Once upon a time, West Ham United was a typically East London club.
A club filled with love, with players proud to wear the famous claret and blue, with a passion to play. To win. But now West Ham United is a club of despair, distance and deprivation. A club where the fans are distant from the team, and the team distant from each other. A lack of desire or passion radiating from both team and manager.
A manager of whom in himself has caused a divided union amongst even the most faithful of Hammers supporters. A team seemingly entirely focused on what appears on their wage slips, as opposed to the score line. Traditions and values are hidden and lost behind the modern exterior, and West Ham United’s fortunes are well and truly hiding.
Once a team feared by others. The ones who ‘won the World Cup’, the ones who lifted the Jules Rimet for England, and yet get refused a rise in pay from thirty-pence to seventy-pence a week, despite their achievements.
Despite this, however, the likes of Bobby Moore continued to play and serve the Irons, simply for the love of the club and love for the game. A model for future ‘professionals’. Or so you would imagine. Instead, however, our once great club is riddled with ‘professionals’ that show no commitment to the club or desire to succeed for the benefit of the club and everything the likes of Bobby Moore, Billy Bonds and Sir Trevor Brooking built and stood for has slipped through the proverbial crack in the new look West Ham United.
The lack of grit and determination is not however evident in the players alone, but also in the under pressure boss Sam Allardyce. Press conference after press conference, excuses are made to cover for a bad performance or off the pitch incidents. But never has Sam Allardyce shown anger or passion, or shown the drive to improve.
He seems to convey a lack of confidence and appears resigned to the club’s difficulties, an attitude entirely unnecessary and inappropriate at a time where, as fans, we are in need of reassurance and hope.
The Hammers sit 19th in the Barclays Premier League, just one point of bottom place. It is now that both players and manger alike must draw passion from the past, from a time where West Ham United meant something in the world of football. It is time that we (like chairman David Gold) had our triumph over adversity and regained our once fearsome stature.
We are West Ham UNITED, and United we must stand!
Keep The Faith!
