Oh what a West Ham circus- an FA Cup disaster at home against the City slickers.
For a few fleeting moments my mind travelled back to 1976 when West Ham were completely thrashed and outclassed by a rampant Liverpool side at Upton Park. It was quite the most horrendous demolition job by a Liverpool team still adhering to the classical traditions of a club guided by the incomparable Bill Shankly and then later Bob Paisley.
That distant January afternoon now seems just a sepia tinted calamity. West Ham were hammered, clobbered, thrashed, humiliated, overpowered and outclassed by a Liverpool team boasting Kevin Keegan and John Toshack. Both Keegan and Toshack were at their height of their striking powers and West Ham just sunk like a suet pudding as Liverpool piled on the agony with quite the most comprehensive 4-0 victory the club had ever achieved by an away side. Well, not quite but it probably felt that way at the time.
The previous season West Ham had waltzed their way to a Wembley FA Cup victory against Fulham, a team once memorably described as that elderly team from no less an authority as Alf Garnett. True Fulham did have the masterfully legendary Bobby Moore as captain and Alan Mullery had seen some of his most vintage years at Tottenham. But Moore, once a proud occupant of the claret and blue of West Ham and Mullery once of Spurs, were just overwhelmed and perhaps overcome by the big occasion with West Ham running out easy 2-0 winners. Their combined ages at the time were more or less neither here nor there, a total irrelevance but the result was ultimately predictable, in fact embarrassingly so.
So it is that we return to my poor old team from the new, palatial London Stadium with over 50,000 supporters hollering themselves silly but privately yearning for the more homely if claustrophobic Upton Park ground. How the mighty have fallen as they say although this may be regarded as a complete exaggeration. West Ham were beaten 5-0 by a Manchester City who just stamped all over West Ham and then trod all over them like a piece of dust.
In the old days West Ham were the strolling, swaggering entertainers who were rather too lenient for their own good. They had the softest centre of any team in the old First Division and many was the occasion when West Ham's opponents relished a visit to the Boleyn Ground like a pack of hounds devouring a piece of meat. Their defence, even with the dogged obstinacy of Billy Bonds. would open up like the creaking portcullis of a castle. Then the visitors would flood through with almost disrespectful ease and score a hatful of goals.
But to return to the business this evening West Ham were ravaged, ransacked and completely destroyed by a Manchester City team who almost seemed to memorise the game instinctively from the training ground. Their passing movements were just heavenly and poetic, their first touch on the ball just immaculate and their general distribution of the ball an object lesson in how to play the Beautiful Game.
It grieves to me say this as a masochistic West Ham fan of over 40 years standing that Manchester City were a pleasure to watch. This was precise, measured and metronomic football of the kind that Arsene Wenger of Arsenal has so popularised at the Emirates Stadium. It was the kind of football that the Magical Magyars of Hungary just mesmerised Billy Wright's hapless England with in 1953. By the end of that game the leader, conductor and ruthless perpetrator Ferenc Puskas looked ever so slightly apologetic and remorseful for what his Hungary team had just done to England.
In a more modern context Manchester City had Pep Guardiola, a manager of such admirable intelliigence and footballing intellect that it's a wonder why he didn't emerge from his playing career with a cap and gown. Guardiola didn't really need to attend an university because the man has obviously passed all of his exams with flying colours. Guardiola is a stylist, purist and innovator of the highest order. As a Spaniard, it was perhaps only a matter of time that Guardiola would perfect that passing template. The Spanish team who won World Cups and European Championships were the fruition and natural extension of everything Guardiola has held dear as a manager.
Tonight with the joyous likes of David Silva, Sergio Aguero, Yaya Toure, Kevin De Bruyne and John Stones in perfect tune with each other's thoughts, City flowed and floated forward like the most majestic cruise liner. They fashioned their attacking movements in the way that a tailor marks up a suit, then weighing and pondering, analysing and judging every flick, touch, pass into space and then stitching it all together with a mosaic of neat triangles and glorious one touch football.
City won 5-0 and from a neutral point of view it should have been a lot more. In fact it was a genuine masterclass so beautiful had it been in its execution and conception. West Ham were not only chasing shadows but also chasing the ghosts of yesteryear, the memories of Hurst, Peters, Moore, the now late Peter Brabrook, Brian Dear, Alan Sealey and Johnny Sissons now no more than a golden halo from another year.
The early penalty from Manchester City simply opened the floodgates with more goals, Raheeem Stirling almost hilariously bundling home but credited as a West Ham own goal. Then David Silva almost arrogantly stroked home the third before Aguero added a fourth and Stones just underlined City's overall supremacy.
There is a part of me that is almost relieved that West Ham are now out of the FA Cup. Maybe the men in claret and blue can now rev themselves up to go again , re-charge their batteries and re-calibrate their engines. Now is the time to get back to the important business in the West Ham in tray. Now priorities have changed and attitudes adjusted. You suspect that for West Ham this may have been the best thing that ever happened to them, maybe a blessing in disguise.
The second half stretches in front of them like the widest F1 racing track full of dodgy corners, teasing chicanes and ever increasing circles of the racing track. They will try to put down the accelerator, sharply change a couple of gears and the whole feat of engineering will be a wonder to behold. Perhaps West Ham may never now be the smoooth, streamlined attacking machine of last season but they may have to open the throttle sooner or later.
Their chief creative architect and playmaker Dimitri Payet still finds his career at West Ham at a crossroads. Does he go or does he stay? Payet has recently expressed his desire to play in the Champions League and is maybe biting off more than he can chew. At the moment he is far being from being the roving, roaming, magical and impulsively gifted player who took the Premier League by storm last season.
There are times when the concentration goes missing and the mind goes a wandering. Rather like his claret and blue predecessor Paolo Di Canio, Payet leaves his genius firmly imprinted on a match. But there the similarities reach an end. Di Canio's temperament and behaviour were far more of a concern than the obvious talent. Payet will never be a loose cannon ready to explode at any moment and is far more restrained than Di Canio ever was.
But the general consensus of opinion is that Payet has far too many delusions of grandeur than is good for him. Payet leaves lovely watercolours and oil paintings in all of his performances whereas Di Canio just loved a good old fashioned strop. Payet's free kicks are more Monet than Di Canio's Italian renaissance. But both players have given us cause to pause for breath over the years. if not breathtaking. Now though is the moment of judgment and Payet has to make vital decisions.
When the London Stadium had closed for business for the night and that glowing red structure outside the ground had been extinguished for the last time I began to think back to those rock and roll Cup nights at the Boleyn Ground when the Chicken Run began to sway its scarves and the North Bank would light up a thousand cigarettes at half time in unison. It is a long, long time ago and in the light of a 5-0 by a team of quite literally City slickers, the London Stadium sounds an almost farcically inappropriate name.
At the moment at least. it is quite possibly a veiled insult to the rest of London teams playing in both the Premier League and the rest of the League. Can West Ham seriously consider themselves as the definitive London team playing at the London Stadium? It does seem a horrible misnomer but then this is not the time for dwelling on what might have been.
The London Stadium was always likely to be fraught with problems and to an impartial observer Upton Park still seems like one of those intimate fringe theatres where every voice could be clearly heard. The crowd control and stewarding issues at the beginning of the season were more than serious disturbances. They were a distressing reminder to all West Ham fans that the whole move to a new stadium has carried with it faint echoes of a huge transitional period.
We all know about the trials and tribulations of moving with all the traumatic aches and pains that accompany this moment in our lives. You suspect though that when all the furniture has been taken off the removal vans then West Ham may begin to find their feet again. But at the moment the sofa looks very ragged and the armchairs are ever so slightly rickety. We must hope that a good lick of emulsion of paint may just be what West Ham are missing. Time for a bit of renovation and modernisation
For the time being though it's time for sober reflection and remembering the flow and fluency of a side managed by Ron Greenwood and how easy it was on the eye. Then there were the equally fluid, supple and flexible presentations of the John Lyall era when the old First Division was almost claimed just over 31 years ago. Oh for that final game when the Hammers reached out and almost claimed the old League Championship. Somewhere and somehow the claret and blue army will reach their promised land. It is time to faithfully blow those Bubbles.
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