It was like Lord of the Rings down at the running track today. Unbelievable that no-one had the foresight to turn up with a ladder or at least a grappling hook on a rope to invade the Director's seating from the concourse.
What's the word that springs to mind about it all? Shambles. A fucking shambles.Let's just go through it all.
First of all, the march that never was. This was verging on the surreal. The Grand Old Duke of Stratford put out the crowdfunding call. Chip in your cash we are gonna march to the top of the hill and down again. Start a revolution.
Everybody joins in and responds to the to the call to arms. Money changes hands. I saw the stickers on the away trips. We all did.
Suddenly, it's off. Actually, it was never really on. Apparently. It was a bargaining chip. G&T's down at Sullivan Towers and it's off. A letter from Karren and it's off.
Mistake No. 1: You raise expectations and you dash them with little or no explanation. Everybody from the outside sees it as a sordid deal with the people that rallied the would be marchers in the first place. Conspiracy theories do the rounds. This is never going to end well.
Mistake No.2 : Divide and rule by the club. A deal with the march organisers is all that's needed. Forget all the other fans groups and stakeholders. Instead of manoeuvring it would be better to take it on the chin and allow the pressure cooker to let off some steam. That intervention made things worse by a massive degree.
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Then those that are not part of the deal are more than a tad fucked off that it's off. Whose march is it? Is it the property of those that dreamt it up or those that want to protest regardless?
Mistake No. 3: Trying to resuscitate something that was not your idea. Better to let it go, particularly when the date chosen happens to be maybe the biggest game at home in 2018 given recent results.
Recriminations. Threats. Virtual violence. All over the press. Politics being ascribed to a dispute that has got fuck all to do with politics. Nothing short of a disaster.
Then in the middle of it all, the accounts come out.
Club record turnover of £142.1million and a £48.5million profit before interest and tax. One expert saying it's the 10th largest yearly profit in Premier League history. £16.4million paid to David Sullivan and David Gold in repayments on loans and interest. Like pouring petrol on a fire when everybody is raging about lack of investment in playing personnel.
No-one has covered themselves in glory. An omnishambles. The realty is however that the buck must stop with the owners, not the fans. They make the decisions. They have the control. They have caused the current situation and recently made it even worse.
Match day. The atmosphere is toxic. No point in going through the detail of the match because football had actually become irrelevant. Suffice to say that West Ham played pretty well in the first half and should have been in front. Didn't happen though.
Goal goes in from the opposition and pure fucking pandemonium breaks out. The frustrations of the halted marchers get unleashed.
Pitch invasions four times. Mark Noble wrestling with a gremlin because there are no stewards in sight. Some dude running around with a corner flag like he's on church parade with the fucking boy scouts.
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Embarrassing. A pure distraction and probably leads to the second Burnley goal.
As for the jokers that supposedly are in charge of that stadium. They haven't got a fucking clue. Never have done.
Day 1, I turned up and saw fighting in the stands. Pitch invasions never happened at the Boleyn (except when Millwall turned up, but that's a different story). What kind of humiliation is it when kids are apparently given seats in the opposition dug out because safety is so compromised?
That stadium is not our home, it is an alien spaceship. It's got that bad, I'm not even certain that a groundshare with Tottenham in their new place would be a worse option. You must know how hard it is for me to say that. At least we'd be in a fucking football stadium.
I've said it, because I am that angry about that stadium, which incidentally is costing the London Legacy Development Corporation £9million in losses just to open the doors to us each year.
This was a deeply wounding week for our club. We are neck deep in a shit pit. It is shameful that on a day when we were supposed to be celebrating the life of a legend of our club, that it ended like this. Will we be able to get over this car crash? Hard to say, but a couple of weeks off could not have come at a better time.
Everybody has got to get a grip. Some have to get a grip more than others.
The funny thing is that I still think we are going to stay up. Despite the fact that I've seen 11 goals go in over the last three weeks. We'll see. This crazy season aint over yet.
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