It used to be the moment to savour. The moment we all wait for. The moment when West Ham score. Dopamine is released in your brain and for a few moments you become a drug junky.
In these present times, I feel almost nothing. Antonio scores four goals and I sit there staring at the screen, trying to recall the manic outbursts of the past.
So, what do I think is going on?
Firstly, everything about the club in recent months has had a depressing effect on my personality – the ground, the owners, the players and the manager. Why do I keep repeating the same behaviour time after time when I know that the result is likely to be disastrous? Why don’t I take up watching Australian rules football or skiing? I must be a fool to keep watching West Ham , either at the ground or on television, with my stomach churning, biting my nails. My wife cannot understand my nonsensical behaviour. It must be that I am a masochist. I repeat this behaviour, because I believe I deserve it. She thinks I’ve regressed to the level of a kindergarten participant.
Secondly, football is supposed to be a spectator sport. And by spectator, I mean someone watching in the ground, not on television. It is a living spectacle. In these horrible times we are living in, football has been reduced to a sterile experience, compounded by the fact the fake crowd noises have to be added to the action to lead us into a world of make-believe. Essentially, we are watching practice game, where there is no home advantage.
Thirdly, we the watching public fool ourselves into believing we are watching a competitive sport. We know it is no such thing. Money rules. Some clubs are able to spend tens or even hundreds of millions of pounds on players. We have countries with few human rights owning football clubs. The Premier League is about to let in a murderer as a club owner. I don’t understand how the financial fair play rules work.
The game is run by crooks. The last President of FIFA was as bent as a nine bob note. Russia won the rights to the World Cup by bribery. The next World Cup is in Qatar – that is some joke! Many FIFA representatives have ended up or will end up in jail.
In the Premier League, there are Russian oligarchs who, rather than helping out their own country men, choose to waste their money on English clubs. Some clubs closer to home are run by pornographers, who now call themselves ‘businessmen’. I thought we were living in times when society were coming down hard on those individuals who may have abused women in the past.
And the players themselves are vastly overpaid. We have had to watch many games this season, where our players have barely been able to pass a ball and a goalkeeper who couldn’t catch a ball.
Fourthly, we have VAR. It has drained the excitement out of goal scoring. Everyone is looking round to see if the goal has to go to VAR. And some of the decisions and rules have been absolutely appalling. And for the spectators in the stadium sit there like lemons until a decision is reached.
So, for me, the enjoyment of watching the game has been reduced to the level of eating a bag of crisps. And what will I do? I’ll keep eating those crisps next season.