The Saturday afternoon ritual

We’ve all got one, those of us who are enlightened enough to enjoy football that is. We do the same thing every week, the only difference being how you feel at the end of the day, which depends on the success/failure of the team you follow. I’m thinking about this because I’m currently sitting in my father in law’s living room. Watching Man United play Southampton on one of those dodgy streams on my laptop. You know the ones where you have to close a million adverts before you can even see the video player in the middle of your web browser. Where they try and trick you into downloading some software because you’ve “got a virus on your laptop”. The ones that probably give you a virus, if you do have one that is.

It’s what I do every other weekend. Not always at my father in law’s (but often there). I do it every other weekend because on the weekends in between you’ll more than likely find me at West Ham. That’s the other thing I do, my other ritual.

It’s funny because we, football fans, do these things on a regular, habitual, basis. Often in a particular manner as we think it has some sort of bearing on our team’s fortunes that weekend. For example, I watch West Ham on these dodgy streams, I potentially fill my laptop with viruses (don’t worry I run two separate virus scans regularly, and I don’t install that crap, I’ve been using the Internet long enough to know better) but I’m convinced it’s bad luck. I couldn’t tell you the last time I watched us on a stream and we won. But a) I still watch pretty much every other week (provided I’ve got nothing else on), even though I think it’s bad luck; b) I, a rational adult in his mid 30s, believe that somehow me trawling through pages and pages that offer “singles in my area” (I mean I’m not even single, where were these attractive women when I was?!?) to watch some often pixelated, and sometimes Turkish or Chinese broadcast of my team playing will have a negative effect on them.

But I do it because I can’t not see. Not if I have the opportunity to see. If I am out, fair enough. But if I’m indoors on a Saturday, with my laptop and connection to the Internet, you’ll find me screaming at the laptop screen because West Ham are inviting too much pressure from Watford or making Sunderland look good. And even when we’re not playing away at 3pm on a Saturday and I’m at home, I watch another game which can range from Bournemouth v Aston Villa  (yes I did actually watch that) to the latest  action from Serie B  (no joke).
Ahhh! The things football makes us do! I’m gonna go a run a virus scan on my computer...

PS I’m not at West Ham today because I object to Sky scheduling Saturday evening games! If it were up to me all West Ham home games would be at 3pm on a Saturday (couldn’t give a toss about the Premier League’s money)!

Those who talk rubbish, risk being struck down!

This isn’t so much a new me or a change to this blog, I don’t do “New Me’s” or New Year’s resolutions. But there are going to be changes, in the blog and in life (watch this space)! To me the New Year is the same as the old one. Except for this one is a European Championship year (no birthdays, weddings or christenings in June or July please). And I’m getting married at the end of it. I’ve decided I need to do something about my growing waistline, which has basically been moving in the same direction since we had our first child Noah (aka West Ham’s bad luck charm) last November. So it’s plenty more running and my own take on the caveman diet in 2016, but more procrastination and sarcasm when it comes to this blog. I can’t wait!!

As for the football, West Ham are doing OK. Many will say we’ve followed the same pattern as last year, a great start to the season with some notable scalps, which then tailed off post November. There is a difference though, the difference is you can see we’re trying new things and players like Payet and Lanzini have added freshness to our attacking play. In many areas we still have the same personnel as last season and as a result have shown our limitations, notably with our defensive displays against Bournemouth and Tottenham. I suppose we now just have to see who comes in in January and whether we can put in an impressive finish to our last season at The Boleyn Ground.

On the subject of transfers it’s now January, as you will have guessed from all of the faux philosophical statuses on social media, which means one thing. The transfer window is open! Barcelona can now sign players (because they desperately need to don’t they); Arsenal won’t sign anyone, despite all of their fans pleading for the capture of Draxler or Benzema or the new Draxler/Benzema; and West Ham (not just West Ham all the other mid ranking Premier League teams) will panic loan an extra 3 has been’s, or never were’s until the end of the Season, see Nikita Jelavic aka the shit version of Andy Carroll (I hope he’s on loan).

Leicester are top! Well they’re not anymore; they’re 2^nd on goal difference. But regardless, that’s quite an achievement for a club who were bottom of the Premier League this time last year. Personally I’d love Leicester to win the league. It would give me the hope that the disparity that has been created between the big and small clubs, in the last 25 years since the advent of the Premier League, Champions League and all that Sky Money, is starting to even out. Fingers crossed…!

Finally if there is anything that the first 4/5 months of the season has taught me; other than the fact that Mourinho is actually mental and LVG hasn’t been good since that Ajax team; it is that in a world were Leicester City are the best team in the country, as a wise man once said… “Chat sh*t, get banged!”