I dont know about anyone else, but reading the KUMB forums and in the press and TV about our beloved team has become almost excrutiating this season.
No real stranger to controversy or defeat, West Ham have delivered up possibly the worst slice of public relations disaster ever since the final day of the transfer window in August and from that day on, there has hardly been a day without some kind of Hammers related article or opinion in the press.There was a time when we could all say b*llocks to it; we dont care what people say about West Ham, we are a family and look to our own. But of late, the prominent members of that family, namely the players have let us all down badly and most sadly of all, we are now resenting them in a way that is hardly parallelled in recent memory.
At the moment, we all have to agree with most or all of what is written about our club, because it is true. Statistics and league positions dont lie, and neither do the opinion of the fans watching our team in person and on TV.
Consequently, the atmosphere at games has become embarrassingly quiet, with 34,000 of us anticipating defeat from just looking at the body language of our players. They themselves have become the living embodiment of a football parody such as Dream Team, with fast cars, booze, drugs and public order offences constantly in the news, alongside poorer and poorer performances.
There are a lot of reasons for this happening and we will never know the reality I guess, but if there is a clique in the dressing room, then it must have come from somewhere and been allowed to develop and fester, and the only person that could have allowed that, naively or not, is Pardew.
A strong manager would never allow a bunch of players to dictate the mood and atmosphere in the dressing room the way that certain players obviously have. A strong manager would not have let one season of mild success and a decent cup run change the mindset of his young charges to that of the 'billionaire boys club' attitude which pervades our team at the moment. A strong manager would have nipped any of this in the bud and had the respect from the players for them to have listened and realised that what they were doing was not in the best interest of the club.
This is not simply being romantic on my part and wishing for the good old days, how many other clubs have been in the press as much as ours this season for disciplinary and other non positive issues? None. What has been developed is a 'look at me I'm so good' culture and rather than showing it on the pitch, which after all, is all that we fans really care about (I personally dont give a f*ck what car any of them drive - if they were doing the business on the pitch they could drive around in a Chieftan tank for all I care), the way that they have demonstrated it is by showing everyone how much money they earn.
This season, there has been some form of corporate advertisement for West Ham running on the big screens before games, extolling the virtues of advertising with the Hammers. It talks about global visibilty, brand value and other marketing bullsh*t. And is accompanied by a video of great moments from the last couple of seasons. Somewhere along the way, someone seems to have forgotten the key ingredient in the marketing mix - the product.
The final nail in the coffin for me was my own son, 7 in March, who asked me for an Arsenal kit for Christmas. With Fabregas on the back. "Only cos he's a great player Dad, not cos I want to support Arsenal" I bought him a West Ham kit with Etherington on the back, and then took him to the Portsmouth game as a treat. I havent seen him wearing it since.
It's a sad day when the future generation of fans will be turned off by the current generation of players simply because they are offering no sort of role model both on and off the pitch.
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