Same Old Story

‘I LOVE July. There is something brilliant about the coming season. All the teams are equal on points – or rather no points. You have bought a couple of players who are going to complete the jigsaw – plug the holes in defence or provide that killer touch up front. This is your year.

Roeder gets a disturbing sense of deja vu

And then comes August. The big kick-off. Suddenly, the Slovakian under-21 international who had been sold to you on the promise that he had scored goals for fun for Dynamo Bratislava looks like he’d struggle to get in your Sunday league side.

And it turns out that the Polish centre-half, who you were told was wanted by half the clubs in Europe, is actually only wanted by half the police forces in Europe.

Yes, August is all about the shattering of illusions – and they don’t get shattered much more rudely than they did for us West Ham fans at St James’s Park on Monday night.

Okay, so we may have been missing a couple of players, especially Frederic Kanoute – but three of the starting XI had been out in the Far East over the summer. And we had Edouard Cisse making his debut.

But this season was going to be different. We weren’t going to capitulate away from home as soon as the first goal went in as we did last season. Were we?

Oh yes. In half and hour, a decent (but far from spectacular) Newcastle side had scored no fewer than four times – sending them to the top of the table and the Hammers to the bottom.

Suddenly, thoughts of improving on last season’s seventh place and perhaps challenging for a Uefa Cup place were replaced by thoughts of survival. Only 37 games left in which to achieve the magical 40 points.

We could, of course, blame World Cup fatigue, but the West Ham trio only played for just over three hours in total in the course of the competition. The fact is that, just as Chelsea will underachieve again this season and Spurs will be rubbish but keep pretending they are a big club, certain characteristics will never disappear.

And one is that West Ham will get tonked away from home – as they did on several occasions last season and to teams a lot worse than Newcastle – on a handful of occasions during the course of the season.

Another is that they will win a lot of their home games and achieve a respectable mid-table position – low enough to ensure that we don’t qualify for anything too serious and high enough to ensure that come next summer Glenn Roeder will make those two signings to propel us this time to greatness. ‘

Posted: 21st, August 2002 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink