UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE..

One or two of my very good friends are lifelong West Ham fans and so the last thing I wish to do is to introduce any discord between us. But maybe we have some common ground.

Compared with the fortunes of my own club, Southampton, the Hammers have done pretty well in that I can never remember them being reduced to the third tier of English football, a fate from which my beloved Saints have only now just emerged.   But supporting a football club is not only about what happens on the field of play.   It`s also about history, tradition, style and grace, personality and reputation - all those things and more that produce respect for any organisation however big or small.  It`s about how the club represents its supporters in public and in business and both our clubs have had their problems off the pitch, which have transmitted themselves to results on it.

Happily for me at least, the Saints have come through years of mismanagement, boardroom reshuffles and power struggles, financial catastrophes leading to administration and the inevitable decline from the top half of the Premier League to scraping the barrel of League One.   Things are now looking brighter with new ownership, financial stability, crisp direction, good management and all round improvement which has resulted in a return to the Championship.

In many ways, the current travails of West Ham have mirrored those suffered by the Saints until recently.   A succession of ownership changes have seen the installation of porn baron owners David Gold and David Sullivan to present a public face for the Hammers in stark contrast to those anonymous Chairmen who quietly directed affairs in their golden years.   Managerially too, the recent departure of the charmless Avram Grunt and the new appointment of `Big` Sam Allardyce provides yet another stark contrast with the days of Ron Greenwood and John Lyall, a contrast made even more sharp by today`s speculation that Allardyce`s first signing is likely to be El Hadji Diouf, arguably the most obnoxious player ever to cross the white line.  

However, whilst Hammers fans groan at the prospect of Championship football under Allardyce`s lump it long and hope regime, Saints fans like me are simply glad to be back in the same division.   They may look wistfully back to the days of Greenwood, Lyall, Moore, Hurst, Peters, Brooking, Brabrook, Byrne and all the other academicians as I look back to Keegan, Ball, Shilton, Channon, Mills, Watson, Armstrong and the ale house boys.  

Times have changed, the game has moved on and not for the best, for it seems to me that the higher the echelons of the game, the less attractive it becomes - FIFA, oligarchs, overpaid millionaire poseurs, super injunctions, corporate this, corporate that, the people`s beautiful game that is no more.   In the Championship, away from the high octane pressure, the self-inflicted tension and the false idolatry of the Premier League, it might be possible for Hammers fans to just sit back and enjoy the football  for what it is and despite Gold, Sullivan, Allardyce et al, to see that relegation isn`t the end of the world but, as I have discovered, just possibly the start of a new one.