Football fans in general are used to being treated like 3rd class citizens despite paying out huge amounts of money to support their teams, so it came as no surprise that West Ham United's match against 'newly promoted' Brighton & Hove Albion was switched to the new friday night slot 'engineered' by Sky TV.
Those fans who attempted to finish work, maybe pick up their kids for a hastily convened journey to the Olympic Park and the London Stadium were confronted with: The Northern Line being closed, and the Picadilly Line being nearly closed. Those closures were bad enough but the icing on the cake was the Overground suddenly being cancelled, no notice, nada, nothing, just some surly git saying that there was a train that had broken down, no alternative transport and no advice as to an alternative route. Fans were left with little option other than to re-trace their steps, in the Org's case that meant travelling back from Highbury and Islington to Oxford Circus and getting the Central line to the 'Stratford Coral' with it's commensurate half marathon walk to the London Stadium! The reward for the journey being massive queues at the security check points generated by people arriving late due to the transport issues.
Having endured such a trek fans were expectant of a decent match, after all on paper Slaven Billic had selected the 'perfect team' with the exception of 'Sulkman' who was suffering from his perennial back injury, but as we all know football is not played on paper, this match was being played on the vast expanse that was supposed to be a football pitch but to all intents and purposes usually serves as a shop window for visiting teams to show just how fit they are!
Brighton took the lead after 10 minutes when the totally unmarked Glenn Murray headed in Pascal Gross' free-kick, Hammers huffed and puffed with plenty of possession looking for an equaliser, but moments before the break Jose Izquierdo curled past Joe Hart from distance, despite the England goalkeeper getting a strong hand to the ball. Murray added his second from the penalty spot in the 75th minute after he was fouled by Pablo Zabaleta who had up until then been 'covering' for at least three players, the most glaringly obvious of which was Jose Font who spent the entire match compromising not only his defence but also the midfield.
The crowd grew more and more hostile throughout as passes were misplaced, crosses failed to find a team mate, West Ham attempted 33, and shots went high and wide, only two were on target throughout the entire match.
Brighton scored three goals from seven attempts, West Ham had 16 efforts, Brighton could have added further misery as Murray had two good chances saved by Hart, their goalkeeper Mat Ryan was hardly tested.
Despite conceding the penalty, Pablo Zabaleta was West Ham's best player by a country mile as was Reid to a certain extent, but the rest were pants in varying degrees. Probably the worst offender was 'Elbows' Arnoutovic, he stands 6'4" but plays 4'6", he looked about 10 kilos overweight and gave the ball away on 9 out of 10 occasions, when he was finally substituted it got the biggest cheer of the night from the crowd!
By the time the third goal for the visitors was scored, the great edifice that is the Hammer's claret & blue elephant known as the London Stadium, was emptying faster than a Harvey Weinstein ex-employee reunion, but the fun was not over, no British Rail had one final treat in store. Having assured those denied the service earlier that the trains would definitely be up and running way before the end of the match, rail officials were then strangely recalcitrant with their communication when confronted by a huge amount of fans who had left early in disgust, "no trains mate" was the message "it's only a twenty minute walk to Stratford". Those with young kids, especially one family with a disabled child were made to endure another pointless walk, salt in to the wounds anyone?
Ironically with the exception of Sulkman this was the team that fans had been crying out for, unfortunately the players seemed to forget that neither he nor Andy Carroll were playing, they kept banging their crosses in all match, but there wasn't anyone at the end of them!
As they say, be careful what you wish for, it may just happen. - Ed
