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claretandbluedagger 11:33 Sat Mar 31
Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/columnists/ian-holloway/Ian-Holloway-column-Why-Why-unhappy-West-Ham-fans-need-to-stop-acting-up-and-having-a-go-at-Sam-Allardyce-article884927.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Why unhappy West Ham fans need to stop acting up



I went with my wife to the theatre on Tuesday – we saw a production of Anne Boleyn and I must say it was brilliant.

On the same night, West Ham were winning at Peterborough, but their fans were singing Paolo Di Canio’s name and several other songs having a go at Sam Allardyce and the style of football his team are playing.

So it set me thinking, about what if I hadn’t enjoyed my night at Blackpool’s Grand Theatre.

What I wouldn’t have done was booed the actors in the middle of a scene, or chanted for John Dove to be sacked and a different director to be brought in.


And when I got home I wouldn’t have gone on the internet to write angry criticism about the scenery, or ­suggest that Jo Herbert had been miscast!

Football is different.

Supporters pay their money and feel they have a right to voice an opinion, and I don’t disagree.

But for some people at the ­moment it seems to have turned into the place you go to have a moan. That can’t help anybody.

My Blackpool played at Reading last week and you could feel their whole club was moving in one ­direction.

They have a good manager in Brian ­McDermott, who has just turned down a possible move elsewhere and signed a new contract, and they have fans who are completely behind the team.

The net result is a lot of positive ­energy. Even when we got an amazing goal just before half-time, their players just kept riding that wave and playing with confidence.

Last season at Blackpool our fans stayed with us the whole way, singing about the best trip they’d ever been on. It made such a difference.

It’s not for me to tell anybody at West Ham about how they should, or shouldn’t, be playing.

But they’d be better off in the last few weeks of the season if the fans all got behind their team during games.

WHU(Exeter) 8:57 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

Like Tony Mowbray, Holloway would be better off concentrating on where the droves of his own club's supporters have disappeared to, following their relegation out of the top tier.

Side of Ham 7:27 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

I'm glad DiCanio was up there when Sinclair hoofed it up to him against Wimbledon that time.

SDKFZ 222 7:20 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

I'm glad that we as a crowd never rose to the bait yesterday when the Reading supporters started to sing 'Paolo DiCanio' and obviously wanting us all to join in.

All of us, now more than ever, need to get behind the manager and players in every single game that is left. Leave all the moaning, carping, whinging and post mortem until the last ball has been kicked at the very end of the season, otherwise Holloway will be proved correct as we will have done ourselves from within with some very important matches still to be played.

The_Phantom 7:19 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

we'll make plenty of noise when we knock them out in the Play Offs

Nicey 6:49 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

:^) 6:27 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up
Running is out of date?


Just running. Running with the ball is in date because, surprise surprise, you do that in a game of football.

roltrader 6:43 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

...keep up face, running is soooo last season. The latest fashion is to hoof it up in the air and hope the poor bugger at the front is not so fashion aware.hth

BMU 6:34 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

Yes Mate. I said that. And Holliway is wrong. He doesn't pay £800 plus to watch a good squad's talent being wasted for the second consecutive season by a manager who, this time around, is incapable of coaching them to string more than two passes together before hoofing the ball back the opposition

We have every right to expect automatic promotion this season. Yet unfortunately there are those who think being an also ran in a league where we are by far the biggest club, is okay because Allardyce says so. He and they may be happy for their limited ambition to settle for third best in a league where we should be first. I am not

:^) 6:27 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

Running is out of date?

Nicey 6:21 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

southbankbornnbred 5:47 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up


Great article that, I got cunted off on here when I said it was bad to watch our players running through Epping forest as it is so dated and this article hammers that point home.

BFS is so very out of date it's scary

SarfendWHU 5:55 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

Like Holloway find him entertaining, however couple of points of points, firstly he may have found a slightly different atmosphere at Reading last week, if they had failed to win a home game for almost 2 months, despite playing such dross as Watford and Doncaster, easy to have a club love in when you have won 12 of the last 14 league games, secondly I for one could have put up with the direct foorball we have been serving up at home for the majority of the season, if we win games, if we don't then I don't think its unreasonable for us to to be critical !
I haven't booed a West Ham player in the 38 years I have been going, but understand the frustraion of those who do, when you have the biggest and on paper best squad in the division, biggest wage bill and Season ticket prices, by some distance I think we have every right to feel a little let down by where we will finish this season
I actualy left the ground yesterday less pissed off then I did after the Boro, Watford, Doncaster and Palace game, as we actually looked like a football team for 43 minutes. 2 minutes of shite defending, Noble going off and the substitution changed the game, he has made big mistakes Allerdyce and alienated the fans with his deluded comments, but the fact is he is far from the Northen fool some class him as on here, the fact that we will break the record of away wins prooves he has at least got that part of the job sussed
Can't see him lasting unless we get up, if we don't then the next appointmen is huge or we could end up stuck here for a few years a la Coventry/Leicester, knowing G and G, McLeish anyone as he will be out of work soon ?

southbankbornnbred 5:51 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

The main article on the page, btw, includes an interview with Leon Britton from Swansea (who came through our youth system, of course). The section where he contrasts what life was like at Sheffield United, compared with Swansea and their approach to the game, is very revealing. You can imagine what he'd make of life under Allardyce.

Banjo 5:50 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

Holloway has a great way with words and most times his little parables and similies and not just amusing but poigniant.

I agree with him in the main and would actually like to see him down at UP someday soon in the chair BFS currently occupies.

southbankbornnbred 5:47 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

But it's not about playing 'attractive' football for the sake of it. It's about playing effective, winning football - and these days that means keeping possession of the ball, not playing largely without it for 89 minutes and hoping that those fleeting moments when your players have the ball at their feet are effective. Which is exactly how Allardyce coaches.

Anybody who wants to genuinely understand what is going on in the modern game right now - and what winning football really means for the vast majority of high-quality football clubs in Europe - just take a peek at page 6 of today's Sunday Times. The two articles on that page sum up the direction that educated football men - and women - are heading in, Read it, then stop and think about where that leaves us under Allardyce...

mentor 5:44 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

I agree. BFC has to go. He's finished at this football club.

One Raducioiu! 5:42 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

I agree with Holloway.

I also think that even if we were playing 'more attractive football' and in third place most of the cunts on here would still moan all the time.

peroni 5:36 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

What's this? A football manager sticking up for another football manager? Well I've seen everything now.

Gloucester Iron 4:15 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

Make him absolutely spot fucking on.

as for Di Canio as the saviour, would be an unmitigated disaster at this stage of his managerial development, and appears to me as knee-jerk, heart ruling head madness...

Carry on...

Tomsdad 4:07 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

Fool of a man.

Shasta Mcnasty 2:21 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

How many of those who have expressed an opinion been wrong in their assumptions? most are spot on. We thought we'd be romping this league that it was an injustice to be in this league in the 1st place. This is bollox we are in this division as over 38 games 11 professionals didn't perform enough to stay in the Prem. This season another 11 pros (some from last season) are not even in 2nd gear hence our position of getting turned over at home in a game that they knew they had to win and yet they capitulated. I agree with some of what Holloway has said as with the others who have said we are West Ham dis-United. Have your opinion of BFS, love him or hate him. Need to get behind them now and hope we can win our remaining games and hope Reading drop a couple.

Di Canio is not necessarily the saviour, as I asked on another thread, if he is appointed next season and we are still in the championship, will all the anti BFS people expell the same vitriol on Di Canio as they do BFS if we are not romping the league or performing to an acceptable standard?

CrowleyHammer 1:13 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

ChesterRd 11:59 Sat Mar 31
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up
Every fucker with a large opening on their face thinks they can now offer up a view on West Ham fans. Thanks Allardyce, you cunt.

ChesterRd 12:34 Sun Apr 1
Re: Ian Holloway: West Ham fans need to stop acting up

Holloway is one of those managers who takes a cut on player transfers so birds of a feather stick together.

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