Simkin]

Interesting interview with Alan Pardew:

http://www.whufc.com/articles/article.php?..._id=7823&page=0

http://www.whufc.com/news/?page_id=7849

[John Simkin]

There has been much speculation about who Alan Pardew will buy for next season. The best guide is to look at what he has said about his recruitment policy. All the quotes are taken from an interview he gave on the 31st March.

“I surround myself with strong characters, winners and people who I like to think have good, sensible morals. I include all my staff and players in that, and if I don't see it in an individual, then I get rid of that person.”

“The nucleus of the squad is young, and they are all secured under long-term contracts. They are all hungry and determined to win a trophy, and we are going to be under good shape in the next couple of years if my additions can add to the team. For any manager, at any club, the most important job is recruiting.”

“My recruitment policy is to sign players who don't have bad injury records, and the combination of those factors is the reason we have looked so fit and suffered very few problems with injuries this season.”

“I want our team to be full of pace, to have high energy, to play football faster than anyone else, and to constantly be on the front foot, forcing the opposition into errors and leading to opportunities for us to score goals. And my vision is also to have a little bit more control, especially away from home, in terms of possession. So there are two scenarios really. One, to increase and improve what we are doing right now and, two, which we haven't quite mastered yet, is to have the experience to take the sting out of games and control possession, especially against the top clubs.”

It has been suggested that Jermaine Pennant and Joey Barton might be targets. Given his comments I think that is highly unlikely. His main priority with be to buy high energy youngsters. I suspect one target might well be Kilmarnock’s Steven Naismith who recently voted Scotland’s young player of the year. Only 19, Naismith is a high-scoring midfield player. In my view we have relied too heavily on our strikers this season. We need a midfielder that can get us 10+ goals a season. Naismith will probably cost about £5m.

Tim Cahill of Everton is another possibility. His form has been disappointing this season but last year he showed he had what he takes. The prospect of European football might persuade him to join West Ham but he will not be cheap.

Another possibility is 19 year old Billy Jones of Crewe Alexander. He is the latest of fine young players developed by Dario Gradi (David Platt, Neil Lennon, Danny Murphy, Dean Ashton, etc.). Jones is a two footed player who can play either right or left back. He has also played at centre-back and midfield and would provide cover for every defensive position. He would probably cost £1m.

Pardew will need to pay more for Glen Johnson. Everyone was impressed with him when he burst onto the scene at West Ham. However, he has definitely gone backwards at Chelsea. I suspect he is a sensitive lad who has not responded well to the bullying style of management. Maybe Pardew could build up his confidence but it will be an expensive gamble. I think Billy Jones is a better bet.

Pardew will also need someone with experience of European football. I think he is unlikely to buy anyone from outside the UK. This is too risky. Remember what happened to Ipswich after they finished in the top six in their first year in the premiership? George Burley bought several foreign players on high wages. They not only destroyed the team spirit at Ipswich but they could not cope with the British game and as a result they were relegated that year.

This is a difficult problem for Pardew. My view is that he will try and get Dietmar Hamann from Liverpool. He is out of contract and can be obtained on a free. He is the model professional who will not create problems in the dressing-room. As Pardew says he wants a player with “ the experience to take the sting out of games and control possession, especially against the top clubs.” There is no one better than Hamann to play this role.

[John Simkin]

West Ham might have lost on penalties but it does not feel like we lost. We drew even if we did not get the pleasure of winning the cup. The important thing is that British football won. A manager has shown what can be achieved by buying and grooming young British footballers and then playing open attacking football. Let us hope it starts a new trend. Maybe in the future we will be able to say that British football changed direction as a result of the 2006 cup final.

Your best player was an Israeli

I disagree. Dean Ashton was West Ham’s best player. The BBC’s accumulated ratings agree with Ashton scoring 7.73 against Benayoun’s 7.63. I also thought Gabbidon was better than Benayoun but defenders rarely get a look in in these contests.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/f...ngs/default.stm

It is true that Benayoun had a good game. Nor am I against foreign players being in teams. My argument is that it is not good for British football to have teams full of foreign players. I believe that football should like cricket, have limits on the number of overseas players in the team.

Benayoun would not have been in the team if we had not sold Joe Cole. Glen Johnson would have been right-back instead of Scaloni, our other foreign-born player. If we had been one of the big-four (Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United or Liverpool) we would also have had Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick and Jermain Defoe in the team.

Supporters of the big-four have no concept of what it is like supporting a team that is forced to sell its best-players to wealthier clubs. The big-four have won every title and cup-final since 1995. They have bought that success in the same way that rich individuals buy privileges. That is the way the capitalist system works. I am just pleased that I was born in an area that allows me to be a supporter of a club who achieves what it does by developing local talent. I would hate to be seen as someone who supports a club because it has a large bank-balance.

[Guest]

That is the way the capitalist system works. I am just pleased that I was born in an area that allows me to be a supporter of a club who achieves what it does by developing local talent. I would hate to be seen as someone who supports a club because it has a large bank-balance.

Whilst I agree it is truely revolting to watch the Siberian proletariat's expropriated mineral wealth run around south west London in blue shirts, I am beginning to find your myopic regionalism rather oppressive

[John Simkin]

Frank Lampard has just published a book attacking his time at West Ham. A West Ham fan has posted this on You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SemE_Kek1DI...rd%20west%20ham

[Guest]

West Ham Utd do not appear to have enjoyed their recent "day trip" to Europe getting roundly thrashed and with reports coming in of serious crowd trouble.

Without a win in four games and with speculation rife over the future ownership this would appear to be a football club in crisis. I am reminder of another lesser London club who got to the final of the FA Cup a few years ago only to blow it all away with a series of very poor decisions and incompetent leadership.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtm...29/sfgpal29.xml

[John Simkin]

Interesting article by James Lawson in the Independent:

http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/co...icle1935960.ece

Whatever happens to Alan Pardew in the shambles that West Ham United have become, and however hard he reflects on the bleak sequel to his brilliant first season in the Premiership, the chances are he will re-emerge stronger at the broken place. Certainly he is young and able and ambitious enough to come back punching, and perhaps more effectively if, in the roll-call of disaster, he does not forget to examine the possibility that he may have made the odd contribution himself.

One was, maybe, a failure to point out strongly enough to likely lads such as Nigel Reo-Coker and Anton Ferdinand that far from being finished products they had merely made a decent downpayment on significant careers in the big time.

In retrospect, given the weight of his hard-won reputation and desirability to other clubs, Pardew might have been wise to have walked out of West Ham the moment Mr Kia Joorabchian came leading two extremely talented but obviously completely dislocated young Argentines by their noses.

Now Joorabchian is rumoured to be on the point of delivering another disaffected South American, the Brazilian Carlos Alberto, as part of a meandering, and thoroughly destabilising, takeover plan, a possibility that is surely guaranteed to remind everybody at Upton Park that it is not only gifts borne by Greeks which demand the most intense and urgent scrutiny.

The West Ham story is at one level a simple failure by the club's hierarchy to understand the basic dynamics of a successful football club. On another it tells us once again that the kind of achievement enjoyed over 20 years by Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United and for a decade by Arsène Wenger at Arsenal is little short of miraculous.

Pardew's experience tells of the terrible vulnerability of even the most striking managerial success. That of Ferguson and Wenger speaks of astonishing commitment, even obsession, and competitive hides resistant to everything short of an elephant gun.

Consider how narrow have been the lines between glory and failure walked by Ferguson and Wenger. Both have been near the abyss on so many occasions, some publicised, others not. They have had their boardroom fights, their tribulations with ego-ridden, under-motivated dressing-rooms, and inevitable points of crisis.

If Roy Keane for Ferguson and Patrick Vieira for Wenger were lieutenants of immense, dynasty- shaping force, they also came to represent challenges of will and self-belief when it was time to move them on. Ferguson became a national pariah when he banished David Beckham to Madrid - albeit after patient negotiations and the offer of a remarkable contract - but he made it clear that he had made a stand he would never regret. Wenger, when so many questions were being asked about how well his touch was enduring - including cries for his head when an unremarkable Bayern Munich banished his team from Europe two seasons ago - was similarly resolute. He had seen enough in Cesc Fabregas and other youngsters to believe in his future.

No doubt, Manchester United and Arsenal were in vastly stronger positions than West Ham when they resisted suggestions that they too might become transit camps for putative world stars, but part of the reason was that Ferguson and Wenger, unlike Pardew, had the muscle and the knowledge and the established achievement to make it clear that their authority in football matters could never be challenged if they were to remain at their posts.

If these seem like rare and excessively loaded examples of omnipotent managerial style, they are not completely isolated. Martin O'Neill and, now, Gordon Strachan braved the tinder box of expectation at Celtic Park both as successful coaches but also men with an absolute conviction that they would do the job on their terms. The greatest stories of success in British football have one invariable theme ... it is of strong football men being given the chance to do their work and beat the odds. Busby, Shankly, Stein, Nicholson and Revie, like Ferguson and Wenger today, were joined at the hip in their belief that the moment they surrendered any element of their control the job was impossible.

You may say that such independence is no longer possible in modern conditions. You can point to the fact that just a few months after putting together a stunning season's work, Pardew's potential successor is now being widely discussed, all the way from the inevitable nomination of former West Ham favourite Alan Curbishley to the bizarre idea that Sven Goran Eriksson might appear at a club which, among its other attainments, can lay claim to providing vital foundations for England's one and only World Cup win. But however we cut it, we are left with one unassailable fact. Great football clubs are not made by the wisdom of a committee. They are forged by the will of single football men who are given the freedom to do their jobs.