Effra reckons Alan Curbishley might be cracking outside the comfort zone of Charlton.
Nothing in the West Ham story this season seems able to rest. Just when we thought that we had got straight that Curbishley was as angry as the fans with the baby Bentley boys and Reo-Coker in particular, he’s now asking us to get off the boy’s back.
To the list of the villains to blame for West Ham’s implosion, Curbishley has now added the press. Now, however different it is being manager of West Ham than Charlton, I can’t believe for a moment that Curbishley has only just discovered the concept of media spin. In a week in which England’s cricketers have also being demonstrating that there is something amiss in a national sporting culture that lauds modest success far too easily and produces too many vain young men who lack mental resilience when the going gets tough, West Ham’s woes have been the stuff of dreams for journalists casting around for a morality script.
Whilst it is true that various newspapers have been at times chucking around names of individuals at West Ham with bare contempt for the facts, Curbishley must have known that when you’re team has lost 6-0 to a newly-promoted team, and you give interviews shaking with anger and proceed to make comments about the players’ lifestyles, that your words are going to become part of that script. What then to make of Curbishley lashing out after Saturday’s match, especially as it meant that he passed over the opportunity to heap some deserved praise on Noble, Tevez and Boa Morte for their second-half performances?
I fear that the answer is that there are depths to what is happening inside West Ham that we still don’t know about and which Curbishley has only just begun to acquaint himself with. Cut out the cancer that is wrecking our club we’ve all been saying for the past few weeks, but what if when you’ve done that there’s about four players left in the team – and an ever-shortening list of players of Boa Morte’s quality who are willing to sign up to the soap-opera?
This could get a lot worse yet.