Guest Post by Chris Lowestoft
We are changing our home ground… We are changing out club crest… Should we now consider changing our club song? Now before you all scream and throw insults in my general direction, I admit that I am making this suggestion with my tongue very firmly placed in my cheek… Let me explain further..
Bubbles, as we all know, is a song about dreaming, and watching those dreams fade and die. Now I am from a generation of Hammers that have experienced success.. Three FA cup wins, one FA cup final defeat, but a glorious defeat. A European cup winners cup final victory, and a defeat. Plus almost winning the first division championship, well, at least still being in the race up until the final hurdle…
Of course I have also had more than my fair share of failures and disappointments, as all of you have. But I have blown my bubbles. I have had dreams. Yes, I have watched them in the main, fade and die. But just on the odd occasion I have watched my dreams come true. And those memories I shall take to my grave. But I am beginning to think that times have changed. Football has changed. Football supporters have changed. The world I live in has changed.
Let’s us take the Premier League. The so called, best league on the planet. Not so called because of the quality of the teams in that league, but so called because of its wealth and commercial clout.
We have the “best league in the world” not because of it’s quality, but because of the buckets full of cash thrown at it by Sky TV and the various other sponsors queuing up to throw money into the players pockets. But the result as I see it is this.. not losing has become more important than winning. Reaching the Premier League, and surviving in it, is now the holy grail. Teams that finish fourth from bottom celebrate on the pitch as though they have won the league title, because they have managed to stay in the division, which financially is probably more important than actually winning it. My generation used to dream of winning the FA cup. Today it seems fans dream of finishing fourth and gaining a place in the champions league. Fourth used to mean nothing, now it means everything.
Nobody in English football has embraced this “new dawn” of football than our current manager Mr Sam Allardyce. Fear of failure has made him a wealthy man. I doubt any modern day coach has made more from not winning anything than Sam. His CV is unimpressive if you dream of winning but beyond reproach if you have a morbid fear of failure. “Then like my dreams they fade and die”…
Now I do not know about you, but I have never dreamed of not being relegated. I have dreamed of winning cups, league tittles, even champions leagues, but never of not being relegated. Surely failure is a consequence of attempting to succeed. So failure for me is a risk I wish the club I love would take. So that I and others can dream again