Monday, February 24, 2003

Spare a moment's thought tonight for the memory of West Ham's World Cup-winning England captain Bobby Moore, who died ten years ago today. Mooro strolled the pitch with innate dignity in an era when the England national team meant something other than being a mere adjunct for greedy, selfish Premiership bosses and the Murdoch media empire.

Speaking of West Ham, I went up to The Hawthorns yesterday afternoon to watch the boys record only their fifth Premiership victory of the season with a 2-1 win over our relegation rivals West Bromwich Albion. In truth, it was a fairly poor quality game offering little encouragement that either side will get out of the drop zone. Big difference for the Hammers in this game was for once David James and Trevor Sinclair looked interested and more to the point perhaps our suicidal second-half defending went unpunished by a hard-working but uninspired Albion.

DJ turns tables over the AlbionI've given keeper David (Nintendo Fingers) James some stick on these pages previously, so to give credit where it's due, he'd obviously left his Gameboy alone this week and pulled off some outstanding reflex saves to secure three hard-earned points. Rookie full-back Glenn Johnson deserves a mention too for helping calm down veterans Tomas Repka and Les Ferdinand when they were in danger of losing their cool and getting sent off in separate incidents. A future skipper there, methinks, that's if the Arse don't snaffle him up in the summer, as has been rumoured.

The afternoon ended on a bit of a downer however with Birmingham pulling away again from the bottom three after beating a truly pathetic Liverpool team 2-1. That leaves the Hammers needing by my reckoning five wins out of their remaining ten to survive. That'll mean collecting all the points from six-pointers against Sunderland (home), Bolton and Birmingham (away) and home wins against Middlesborough and either Chelsea or Tottenham. The Tottscum game is this Saturday, and as much as I hate to admit it, they've got enough confidence and nous to get at least a point against us, and it would be typical if that loathsome lantern-jawed lobotomy job Sheringham stole all three, just for the sheer pig-headed spite of it.

So perhaps we should savour the moment of a rare crucial victory while we can. Not that the Hammers support needed much encouragement there, complete strangers hugging each other saying 'I love you! I really, really love you!' and one fella was so overcome with emotion he was wandering around teary-eyed telling everyone that cared to listen 'this is better than sex...this really is better than sex!'

Thinking about it, that's not a bad analogy - all those clumsy passes fizzling out with a disappointing dribble, and happening about as often as a Hammers away victory, I think I can see where he was coming from...

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