As a mere Crystal Palace fan, I fear I must start a post about the mighty West Ham United by conceding the following points straight off:

• They did indeed win the World Cup
• They are so much more than just a football club, as Alan Pardew’s T-shirt stated at the 2004 play off finals (how did that go, Supa Al?)
• They always keep it on the deck and never revert to long ball, and any football manager who says otherwise is disrespectful (that’s you, Dougie. Please don’t embarrass us like that again).

Having said that, Hammers boss Big Sam Allardyce’s muse for his most recent Standard column was surely not Bobby Moore but Private Eye’s Glenda Slagg, famous for her contradictory articles.

Sam kicks out at Liverpool CEO Ian Ayre’s suggestion that Premier League clubs should individually negotiate their overseas TV rights. He stands up for small and medium sized clubs, and describes Ayre’s concept as ‘selfish’:

Instead of us individually trying to branch out and pressing the self-destruct button we should all collectively look to enhacne and improve things even more…Once you start taking away money from the other clubs and handing it to the elite, it can only end in failure…you have to stop being greedy.

Big Sam standing up for the Little Guy: a romantic vision of collectivist football.

Immediately underneath this article in print (two articles below online), Sam turns his turns his attention to the future of the Olympic Stadium.

Declaration of interest: in order for CPFC to return to its historic home , Crystal Palace Park, it is necessary for Tottenham Hotspur not to take up residence in the Olympic Stadium. West Ham, are for Palace, the lesser evil. But a lesser evil remains, er, evil.

‘To join the big league’, asserts Sam, ‘we need to move home’. He asserts that Bolton would not have ‘reached the Carling Cup Final, played in Europe and managed to sign players [of quality]’ without having moved to a new stadium. He concludes that a move from the Boleyn Ground is necessary for ‘West Ham…to be held in the same high esteem as our London rivals Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham.’

What he forgets, of course, is that a move from Green St to Stratford will be at the expense, not of the three clubs he mentions, but of Leyton Orient, which is likely to fall into decline if the bubble blowers move onto their turf. As someone once rightly said, when their club was threatened by a larger club flexing its muscle, ‘You have to stop being greedy.’ Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!