ERLING HAALAND sauntered out of Stratford on Saturday night clutching a match ball under his arm, leaving behind 60,000 comatosed Cockneys.
West Ham had duly fulfilled their role in the annual turn-up-and-take-three-points parade for Manchester City.
In itself, this is fine. There’s no doubt that having a planet-sized Viking battering ram spearheading a team of magicians gives City a certain edge over their rivals.
But in conversation with some Hammers-supporting friends in the aftermath, one of them shrugged off the latest surrender by admitting ‘our season won’t be defined by Man City at home’.
And that is the state of the Premier League in a nutshell.
A declaration of defeat being totally acceptable — indeed, expected and irrelevant — long before kick-off. By the fans, not the players.
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There was a time when a visit to West Ham for teams at the top of the table was a football minefield.
When Manchester United were the dominant force here in the Nineties and Noughties, wherever they went they mostly got a game on the field.
Even if they didn’t, the home team’s supporters would whip it up so that whichever of Sir Alex Ferguson’s 13 title-winning squads came to visit, they played in fevered stadiums.
Everyone just wanted to give the champions a bloody nose. And back in 1995, United were defending the title right up to the last day, when they rocked up at West Ham’s old Upton Park ground.
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The atmosphere was so hostile that the very air became a performance-enhancing drug for the mid-table Hammers, who built a wall around their goal to deny a very red-faced Fergie his win and the title went to Blackburn — by a point.
That season, the Red Devils lost at Everton, Leeds, Ipswich and Sheffield Wednesday in the league.
Lesser teams who were up for landing a punch on the best team in the country for the sake of it — or because they simply couldn’t stand United.
Ferguson toughened up his team to wrestle back the crown 12 months later but even then they lost at Leeds again, Aston Villa and Southampton.
In the past two seasons, Brentford and Wolves are the only teams from outside the traditional Big Six to have found enough gumption to beat Pep Guardiola’s City at home in the Premier League.
West Ham have moved grounds since 1995 but the apathy among what was once a ferocious fanbase is not entirely down to the vast oval-shaped ground they now play at.
It’s become the mindset of the fans that, come what may, City will stroll up, pass their way around the West Ham players and help themselves to a few goals.
If this is the feeling on the terraces in the East End of London, be sure it’s the same at Southampton, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, Nottingham Forest, Leicester. The list goes on.
West Ham have not beaten City at home in the Premier League since 2014.
Top-flight grounds are now more like must-see stop-offs on the tourist trail than hotbeds of pumped-up locals lying in wait to ambush title ambitions of the elite.
No wonder Guardiola’s team have been able to plunder four titles on the spin with diehard home support diluted to a point of disappearing and those that remain resigned to defeat.
It’s not games against closest rivals that should count. Clashes between the top teams have always guaranteed uncertainty because of the smaller skills gap between the players.
It should be the less glamorous surroundings of the relative minnows or the also-rans where English leagues are ultimately won and lost.
Top-flight grounds are now more like must-see stop-offs on the tourist trail than hotbeds of pumped-up locals lying in wait to ambush title ambitions of the elite.
ANDREW DILLON
At grounds where world-class footballers like Haaland tremble, even if just momentarily.
The players of those teams need their supporters to believe — foolishly or not — that everything depends on beating City.
That even if they go down, they go down fighting.
Not knowing that the vast majority of the home crowd are checking their watches to see if there’s time for a crafty pint if they leave early enough and that losing to City at home is ticked off for another year.
GREEN WITH ENVY
OF course, the Irish have a point about Declan Rice, Jack Grealish and, to an extent, Lee Carsley.
With Rice in particular, three senior caps for the Republic of Ireland before jumping ship to England in 2019, means he should rightfully expect a coating from the fans in Dublin on Saturday.
Grealish is the same, having represented the Boys in Green at Under-21 level.
England’s interim boss, former midfielder Carsley, played 40 times for the Republic, so is Irish in football parlance.
Yep, pretty dodgy, isn’t it? The Irish must be fed up as hell to have lost those three to their colours — and it’s England’s gain.
For those old enough to remember Sunday afternoons watching quiz show Bullseye on the telly, the words of compere Jim Bowen spring to mind, ‘Look at what you could have won’.
THE D’OR IS WIDE OPEN
THE Ballon d’Or has been pretty much a two-horse race for 15 years.
With the odd exception, it has been either Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo winning the poll of the planet’s best player.
So it’s refreshing that neither Messi nor Ronaldo has even been nominated for the 2024 award.
Can’t see past Erling Haaland as the winner but seeing Jude Bellingham’s name on the list suggests there could be more competition from now on.
However, we need the likes of fellow nominees Kylian Mbappe and Phil Foden to make sure the competition doesn’t just slip back into its old ways.
Otherwise, it will be no more interesting than Scottish football.
MAKING A BEELINE FOR IT
I DO rather bang on about climate change and annoy the hell out of my editor by doom-mongering about the environment.
Yet it’s always better to see something good happening and reading this week’s ‘Sport Positive’ bulletin, a little initiative by Brentford lifted my mood.
The Bees travel to Manchester City for their next match a week on Saturday.
And they have teamed up with Trainline so that anyone in possession of an away ticket can save 20 per cent on the rail fares to Manchester.
It’s part of the ‘I Came By Train’ campaign to curb car journeys and it’s wonderfully simple.
Though it does make me think why nobody has thought of it before?
LIFE GOES JON
NORTHERN IRELAND began life without Jonny Evans in their squad last night.
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After 107 caps, one of the best defenders and nicest blokes in the game has retired from international football.
Just hope the Irish FA don’t let him slip away and give him a role shaping the next generation in their tiny but productive football outpost.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
