Free Nearly Reach the Sky by Brian Williams Page B

friends (I know, embarrassing isn’t it?) reckon this is just an urban myth, although I’m not so sure. They like to portray themselves as pessimists, but in recent years they have been a pretty cocksure bunch and I can just picture one of them making that call. Your typical West Ham fan, on the other hand, would beconsiderably more cautious in similar circumstances. When you’ve watched your team throw away a 3–0 lead at home to the likes of Wimbledon (1998) and West Brom (2003) you don’t start counting your chickens until they are surrounded by roast potatoes having been plucked, stuffed and cooked until the juices run clear. Snatching disaster from the jaws of triumph just doesn’t come as a surprise any more – it’s simply the West Ham way of doing things.
    I should point out that at West Ham the way we do things is not to be confused with the West Ham Way – a phrase generally used to describe a free-flowing style of football that the supporters want to see.
    There are those who will tell you there is no such thing as the West Ham Way. Sam Allardyce, in his first season as manager, put forward this fanciful idea after a trip to the picturesque cathedral city of Peterborough. Having been offered some helpful and constructive criticism by 6,000 pilgrims who’d made the journey as well, he responded to the repeated chant of ‘We’re West Ham United – we play on the floor’, by saying: ‘There has never been a West Ham Way shown to me. I’ve spoken to a lot of people at the club and no one can tell me what it is.’ Apparently those of us who believe there is such a thing are ‘deluded’.
    This is the same Sam Allardyce who, the following season, cupped his ear in astonishment as a highly disgruntled Upton Park crowd booed him off after a diabolical performance against Hull. Admittedly we had won and effectively banished any lingering fears of relegation – but West Ham supporters know what we want from our team and had expected better against a side that found itself a goal down and reduced to ten men after barely a quarter of an hour. Allardyce complained it was the only timehe’d ever got a response like that after winning – he just didn’t get it at all.
    Then, just as Allardyce appeared to have seen the error of his ways and changed the system to incorporate two men up front rather than a lone striker (and had West Ham playing some of the best football we’ve seen in years), his old mate Sir Alex Ferguson chipped in with: ‘I hope that, before I die, someone can explain the West Ham Way.’ Well, if the crowd of naysayers would care to let me through for a minute or two I’ll do my best. You see, WE ARE THE FAMOUS, THE FAMOUS WEST HAM! And we’re famous because of a football genius who laid down a (claret and) blueprint for the club that has now become an indelible trademark. His successors ignore it at their peril.
    Ron Greenwood was not a man to go out of his way to win friends. He didn’t like his own captain (a certain Robert Frederick Chelsea Moore) and he didn’t have much time for West Ham supporters or the East End as a whole. ‘This community and this area doesn’t understand or appreciate anything that this club stands for,’ he is quoted as saying by West Ham historian Charles Korr. The problem, according to Greenwood, is that we ‘don’t understand sincerity and intelligence’.
    Maybe not. But we do know a thing or two about football, and we came to appreciate the way he believed the game should be played.
    Greenwood joined West Ham from Arsenal in April 1961 – the same month that Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space (personally I’m in no doubt which was the more important event). His footballing philosophy can be traced back to the day he saw the brilliant Hungarian team of the mid-1950s trounce England 6–3at Wembley – the first time England had ever lost at home – with a performance that revolutionised the way the young Greenwood thought about the game