I didn’t bother. Watching the second half of the Hull game. You see, I had to leave for the wedding do of my best mate at halftime – and I left the house in confident mood, we were 1:0 up and I seriously had no doubt in my mind, naively probably, that we would see this one through, maybe even add to the lead in the second half, I was actually looking forward to watching the rest of the game after returning back home around 1 a.m. in a fairly pleasant state of mind.
The wedding do as such was lovely, good conversations, laughter and banter with some great people, and quite nice food too, albeit it only of the finger food and snack variety. Every hour I had a quick think about how West Ham may have got on and how much I would enjoy watching our much needed win later.
Alas, I committed the schoolboy error to go online first when returning home and so by accident really I stumbled upon the fact we had actually lost the game. I quickly read David Hautzig’s match report and decided it might be better to give the second half a miss what with me being in a good mood after the wedding do. I didn’t want to spoil that.
The weird thing was that I was surprised reading about the result, then disappointed, shaking my head in disbelief, but all of that lasted merely a matter of minutes and then it was gone.
I really wasn’t that bothered anymore as I usually am. Is that a bad sign? I don’t believe for a second that we might actually get relegated this season, we will still win and draw some of our remaining games. But it’ll likely be an underwhelming run in of an utterly frustrating season altogether. From the glory of that final Boleyn season to a complete shambles of a season at the new place.
Make no mistake, the stadium excuses are getting tired by now and even I’m no longer buying them. It’s been a horrible combination of things gone wrong this season, on and off the pitch. The trouble is, with all due respect, that I simply don’t trust the relevant people in our club hierarchy (yes, the owners again) to draw the right conclusions from all this. Once again I fully expect them to follow the path of least resistance: They will let Bilic go, install a new manager, spend as little money as possible, take the odd punt in the transfer market with loans and freebies and hope for the best.
I also won’t put Bilic on the pedestal forever, maybe he has lost his way a bit or is simply running out of ideas. I love the man to bits as a character and a quite unique person too, a man of class and many commendable traits. But even I’m beginning to think now he may not be getting the best out of the players we have which may have to do with the way we train or that maybe some of our players are simply not good or committed enough. Maybe some players also already consider their options for next season at this point and wouldn’t actually mind playing their football elsewhere.
Still for that to happen it’d help if these players (like hopefully everyone wearing the claret and blue shirt) would put in some decent shifts in the remaining games.
Reading that statement from the board about having 100% faith in Slaven of course is encouraging. At the minimum I would give Bilic next season to see if he can turn things around with less off pitch distractions, maybe also less injuries.
It’s all gone a bit stale though at West Ham in my view. It’s not just the fact we’re losing, we’ve done plenty of it during the years I’ve been supporting the club and I’ve seen more relegation struggles than midtable mediocrity, nevermind top half excellence at West Ham. But our entire club at this stage somehow appears to lack a compass, a coherent strategy, a long term focus.
It’s the same on the pitch, far too often I see our lads reacting rather than trying to put our own footprint on the game. I’d also like to see our team press the opposition more consistently, we seem quite happy to let them have significant chunks of the ball, space and time on the pitch all of which combined is an invitation to opponents to have a right go and snatch victory even from the jaws of defeat, as it was the case at Hull.
Keeping with the wedding theme though, when supporting a football club, just like being in a relationship or marriage, you are bound to hit dry spells occasionally, bumpy roads and even the odd crisis. Still you don’t just walk away from it all just because it’s not all bags of fun and laughter all the time. You keep on coming back.
Even though West Ham have changed massively in the past few years and especially the last 12 months, they are still my club and I can’t see that changing.
For better or worse and all that…I may not think too highly of our owners, I may not like the new stadium much and it drives me berserk seeing our lads give away the ball time and time again. Still this West Ham addiction of mine seems to remain this constant thing running through my life and that’s the way it is.
While West Ham seem to be glancing nervously towards the wrong end of the table, Concordia are still, at least mathematically, aiming for promotion. Quite surprisingly they met the deadline last week to officially hand in the necessary application papers to officially declare their willingness to play one level further up next season (4th level of German football), should the Cordi boys actually finish above the only other local rival applying for promotion, current table toppers Altona 93, another heavyweight as far as traditional lower level Hamburg clubs go.
Unfortunately Concordia only managed a goalless draw at Altona yesterday afternoon, but it was a cracking game still, played in lovely sunshine and in front of a bumper crowd of 2000 fans which is absolutely massive for a game at this level, considering you are usually lucky to see crowds between 200 and 300 people attending games in the Oberliga Hamburg. So Altona’s eight point lead remains intact which will make it very hard for Cordi to still catch Altona and qualify for the promotion playoffs.
But it is still a very promising sign that my second team did actually apply for promotion at all as it shows that they seem to have done some good work in the background with regard to attracting sponsors and also finding a proper new ground to play their home games, be that in a groundshare with another local club or maybe even with the prospect of building a nice little new ground somewhere in the East End of Hamburg.
So, it’s shaping up to be quite an exciting end of the season for both my teams, for contrasting reasons. Let’s hope we see some kind of positive reaction at Arsenal midweek.
West Ham have always been good at doing the unexpected. Following that concept I therefore fully expect Arsenal to beat us 5:0. So will this be a “Tale of the Unexpected” with a dumbfounding twist in the tale ? We shall see…COYI!