Down with the ship?
February 28 - 2007
After an absolute drilling at Charlton, West Ham are now assured of going down. I can’t believe I just typed that sentence.
Allow me to restate my position on relegation as a practice: it rules. It’s the single greatest invention in sports history. While other leagues hang there heads in shame as the Cleveland Browns take on the Arizona Cardinals, or the Boston Celtics lock horns with the Atlanta Hawks, Wigan vs. Sheffield United (on the final day of the season) will be one of the most anticipated games of the season. Relegation turns crap into gold.
That being said, watching West Ham go down for the second time in 4 years will be soul-crushing. The impending fire-sale, the eventual transfer requests, the recriminations…truly heart-wrenching stuff. And it’s even worse as an American fan. Following a team in the Championship, from a distance, is one of Dante’s lower circles of hell. It stinks. No televised games, 3-second highlights on Sky Sports, live-match reports on Tuesday afternoons…
Plus there’s no guarantee West Ham will be coming back up anytime soon. The Championship must be considered among the most difficult leagues on the planet, and regardless of the players you drag in there with you, getting back up can be an elusive charge. I’m sure Leeds fans were positive they’d bounce right back; last time I checked, they had a dwarf for a coach, a mole in the dressing room, and one foot in League One. In Leeds-like fashion, West Ham have spent a lot of cash on their way down, and it’s possible they’ll have a Leeds-like stay in the Coca-Cola.
So I must ask myself: Am I prepared to support a team playing outside the Premiership indefinitely?
I just don’t know. 4 years ago, I viewed following the Hammers down as a point of pride. In truth, it probably had a lot more to do with proving a point to my new wife: I stick, baby. When she made fun of me for supporting a team that was so bad “they got kicked out of the league,” I had an easy and romantically useful retort: “Because that’s the kind of man I am. When you someday get kicked out of the League of Hot 20-40 Year-Olds, I’ll still be there, singing your praises and buying both your home and away jersey.”
It is, however, a deeply flawed analogy. I like my wife a great deal more than I like West Ham. I would never call my wife “useless shit-for-brains,” yet I call Paul Konchesky that all the time. I would never beat my wife, yet I fantasize about laying into Matt Etherington with a tire-iron. I’d never cheat on my wife, yet I find myself daydreaming about Moritz Volz, Jimmy Bullard, and cottages. Clearly, my relationship with West Ham is unhealthy.
In the end, life is probably too short to follow teams in the Championship, and so I’m going to be giving my status as a West Ham fan some serious thought. I’m not from East London, the team have sold or benched all my favorite players, and they’re crap to watch. Next year, crappy or good, I won’t get to watch at all. What exactly are the positives here?
Right now I can’t find any. I won’t do anything rash, but still…I feel like I just broke up with a longtime girlfriend, and now I’m on the prowl to bang any slut of a club that comes my way. Fulham have been wearing a particularly short mini of late, and I might just have to hit that back at the Cottage. Portsmouth, maybe. Even Reading are starting to look good, for Chrissake.
I should probably sleep on it.
MLS has to adopt the table-based point system first. Relegation (which i’m still not 100% sold on as the best of all possible worlds, mind) just isn’t a financially viable option for the clubs. Unfortunately, there’s no Eggert Magnusson or Mohamed Al-Fayed waiting in the wings to buy up Miami FC and provide an infusion of cash. Relegation is nearly killer for ex-Premiership sides already, it’d be the swift hand of death itself in the MLS.
You’re right that it would bring up interest, but at a price. Moreover, there’s the question of how many people will show up to watch who is “Least Worst”.
This isn’t to say Relegation is a wholly bad idea. It’s a great idea that the MLS should implement. But not until it can afford to, and right now, I can’t see it being viable.
The upside to no relegation is that the MLS features a bit more parity between clubs than European leagues that have, let’s be honest, gotten a tad top heavy (Last year the teams won consecutive titles in England, Germany, France, Italy [sort of], Spain, Russia, amd Holland). And while there certainly is a bonus to having powerhouses like Liverpool and Real Madrid around, I do kind of like not necessarily having to deal with their continued G-14 greed and dominance.
I’m rambling. My opinion? Relegation - Yes. But not yet.
Comment by Prederick — February 28, 2007 @ 6:32 am
Prederick,
I died laughing about Nista’s West Ham man crush, and then simply died of boredom after reading your crap. No wonder MLS is so boring, they’re fans are too.
Let’s not digress…Nista,
I hate to say it but, “I told you so!” West Ham are crap and they’ve always been. Newcastle will always be THE team to support. You never know what you’re going to get. It’s the girl that looks spectacular in some light (NUFC 2-Liverpool 1), and terrible two minutes later (NUFC 0-Wigan 1), or after you sober-up. I know you’re on the rebound and normally an emotional rollercoaster of a girl, I mean team, isn’t such a good idea. But, it really is exciting to guess which team you’ll see. Trust me, I’ve even punched myself in the head and hugged myself in the same match. It’s pure love baby.
Comment by hose B — February 28, 2007 @ 10:37 am
No wonder MLS is so boring, they?re fans are too.
But they do have a grasp of 5th grade grammar, which seems to be slightly more than what the average Newcastle fan has achieved.
While I totally agree that relegation is the single greatest invention in sports, it will never, ever, ever happen in the U.S. because owners would be afraid that their investments (i.e. teams) would sink in value.
Comment by Spectator — February 28, 2007 @ 11:14 am
Uh-oh, interleague grammar wars.
I love to beat the relegation horse, so: any business you enter, you can’t just be thinking “Gee, how awesome is this going to be…how much money am I going to make.” Take a look at egg-head (west hame). He has said from the outset he has a contingency plan for going down. Whether or not that’s true, it would be pretty simple business sense.
And as far as parity goes, a little less in MLS would be nice. The league is as competitive as the United Socialist Basket Weavers annual 5-a-side tourney.
Comment by garth — February 28, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
How is switching sides even an option? It’s one thing to bring it up for amusing discussion, but to actually consider making a switch?
Absolutely not. It’s off the table. If you abandon West Ham, the Universe has no choice but to force you to pick a MLS in return.
On a different tangent, if West Ham’s board had been more solid over the past decade and not treated its staff and players so poorly, they may have been able to hold onto, oh, half of the fantastic talent they let walk out the door.
Say what you will about finances, but when Harry and Frank Sr. left, all that promising work with the upcoming youths went bye-bye.
Comment by Scott — February 28, 2007 @ 5:32 pm
Need a reason to avoid Newcastle? Here’s their idea of entertainment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puA73Ylm5Pk
Comment by stuartdowningpints.com — February 28, 2007 @ 7:17 pm
There does seem to be something fundamentally wrong with switching which english team you support, doesn’t there. If you were to decide to support say Fulham, and West Ham were to get promoted back next season, man you would just feel dirty. Once you pick a team to support, that’s it. So next year, you can watch Fulham games, but no cheering, even if Volz threads a through ball to Dempsey who megs 3 guys and crushes one into the upper v. Just take your soma and smile happily, because a gramme is better than a damn.
Comment by jobicoppola — March 1, 2007 @ 9:20 am
You can’t just switch teams. There’s something fundamentally wrong with that. Abandoning a team because they had a bad run isn’t being a fan, that’s being a bandwagoner. Take the kick in the nuts for now, and things will get better in a little while.
That being said, you can always have other teams you like without being a whore about it. Cheer on MLS East, as long as they’re not going up against the Hammers.
Comment by Dawson — March 1, 2007 @ 10:17 am
I agree, switching teams is a complete puss move. You must stay a Hammers fun, and if you don’t the GSE are coming after you!
Comment by LG — March 1, 2007 @ 10:06 pm
I’m in the middle of a vision quest, hoping to discover if I’m man or pussy.
Comment by garth — March 2, 2007 @ 2:04 am