Showing posts with label James. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 12
James thinks stadium might be a calamity
There's a lengthy piece by David James outlining his worries about West Ham's move to the Olympic Stadium in the Observer (click on link to read). I'd agree that renting not owning is a problem, partly mitigated by the 100-year-lease. Though I think he's wrong to equate Arsenal's lack of success with a move to the Emirates. Most of their fans seem reasonably happy with the new stadium, it's just Wenger's inability to buy a decent defender that gets to them. James also worries about the likelihood of getting in 60,000, though fails to mention the massively improved public transport links at Stratford, which will surely help bring in the floating fans and part-timers. Though it is, as he writes, a risk... read the piece and see what you think.
Friday, February 10
Who is the mystery man?
David James had a good piece on captaincy in last weekend's Observer and mentioned a troublesome individual at West Ham in 2002-03. He wrote:
"At West Ham we had a player who managed to alienate everyone in the first team. It was the year that we were fighting relegation and endless stories were being leaked to the press causing further upset in the dressing room. When we finally discovered the culprit, the entire team united against him. As a result he was left off the team sheet, a sensible decision taken by the manager. By Christmas, however, and ravaged by injuries, we desperately needed reinforcements. Trevor Brooking, our manager by then, called a team meeting to say: "We're struggling for numbers, we're going to have to use our pal in the next game." The consensus was that we did not want him anywhere near the first team but the logic was that, if the guy could help us win a game, then we were not in a position to hold grudges. Avoiding relegation was our priority over everything. We did not manage to dodge the drop but we did go down with a record number of points after a superb final run-in."
James has his dates slightly wrong as Brooking did not step in until Glenn Roeder's collapse in April. But there's only one individual I can think of who was dropped and came back into the side for the final run in...
"At West Ham we had a player who managed to alienate everyone in the first team. It was the year that we were fighting relegation and endless stories were being leaked to the press causing further upset in the dressing room. When we finally discovered the culprit, the entire team united against him. As a result he was left off the team sheet, a sensible decision taken by the manager. By Christmas, however, and ravaged by injuries, we desperately needed reinforcements. Trevor Brooking, our manager by then, called a team meeting to say: "We're struggling for numbers, we're going to have to use our pal in the next game." The consensus was that we did not want him anywhere near the first team but the logic was that, if the guy could help us win a game, then we were not in a position to hold grudges. Avoiding relegation was our priority over everything. We did not manage to dodge the drop but we did go down with a record number of points after a superb final run-in."
James has his dates slightly wrong as Brooking did not step in until Glenn Roeder's collapse in April. But there's only one individual I can think of who was dropped and came back into the side for the final run in...
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