The phony war is over the real battles are about to begin, 38 of them to be precise, at last the new season starts next Saturday. West Ham finished their pre season with a game against Deportivo La Coruna which I dwell on too much as just to say that it finished 0-0 and the Hammers won 5-3 on penalties, the first time I have ever seen West Ham convert all 5 penalties in a shootout, to lift the newly renamed SBOBET Cup, formally the Bobby Moore Cup. Why they felt the need to change the name of the trophy only the club can answer but when you remove the name off the trophy of probably the most famous player to play for West Ham and replace it with the name of your main sponsor, it does smack of commercialism .Its possibly a thank you to the sponsors for the fact that they paid all their shirt money for three years upfront to bail out the club when the money was running out when the Icelandic’s went broke but to me its just further proof that football is all about the money ,Tradition and history can be pushed aside only to be used when needed ,like when launching your new teams strip .
Last season West Ham struggled to sell their shirts and at one point in the season you could get a shirt for only £10, if you had a football team you could get 11 for the price of ten, the reason for this was that just one month into the new season they announced that they were changing kit suppliers when their present contract finished at the end of the season meaning that the shirts that were on sale in the club shops would only last for that season. When the new owners arrived and saw the tens of thousands of unsold shirts they had to act which to be fair to them they did. Forward to this season and West Ham launched the Away strip first ,a homage to the change strip worn in the late 60s,early 70,s and to advertise this they use a picture of Bobby Moore in the strip ,good enough to sell shirts but not good enough to keep his name on a cup .
The club have only embraced Bobby Moore since his far too early death from cancer, A bust of him was commissioned, A statue built to mark his finest hour, West Ham sorry ENGLAND winning the world cup and also the naming of the first new stand built at Upton Park after the Taylor report pushing clubs towards all seated stadiums. West Ham were already building this stand when Bobby died and did not have a name for it while this was the logical choice the cynical in me thinks that it wouldn’t be called THE BOBBY MOORE STAND if he was still alive.
To be fair to the club they do raise money for the cancer trust set up in his name and the shirt sponsors did donate £10,000 to the Bobby Moore Cancer Trust before the friendly started, unfortunately I come from an age before football was commercialised and therefore always look back to the so called good old days before the premier league started and clubs became businesses.
It’s a hard juggling act clubs have in trying to modernise and survive as a business and yet not lose sight of their heritage and history one that West Ham normally does well at, after all at this moment in time West Hams glory days are behind them as emphasised in the games programme where through out this season they are celebrating the silver anniversary of West Hams highest league finish of 3rd ,a season that came out of the blue and has never been repeated, but fingers crossed at the beginning of every season we start level on points with the so called big 4 and after the first game the most we will be off top spot is only 3 points ,that for me is the best bit of the start of the season ,The optimism, which is why I like normally to avoid pre season games , like the Deportivo game , because my optimism has been diminished by the realism of after the way west ham played perhaps our glory days will still be in the past and that this season is another one of false hope interspersed with flashes of brilliance. When I walked to yesterday’s game I was expecting to write about the new dawn of West Ham yet due to the tedious nature of the game I walked out afterwards feeling the way above
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