Saturday, 29 August 2015

Egg Chasing with Big Sam

So we're well underway now! Three games into the Season and it's a familiar feeling down at Upton Park. So familiar in fact that if you looked at our results at the beginning of last season under the tactical guru that is Sam “Allardichi” you’ll find we had made exactly the same start.

But the media won’t tell you that though. It was all rosy when Allardyce was in charge, we sauntered through the league disposing of sides like Leicester with ease. We were like the Barcelona of the East End of London. No actually scrap that! We were the Harlem Globetrotters, Adrian would spin the ball on his finger while the crowd whistled that Harlem Globetrotters theme. You know that theme. I’m whistling it now!

That’s it! Under Big Sam West Ham were the Premier League’s equivalent to the Harlem Globetrotters. I mean, we even qualified for Europeancompetition last year…

Now the wheels have fallen off. Now Slaven Billic, another one of those Foreigners, with his fancy ideas and lack of substance, has come in and ruined all the hard work that Big Sam did. And West Ham and their fans deserve it! That’s right we deserve it because we hounded Allardyce out when he was performing a minor miracle getting plucky little West Ham, who only average 34,000+ at home you know (just a thousand less than the likes of Sp*rs, I mean how will we fill that Olympic Stadium?), to qualify for Europe and keeping them in the Premier League.

We owe Big Sam a huge apology! He’d never lose to Leicester

I’ve kinda gone off on a sarcastic tangent there, sorry. As I was actually saying. Things are exactly the same. In fact most of the players who have played in our 3 league games so far are players that played under Allardyce. We still don’t have much depth, in terms of attacking options in our squad, much like under Allardyce.

So you can imagine, when I see all tweets from the West Ham experts, after we’re shown, on that great factual representation of the football that was played at 3pm on a Saturday that is Match of the Day (MOTD), getting stuffed by Bournemouth; and I see that ALLARDYCE HIMSELF has been brought in to do the analysis?!? I’m not massively happy!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. One of the worst things about West Ham playing badly is all of the “experts” that come out of the woodwork to tell us West Ham fans what’s wrong with our team. The “experts” whose knowledge of West Ham is based on whatever 10 minutes of footage the BBC has decided to show on a Saturday night to represent what happened over an hour and a half period.

MOTD is BULLSH*T! I’ve said that before too. They don’t have the time, nor the inclination (nor the knowledge sometimes). To actually show you what happened in a game so they stick to a pretty familiar format for all of their editing.

Team A won = Show all of Team A’s attempts on goal and all footage that backs up that Team A were the better side; Team B lost = Show everything that suggests that Team B aren’t that good; Player X scored = Show footage that suggests Player X was one of the best players on the pitch...

Obviously it’s a lot more subtle than that, but if you regularly watch full Premier League games you’ll pick up patterns like this watching MOTD.

By the way, that’s not me saying that West Ham were the better team against Leicester and Bournemouth or that we didn’t deserve to lose (although against Leicester I think we were a little unlucky based on the 2nd half). My point is that you get all these people that have watched a bit of MOTD and all of a sudden start telling you how you’re team’s going wrong and how Allardyce should have been kept on.

These are the same people that were probably slating him two years ago when we were having a horrible time, and saying that we were playing too much long ball. Because MOTD told them!
Smug faced twat!
And then there’s Allardyce himself. Is he for real?!? Sitting there grinning like a Cheshire cat as Lineker pours over the Bournemouth “analysis”. Does he not remember the end of last season? The 3 wins in 25 games? Does he not remember getting dumped out of the FA Cup in the last two seasons by sides who weren’t at all great, conceding 9 goals in two games!

Because I do Sam. You smile, get all the laughs in now. You were getting slaughtered by the very pundits and fans that are now suggesting that you’re some sort of English Pep Guardiola. When you filled our team with rubbish like Nolan, Roger Johnson & Joey O’Brien and left us short of strikers because you put all of your eggs in the Andy Carroll basket.

Every dog has his day Sam. Today is yours! Sit there on MOTD smiling (by the way every time I write that I’m expecting you to read “Mo-te-de”)!

I can’t remember where I heard it but the other day somebody said, “Teams that get rid of Sam Allardyce always get relegated soon after.” I’m not sure that statement is as complimentary to Big Sam as was intended…



The Egg Chasing World Championships start in a few weeks time. Now I’ll be watching it as I’m partial to a bit of “Rugger”. Union, that is, none of that Northern, League rubbish. But there’s a few things that I don’t like (or don’t understand) about Rugby.

Firstly there’s the random penalties. Now I know what a knock on is, I get offside and high tackles, I’m not some sort of Rugger Simpleton. I know how to chase egg shaped objects and how not to. But every so often when I’m watching a Rugby match (I was gonna say “game of Rugger”, for comedic effect but even I think that sounds too stupid to carry the joke on) the play just stops for a random penalty?!? And have no idea what the hell is going on!

Even worse, sometimes the commentators are like, “That’s poor Rugger! You can’t make those sorts of errors at this level!” Am I’m like, “What?! What errors? Those dudes were Ruggering climbing all over each other a second ago and it was cool! That guy literally Rugby Tackled his opponent to get the ball, and that’s allowed! Now you've seen some sort of infringement and decided to give a penalty, which will probably lead to points being scored!” No idea?!?

Secondly, how can the World Cup be next month when domestic matches are being played at the same time? You can’t have a World Cup at the same time as domestic fixtures. Don’t the guys who weren’t good enough to make their national team want to see how their compatriots are getting on? Won’t that potentially take spectators/interest away from one (actually both) of the competitions?

The World Cup should come after a domestic season. The players should be released from club duty. Then people should moan about how late certain players were released from club duty. That’s how it goes! It’s just not Cricket (well of course it’s not, it’s Rugger)!

All joking aside, one of my biggest gripes is when Rugby (see, I said “joking aside”) fans bash football. It’s cool. Both sports can exist! There’s like this inferiority complex. Being somebody who EVERYONE knows is a football fan, I get it all the time.

*Winey voice* “All footballers do is dive a roll around like little girls…!” “Rugby’s a real man’s sport!” “The carry on even when their teammates are down. You wouldn’t get that with those football softies…!” “The clock stops every time the ball goes out of play… They only take 10 minutes at Halftime… They only blow the full time whistle when the ball goes out of play…!”

Well bully for them! The sport is still nowhere near as popular as football!

Footballers don’t all just dive and roll around, and I’ve seen Rugby players feign injury! Ever heard of Bloodgate? And as for this idea that footballer are these delicate little flowers prancing around, pulling each other’s shirts. Have to ever seen the size of Cristiano Ronaldo? He’s like 6ft 3” and pure muscle, but he looks like an average bloke because, guess what, a lot of footballers are above average size and pretty much all of them are in peak physical condition. I see a lot of Rugby players that aren’t in the greatest of shape too! And just because Lionel Messi doesn’t get his ears mangled by the opposition every week it doesn’t mean that the sport he’s playing isn’t physical!


Stop trying to 1 up football! It’s cool, your sport is legitimate too! Although why the hell are those guys playing their league match when the World Cup Semi Finals are today? And why did he just award that penalty? That was perfectly good Rugger in my books!

PS Why the hell are you purposely trying to kick the ball out for a throw?!?

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