I’m writing this on the last day of February, the morning after we’ve dispatched Leicester 2-0. Hot on the heels of effectively ending Arsenal’s title hopes, I should be cock-a-hoop about our first back-to-back victories in quite some time. But I’m not.
The overriding feeling is instead melancholy, and not just for a wasted season. When the victory over your own board on ticket pricing and concessions feels more jubilant and hard-won than a victory over the Foxes, it’s a sure sign that football’s sporting compass has gone haywire. Points mean prizes, that has always been the case, and I have frequently taken pleasure in a scrappy or fortuitous three points.
So, by rights, I should be revelling in a display that saw us dominate without even getting out of second gear. Comfortable wins in the Premier League are not to be taken for granted. In truth, however, any sense of satisfaction is undermined by Leicester’s lamentable infirmity. It felt less like a new dawn for Graham Potter’s claret and blue army – though I sincerely hope the upward curve continues into March – than the death knell for adrenaline-fuelled football.
Fanzines vs. The Digital Realm
My mood’s probably not helped by the latest royalty statement also arriving this morning and suggesting that the publishing industry is in even less rude health than the bitterly divided and deeply inequitable world of the once beautiful game. At least Blowing Bubbles proudly bucks the trend of physical fanzines disappearing into the digital realm of clickbait and faux sensationalism, and I’m immensely grateful to the handful of people who’ve spent their hard-earned cash on any of my books.
For the vast majority who haven’t read it, the blurb to Fortune’s Always Hiding sells it as ‘a fan’s-eye view that reads like The Secret Diary of a West Ham Fan Aged 40¾, chronicling a turbulent few years that will resonate with anyone who finds themselves disillusioned with the modern game but in too deep to ever give it up.’ The only thing that’s changed is I’m now 43¾.
From the Greenway to Stratford
Though bemoaning everything from obscene salaries to VAR, I’m not an out-and-out doom-monger. I was naively sold on the Olympic Stadium move, probably helped by the fact that I watched it rise during regular runs along the Newham Greenway and spent my last night in London before a move up north watching Usain Bolt and other athletes rocking the bowl in its original 2012 form.
On a similar note, I’ve watched the erection of Everton’s new home in Bramley-Moore Dock as it’s on the drive to the in-laws’ place. Some of our fans have got very excited over this as a ‘proper football stadium’ but a word of warning to away supporters, the travel links make Stratford look like Tokyo for options and efficiency. And with some of the point-scoring that’s been going on over Moyes’s Everton revival, you have to wonder whether some actually prefer blue without the claret.
The Malaise of Modern Bricks and Mortar
Thankfully, no such mistake is possible in north London, where the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium also gets eulogised as a proper football stadium, but that doesn’t make it immune from complaints about tourists and sterility. Evidently, the malaise runs far deeper than the bricks and mortar – or rather, the scaffolding and layout – of the London Stadium.
And while sympathising with many of the grievances about the LS, in particular the change of atmosphere wrought by the change of milieu from Upton Park, I think much of the discontent is symptomatic of more systemic changes. Which brings us back to Leicester’s inexorable slump towards relegation. It looks increasingly likely that, for the second season in a row, the three promoted sides are going to be relegated, while parachute payments continue to tilt the Championship in favour of the usual suspects.
The Chasm Between the Haves and Have-Nots
The gap between the haves and the have-nots has been commented on since the early days of the Premier League but it’s now more of a chasm. Winning the Championship at a canter ought to instil optimism for the subsequent season but instead survival is now the best that can reasonably be hoped for, especially when your Championship-winning manager (Enzo Maresca) gets poached by one of the big beasts and takes one of your star players (Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall) to sit on their bench.
The irony is that Leicester were the last club to rip up the rule book and smash through the various glass ceilings that the game’s accountants have constructed. That their fairy-tale season coincided with our last at the Boleyn provides the sense of an ending that was echoed in our recent meeting, which felt like two clubs going through the motions and knowing their place in the grand scheme of things.
European Trophies and Mid-Tier Glitterballs
Of course, the move to Stratford was supposed to see us compete at the top table. And a European trophy is some vindication towards that, although the popular characterisation of the Conference League as a mid-tier glitterball is also telling. The waning of Manchester United, Tottenham and even Manchester City has done a commendable job of adding to the Premier League’s general state of depression among its fanbases.
While most of us can derive schadenfreude from the decline of half of the long-term Big Six, no-one taking their places – Aston Villa, Newcastle, Nottingham Forest – all with their own PSR concerns – has any realistic hope of emulating Leicester in 2016 and actually winning the league any time soon. Any form of silverware eludes 98% of professional clubs, which is why we should be grateful for our moment in Prague. Only, I always thought football was supposed to be about dreams and passion rather than being grateful for scraps.
Professionalism vs. Passion
Glory seems more remote than ever because modern football is decided in board rooms, and there’s nothing glorious about that. And even on the pitch the action is akin to a chess board. Ipswich and Southampton, joining Leicester in the bottom three, have suffered from being suckered into playing the Premier League’s accepted style.
The old-school pundits from yesterday’s match rightly mourned Leicester’s lack of fight. It was as if the spirit had been sucked out of players and supporters alike, which is understandable when the next moves have been preordained. Meanwhile, West Ham – from the elevated position of no longer being a yo-yo club – produced a professional performance that barely gave Leicester a sniff but equally produced scant excitement for our own fans: effective keep-ball but only two shots on target. Possession, it seems, really is nine tenths of the law.
Mavericks and the Ghost of Upton Park
We’re supposed to applaud professionalism but it can, in truth, make for dire entertainment, which brought to mind Julian Dicks’s autobiography. My main takeaway from Hammer Time: Me, West Ham and a Passion for the Shirt is that my favourite Hammer growing up probably wouldn’t make it as a top-level footballer nowadays given his unprofessional penchant for a pre-match bath along with a Coke and Mars bar in lieu of a proper warm-up.
Today’s mavericks get straight-jacketed so as not to upset the apple cart. Di Canio’s talent probably wouldn’t be indulged today, he’d be seen as a bad apple. Paquetá is perhaps the closest we currently have to a maverick, and we’re increasingly infuriated by his squandering of possession in search of panache, because fans have been taught to ‘appreciate’ a more sedate, possession-based game.
Dicks, Di Canio and Upton Park represented blood and thunder. It wasn’t always pretty – let’s face it, there were times when it was crap – but at least it felt pure. Promotion and relegation really meant something rather than going through the motions. That adrenaline rush has largely been stripped out of the sport, and it’s not just the hushed crowds at the London Stadium who are feeling its loss. Here’s hoping the victory on concessions is step one towards reclaiming football’s soul.
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