West Ham are coming back.
In between Champions League games we’ve got another chapter in the ritual formality of getting back into it. On Sunday afternoon we will be extending the warm hand of friendship of those lovable scamps from the East End, the 1966 World Cup winners, professional hooligans, straight-to-DVD film actors and gangsters who made the streets safe and only hurt their own. Yes, it’s time to welcome, for the second time this month, West Ham.
Last time they came here we were celebrating our 150th anniversary a couple of months earlier, or a year late, depending on who you want to believe. It was cheaper to get in, the food was less extortionate than usual and the programmes ran out. Chris Heck looked out at all those seats filled with cut-price tickets, put his head in his hands, and wept. Then he had to meet the West Ham board and wept a bit more. He would, though, have been picking up a few ideas on how to get a new ground on the cheap.
Because they won the World Cup, they’re in London and they’ve been given a bigger ground for pennies, West Ham have been appointed as a Big Club. That mean they can make bids for other clubs’ players the week before they play each other, but as they’re owned by one of the biggest shysters in football, the offer was just about enough for one of the player’s legs.
The players they will be bringing with them still include Danny Ings, more in the hope that we’ll feel sorry for them and give them their money back than anything else. We’ll have at least one new signing and a few players who are a bit closer to full fitness plus a talisman back from suspension. We beat them last time, we’ll beat them this time.