The Diary

28 December 2006: Charlton-Fulham - Aand The Rapid Onset Of A Terrible Feeling Of Deja Vu.

Welcome to my Albion-orientated world once more, so without further ado, here?s a bloody great ?BULAH!? to all you lovely Baggie people out there tonight. Don?t worry you pretty leetle heads about my last, it?s not rude, honest. Far from it: it?s the Fijian equivalent of ?Wharro, aer kid!?, actually, and such a lovely all-purpose greeting, I even had it immortalised on a tee shirt purchased when I was out there, around ten years ago. Such a colourful number, too, and dazzlingly so, to the extent you?re bound to see me wearing it while schlepping around Bearwood High Street on any given midsummer day.

Feel free to use it on absolutely anyone you care to, I don?t mind. Just think, you could even brighten up your gaffer?s day an awful lot just by stealing up on him/her whilst fully engrossed in some kind of mundane company business or other. For maximum effectiveness, give it them with both barrels, and at very close range, too. Then wait for the bang. Sorry, I don?t specialize in the creation of CV?s for job application purposes: just cart both you and your freshly-minted P45 straight to the local Jobcentre, and they?ll take it from there with the utmost pleasure, of that I?m sure!

What a good time to start tonight?s instalment, this, coming hard on the heels of us both watching the second half of tonight?s London derby on the box. The final score? Charlton 2 Fulham 2, but the final moments of that game proving so horribly reminiscent of our last brief foray into the opulent world of the Prem, I?m willing to bet anything you like that a goodly proportion of those Baggies watching developed sympathetic symptoms of post-traumatic stress with a speed truly frightening to behold. Been there, done it, worn the tee-shirt, even. Now, it?s Charlton?s turn to suffer, poor sods.

Well, it just had to happen, didn?t it? There were the Addicks, new manager Pardew, and everything, but immovably stuck on the next-to-bottom rung of the ladder, playing the Premiership-wise Cottagers, and at The Valley, too. The grabbing of a nifty three points from that one would have done the Charlton cause no end of a favour, of course - and for the main part of the second 45, that?s precisely what they looked set to do. Have the footballing equivalent of the Seventh Cavalry appear from over the horizon, I mean. Until bloody Fulham somehow squared things right at the death, that is. No wonder I spotted a plethora of satisfyingly-thick nooses, each and every one fully furnished with its own sitting tenant, all oscillating gently in their home end, the very moment Graham Poll - yes, with him in the middle, controversy?s never too far away, is it? - blew up for the end of the allotted ration, and within seconds, literally, of the visitors perpetrating the previously-mentioned act of last-minute larceny.

The true origin of the trouble lies well-hidden in the small-print of the diabolical pact every top-flight newcomer is obliged to read, comprehend, then sign to say they?ve actually gone and done it, viz: ?When you find yourself stuck right at the bottom of the heap, and relegation looms more ominously with every successive week that passes, that?s when you really begin to discover the enormous, but normally latent, potential of others in that league to totally screw you up, both mentally and physically.?

And if you still don?t believe me on that one, I cordially invite you all to cast your minds right back to our own soul-destroying experiences when placed in that unenviable position. Sometimes, only a large measure of strong waters will help deaden the pain of constantly dropping hard-fought points in the most infuriating of circumstances, of course: applying that well-founded maxim to the psychology of most Baggies regulars at that time would unearth an epidemic of covert dipsomania unparalleled in modern times, I reckon.

The very last time Charlton achieved escape velocity from the old First was the same season we played them on the very last day, at home, and needed all three points to ensure safety. Having already secured their own top-flight status in fine style, they didn?t care diddly-squat about the final score that day, hence that generously-donated brace of Albion goals, courtesy a more-than philanthropic defence. That was a good five years ago, of course, and much water has flown under the bridges of both clubs since, which could conceivably mean both clubs passing each other like ships in the night, come the end of the current season?s hostilities.

How sad for Charlton: all that vast expenditure of effort just a few years ago to keep the club afloat, then secure a happy return to The Valley, their spiritual home, with two subsequent top-flight promotions to brag about along the way, and with first Lennie Lawrence, then Alan Curbishley, steering the ship of state towards calmer waters. It would now seem that the departure, last season, of the man who is now West Ham?s head of state, precipitated something of a crisis at the club: getting through three managers within the space of as many months does not a stable situation make. And now they?re reaping the whirlwind. Oh dear.

Thoughts apropos of a Premiership club struggling to survive in the big boys? playground put me very much in mind of our own efforts to make it a promotion hat-trick, this season. That?s why I was particularly gladdened to read some of Mogga?s post-match thoughts, the ones touching upon the pressing need for us to come up with the names of players well used to both teams and situations where results have to be painfully ground out. With those few words, he?s gone right to the nub of our current problem.

That?s got to be one of our main priorities once the transfer window opens for fresh seasonal business, come the last echoing chimes of Big Ben this forthcoming Monday night. Sure, as yesterday?s events proved so conclusively, we have an absolute plethora of players more than capable of delighting crowds with the truly slick quality of their passing of the ball, not to mention the sheer intelligence of their anticipatory movements off it, but it takes far more than that to get out of this division, commendable as those skills may be. That?s why its so imperative we use the forthcoming ?window? as a means of seeking out players who aren?t so watchable, aesthetically speaking, but gratifyingly possessive of that vitally-important ability to get stuck in, as and when necessary.

And we also need to strengthen elsewhere, of course: the rapid acquisition of an experienced defender cast in the Big Dave mould wouldn?t go amiss for starters, certainly. Geoff Horsfield, freshly-resurrected from the living hell of a footballing existence ?oop North?, and the ?prodigal son? returned nicely in time to help pick up the ?heavy duty? striking reins of our forthcoming ?run in?, too? Not too much to be had there in the ?silky skills? department, ?tis true, but for sheer hard, honest graft, not to mention commitment to the cause truly frightening in its totality, I can?t think of many better currently in the game.

Let?s put it this way: get some improvement in the consistency stakes up and running over the course of the next few weeks, and the future will look much brighter, as far as promotion?s concerned. But not the ?automatic? variety: to all intents and purposes, I see those two places being taken by Blues and ? very likely ? Derby. The former I regard as a shoo-in, the latter? Still a pretty good bet, I?d say, though. When it comes to the play-offs, that?s when the guiding principle of ?horses for courses? really begins to kick in. And yes, I could see our very own former ?Horse? playing an important role out there, were both manager and chairman to be fully concordant on a return visit to that particular road over the next few weeks.

It?s only when you land in the play-offs you begin to truly appreciate the pressing need for performers, blessed from birth, almost, with hearts the size of the Post Office Tower, and a loyalty to the cause to match. Just like the all-too readily debatable subject of penile dimensions, skill isn?t everything. Lack a reasonable quota of good honest grafters in your first-team squad, once those all-important semi-final games start to loom large, and you?re stuffed, basically. There?s an awful lot of hard decisions to be made out there over the course of the next three or four weeks, that?s for sure. Let?s hope we get most of ?em right. Stuff up, and that leaves us with just one season?s worth of parachute payments owing. You only have to look at what?s happened to the likes of Leeds and Leicester since their headlong nose-dive from grace to appreciate what?s at stake. Do try and get it right, Albion.

Now we?ve all gone and put the main bulk of the season?s Bacchanalian and dietary excesses well and truly behind us - turkey carcass, family, for the use of, turned into curry, and yet more curry; gash potatoes and cabbage quickly transmogrified into bubble-and-squeak; festive pudding, or, more to the point, the ritual post-prandial torching of it by frustrated-pyromaniac Pater, necessitating the rapid attendance of the fire brigade, etc. ? along with megatons of over-the-counter indigestion remedies of varying strength, do all you lot out there reckon now is a propitious time to take stock of what?s been happening in the great big world of West Bromwich Albion, and all stations west, of late? Yeah, of course it is ? so let?s do it, shall we?

Along with our win, yesterday, I took pleasure in great big heaps with the concept of our central heating boiler actually behaving itself over the festive period, for once. As you?ll already know, we had the new one installed just the other week, then hit teething-troubles of one sort or another almost immediately afterwards. Following a brace of extra-curricular visits to our place by Norm, and an awful lot of blue language when actually investigating the cause of the problem, we now reckon we?ve cracked it, more or less, so no more central heating failures, then. Cross fingers.

Additionally, we?ve since retrieved our relatively-new-but-maddeningly-errant PC hard drive from the ?hospital?, where it lay in the cyber-equivalent of a coma for some considerable time, followed by a good electronic detox session, somewhat hastily prescribed in the wake of that machine?s exasperating tendency to ?crash? without warning, and usually whilst working upon yet another instalment of this very same diary piece, too. Well, it was either that, or the thing ending up defenestrated as the inevitable consequence of my fury: not just any old paddy, mind, but a real ?red mist descending? deal, the genuine article. You mean to say you?ve never once seen me lose my temper? Oh dear. Not nice, believe you me.

At least the brand-new version?s several zillions of light years faster than our previous lumbering number: ah, the sheer luxury of being able to dial up any part of my PC?s services, have it delivered, and within just a fraction of a second, too. As Lewis Carroll once put it, in one of the ?Alice? books: ?Calloo, callay, O frabjous day!......? Takes around 30 minutes off the job straight away, it does, and before needing to type a blasted thing, too: precious time in quantity, that, especially when there?s literally tons of other things you want to be getting on with afterwards.

Like get stuck into what the post-Christmas sales are offering? Not usually my bag, that particular species of conspicuously consumptive lunacy, but as we were feeling more flush than is usual for us at this time of year, and urgently needing a replacement pair of cordless telephones, anyway ? they, too, had contracted ?shutdown-itis?, and what seemed a hopeless case, at that ? off we headed down to Oldbury Argos branch, to flash some serious cash at the problem. Not just to solve our immediate communication problems, mind, but to grab ourselves a particular make of in-car satnav we?d seen on offer in one of the dailies, this morning.

After a quick pre-departure check on their website to see if that branch still had our desired goodies in stock ? the nice little man, he say, electronically: ?YES!? ? off we went to do the biz, make both transactions, but in one easy journey, rather than have to put up with several. Well, that was the theory. Trouble was, this was a SALE we were talking about, and not a vague hypothesis, so once we?d arrived at the store (absolutely packed with hopeful bargain-hunters, it was, by the way: forget about swinging the proverbial cat in a cruel and unusual manner, even the challenge presented by the piddling task of moving a small rodent from A to B would have proven horribly problematic for anyone daft enough to try) then checked on their own internal gubbins again prior to attempting purchase, both items had sodding well gone, hadn?t they?

Oh well, there?s always next week, once everyone?s well and truly returned to their personal place of durance vile, and doing enough hard yakka to earn the necessary dough to finance the 2007 caper. Just don?t bother trying to ring us on our landline in the meantime, that?s all. Festive season or otherwise, I?ll be back come the merry night of Friday, when it?s high time to speculate upon the likelihood of us doing the double over Ipswich, the subject of a neatly-executed goal-blitzing courtesy our lot, on their very own muck heap (not to mention at the hands of a completely different managerial incumbent, albeit a temporary one) only a matter of just a few short weeks ago. The Tractor Boys may not possess the same degree of footballing ?sexiness? they had about them back in the heady managerial days of George Burley, et. al. but they?re still fully capable of springing a nasty surprise, or three, just the same. ?Treat With Extreme Caution?, just like it says on the label? Too bloody right, and much more besides.

And Finally?. Some late news just in, mainly concerning the pressing need for ?Im Indoors to remain in our living-room, while some eager-beaver Baggie or other journeyed to our house, so the ?main man? could sign the inside cover of the guy?s newly-purchased Cult Heroes book, right there and then! I foresee the rapid onset of Hypertrophied Head Syndrome in hubby, at this rate: as the old wartime song once put it: ?How do you keep ?em down on the farm, now they?ve seen Gay Paree?..??

 - Glynis Wright

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