The Diary

29 November 2004: United: Some Sundry Post-Match Thoughts

If there was one thing I really could have done with yesterday, it was the services of the bloke who rendered me unconscious within seconds on Friday morning; had he been around The Hawthorns to ?pass the gas? as it were, that trauma-ridden second half would have passed me by completely. Anaesthetists are like buses, really; on Friday morning, within the space of about fifteen minutes, several of the buggers came along to see me. Come the Man Ure game, when I was in desperate need of some more chemically-induced oblivion, where were they? At Dudley Road, saving bloody people?s lives, that?s where! Get yer priorities right, chaps! Come on, Jeremy - install ?em at the turnstiles, that?s what I say.

A most entertaining part of yesterday?s half-time interval, may I say, was the sight of ?Mister Woo?, our club sponsor?s nationally-acclaimed ball-wizard strutting his many perfections on the Hawthorns pitch. Yet another reason why the whole thing had something of a ?retro? feeling to it; older Baggies will recall, of course, a certain Dave Burnside performing similar half-time antics in the early sixties for the benefit of a most discerning Black Country audience. And, coupled with all that, were all those marvellous United chants ? some real raves from the grave in that little lot, I can assure you. (More about that subject at the end of this piece, by the way.)

United?s version of the US Marine hymn ? the one that has the refrain ?To hell with Liverpool, to hell with Man City/We will fight, fight, fight for United, ?till we win the Football League?.? was a real blast from the past; a ditty I last heard around the time The King played up front for us, and the Vietnam war was going full-tilt. A shame we couldn?t emulate the sort of final score we generally racked up against them back in those halcyon days, but as the Stones also sang around the same time, ?You can?t always get what you want?.? Unless you?re Fergie, of course, whose SOP is to give any match official showing even the slightest sign of independent thought the full hair-dryer treatment, blow waves and all.

But, enough of this churlishness; United are from Venus, we are from Mars, and never the twain philosophies shall meet, ever again, I suspect. The Mancs probably see their long-term future in terms of chucking their lot in with a European League, and sod this one for a game of soldiers. We Baggies? Premiership survival, plain and simple, would be very nice, pretty please. I reckon the tipping-point was reached around the time our current gaffer still strutted his stuff for the stripes; had we gone on to win the title under Atkinson, instead of breaking up that marvellous side through transfers out, poaching, etc., would both clubs? respective paths along football?s storm-ridden highway have been as wildly divergent as they subsequently proved to be, I wonder?

It?s quite an interesting game to play, this ?What if?? business. History, vastly simplified, and coming down to a set of crucial choices that present themselves to men and nations from time to time; take out the little German lance-corporal with the funny moustache in that World War One trench, for example, and you?ve averted the second conflict, and much, much more. Or maybe not, should someone else harbouring similarly-extreme views have come to the fore in the ruinous backwash for Germany of the 1919 Versailles Treaty. Assuming our side was the victorious one, of course. Had we not been, who knows by how much modern history would have differed by this time?

And, returning to the more mundane business of the beautiful game once again, flash some serious boardroom cash to Big Ron, beat off the moneyed blandishments of the Mancs, and you?ve kept a bloody good side together, plus its manager, and gone on to even greater things. Or not; it?s a pretty thorny subject for debate, trying to work out into which bifurcation of Time?s ever-streaming rivulets our fortunes would have dropped had we hung onto what we had then. Or, at other equally-crucial stages in our existence, such as the time Ossie Ardiles upped sticks and left us for the bright lights of the metropolis and his beloved Tottingham. As all the best exam papers put it these days - ?Discuss!?.

As far as yesterday?s concerned, I?m still desperately trying to hang on to one ?positive?; a couple of weeks ago, it was pretty-well universally agreed among our support that the forthcoming triumvirate of ?Boro, The Arse and The Mancs should be totally written off. To get anything whatsoever from that lot would be a miracle of Galilean proportions, and I don?t recall anyone I spoke to seriously finding fault with that particular theory at that time. We?ve now emerged from that awful run of games, and, hey, we actually got a point at the expense of one of the most exciting sides in the English game, and at their place as well. And, looking at things from the ?half-full? viewpoint once more, we should have earned ourselves at least a point from Boro (oh, dear, Kanu!), and we did manage to last 45 minutes plus a bitty chunk of the second half before United managed to properly see us off. And you might want to argue that had Big Dave and Cosmin Contraceptive not had to leave the scene of the accident due to infirmity, the eventual damage inflicted might have been limited further, or not happened at all.

Looking at the whole thing from the ?glass half-empty? viewpoint, though, it?s an inescapable fact we?re now two points adrift at the bottom and but three games remaining before the Christmas period. Poor results in those, and we're going to be three or four points adrift come Yuletide, and all but gone. It?s been said ad nauseam, I know, but no Premiership outfit has ever survived holding up the rest over the festive period. The next three games, Pompey, away, Charlton, at home, then away once more, at Blues, could be absolutely crucial to our survival. The need to get something from these games to keep us in with a fighting chance of survival come the re-opening of the next transfer window, is absolutely imperative. If we don?t get a win from somewhere, and pretty soon, it?ll take pretty much all the combined escape resources of Steve McQueen, Papillion and Casanova ? no mistake, that one; he famously managed to escape from the Doge?s Palace dungeons not long after being banged up ? to get us out of this awful mess.

?O, Brave New World that has such people in it?.? Never has Shakespeare?s famous lament down the centuries struck such a chord with this column. How come? I was quite saddened to hear yesterday of The Fart?s humiliating knock-back at the Halfords Lane Stand glass doors, where he?d arranged to meet John Motson plus son pre-match, as detailed in yesterday?s gripping instalment. ?Apparently, ?Im Indoors relieved El Tel from selling duties as arranged, The Fart then belted at a rate of knots around to the other side of the ground, where Motty awaited ? but they were only to natter for a brief minute or so before some Albion jobsworth or another chucked our septuagenarian editor out for not having the relevant pass, or something.

Absolutely disgraceful treatment of an Albion nut, who has loyally followed the club through thick and thin ? mostly the latter ? for nigh-on sixty years, now. It?s not as if he was a young chancer trying to blag his way in, for God?s sake; The Fart has always carried the torch for the Baggies with complete honour and dignity over the decades, and on more than one occasion in our recent history, has done so under circumstances where he would have been perfectly justified in saying ?Sod this, I?m not doing it any more?. I?m sure that had he known, Motty would have been truly embarrassed and horrified by the whole thing also, as it was he that enquired about The Fart?s whereabouts in the first place.

Not only that; when idly trolling through our incoming mail today, I also quite accidentally learned of the plight of a fellow Baggie, who?d suffered a prolapsed vertebral disc, a condition that causes excruciating pain to the sufferer; because of pressure on the sciatic nerve from the errant bit of anatomy, sitting down is a total impossibility for someone with this particular problem. Not unnaturally, once diagnosed, the guy then wrote to the club explaining his predicament, and asked if he could stand on the concourse at the rear of the East Stand (where he?s a season-ticket holder) instead of sitting down as per usual.

The reply? Not one conveying profound sympathy for his plight and offering practical solutions, as you might have expected, more something on the lines of ?no, this would be not be possible? and just to add (literal) insult to injury, the guy was further informed in the same email, in no uncertain terms, that having now been alerted to this potential breach of stringent health and safety regulations, the stewards in the East Stand would be instructed to be extra vigilant, and ensure no one was standing in the area.

The cynical tone of the email, not to mention the breathtakingly-insensitive arrogance of the whole thing, left the recipient absolutely incandescent with fury, as you might expect. As the sender further commented, over the years, the pair of them had watched Albion the length and breadth of the land, in ramshackle grounds, more often than not, and enduring desperate weather conditions, and all the while watching football of a truly shocking standard being played under the tutelage of hopelessly incompetent managers. The writer then concluded: ?As good loyal football fans we asked for some understanding (of) a medical predicament and a little bit of flexibility, and we are told to, in effect, F**k off.?

I can only add the comment that it?s at moments like these, I really do despair for the corporate monster our club is rapidly becoming. Quite a turnaround from the time, ten years ago, when a good mate of ours, having just broken his leg playing football, asked the club for help watching home games (he?s a season-ticket holder, and has been since Pontius was a Pilate, pretty much), with the result that prompt arrangements were subsequently made for our chum to have a group of seats at the front of the stand he could lie on, full-length, for the period of his time in plaster-of Paris-ed durance vile. Not only that, when I was incapacitated with back pain of similar origin around four years ago, the club were absolutely brilliant, also, in assisting my endeavours to watch away games from a wheelchair, in disabled enclosures the length and breadth of the country. As it turned out, our correspondent did manage yesterday, but only with the assistance of very strong painkillers indeed, bolstered by the ingestion of a considerable quantity of alcohol, and because of the very real danger of a possible reaction to both substances taken in combination, not the most sensible of solutions to the problem, either.

There?s been quite a colossal turnaround in attitudes over recent years, hasn?t there? Customer care? Loyalty? Don?t make us laugh, just bugger off back to the cheap seats where you truly belong. And, while you?re at it, don?t forget to visit the club shop on the way. Is this really the positive and caring image West Bromwich Albion wants to project to the general public? Do we really have to alienate genuine Baggie people like The Fart, and the chap mentioned above, in the totally-insensitive manner previously described? Or are the club so intent upon keeping their corporate market happy, a little bitsy problem with those punters still of the quaintly-anachronistic variety that go purely for the football, and nothing else, means absolutely sod-all to them?

And finally?.One. Yesterday, as per the previous Premiership meeting of our two clubs, I marvelled greatly at the resourceful and witty chants and ditties employed by our visitors? followers. How the hell did they manage to organise things to that extent, I wondered? Well, thanks to someone on the Boing mailing-list, I now have the answer ? well, part of it, anyway. Those razor-sharp ?lyrics? of theirs are written by a bloke called Peter Boyle, apparently. There?s also an actual website out there completely dedicated to United chants, one of which featured heavily in their repertoire yesterday, much to my amusement. The one that goes, to the tune of the well-known Live Aid ditty, Do They Know It?s Christmas: ? Feed the Scousers/ Let them know it's Christmas time...? also ?My old man said be a City fan?.?, the one that goes to the old music-hall ditty, ?My old man said follow the van?..? Shame, though, the people responsible for that site managed to overlook the sarcastic one still posted there about their current idol, a certain Wayne Rooney!

Two. Under the terms of his severance agreement, as I understand it, our erstwhile manager is obliged to apply for every single job going in the top two divisions. Cor, I?ll bet the keyboard on his PC was rapidly rendered red-hot typing out that all-essential managerial CV. Three more this week for our ex-boss to consider, then: Pompey, Gillingham, and - although they?re not of those fully entitled to wear the Tyrian purple these days - cash-strapped Stockport County! Mind you, after a previous incarnation at the helm of the Edgeley Park club just a few years back, the final job loss being due to ?boardroom problems?, I can?t see that one being too much of a goer, somehow!

 - Glynis Wright

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