DON’T BE FOOLED by the sardonic humour at West Ham – we take this football lark very seriously indeed. Believe me, you won’t hear people using words like ‘footy’ in the Boleyn Ground. You’ll hear other words beginning with f, but not footy.

And you can forget all this romantic twaddle that we’d rather watch our beloved Irons lose 6–5 in the game of the season than grind out a 1–0 win. Where do people get ideas like that?

Some years ago my ears pricked up when I heard on the radio that Man Utd had won 5–3 at White Hart Lane – a result made even more remarkable by the fact that Tottenham had been 3–0 up at half time. The venerable gentleman who had been watching the game at BBC licence-payers’ expense was particularly enthusiastic about United’s performance when asked for his summary of the game; in fact, he reckoned the visitors had ‘sprinkled stardust’ over north London and any Spurs fan who witnessed the event would consider themselves lucky to have been there. I don’t think so, my friend. I can’t believe there is a supporter in the land who would feel anything but despair after watching a capitulation of that magnitude. (Some say the commentator in question is an institution. Personally, I think he should be in one.)

While we’re on the subject of misfortune befalling Tottenham Hotspur (an occurrence dear to the heart of any West Ham supporter), this was the game that spawned news reports of a Spurs fan who was so confident of victory at half time that he took the annoying cliché about ‘putting your mortgage on it’ and did just that.

The story goes that the guy was keen to impress a new girlfriend, and was no doubt feeling pretty smug when the team he had just introduced into her life trooped off at the interval three goals to the good against the reigning champions. But rather than trying to press home his advantage with a mug of Bovril and a meat pie as any normal man would do, he got on his mobile (which would have been the size of a house brick back then) and arranged for someone to place a six-figure bet, equivalent to the value of his home loan, on his behalf. Forty-five minutes and a liberal helping of stardust later, the bloke had no house. History does not record if he had still had a girlfriend.

Tottenham-supporting friends (I know, embarrassing isn’t it?) reckon this is just an urban myth, although I’m not so sure. They like to portray themselves as pessimists, but in recent years they have been a pretty cocksure bunch and I can just picture one of them making that call. Your typical West Ham fan, on the other hand, would be considerably more cautious in similar circumstances. When you’ve watched your team throw away a 3–0 lead at home to the likes of Wimbledon (1998) and West Brom (2003) you don’t start counting your chickens until they are surrounded by roast potatoes having been plucked, stuffed and cooked until the juices run clear. Snatching disaster from the jaws of triumph just doesn’t come as a surprise any more – it’s simply the West Ham way of doing things.

I should point out that at West Ham the way we do things is not to be confused with the West Ham Way – a phrase generally used to describe a free-flowing style of football that the supporters want to see.

There are those who will tell you there is no such thing as the West Ham Way. Sam Allardyce, in his first season as manager, put forward this fanciful idea after a trip to the picturesque cathedral city of Peterborough. Having been offered some helpful and constructive criticism by 6,000 pilgrims who’d made the journey as well, he responded to the repeated chant of ‘We’re West Ham United – we play on the floor’, by saying: ‘There has never been a West Ham Way shown to me. I’ve spoken to a lot of people at the club and no one can tell me what it is.’ Apparently those of us who believe there is such a thing are ‘deluded’.

This is the same Sam Allardyce who, the following season, cupped his ear in astonishment as a highly disgruntled Upton Park crowd booed him off after a diabolical performance against Hull. Admittedly we had won and effectively banished any lingering fears of relegation – but West Ham supporters know what we want from our team and had expected better against a side that found itself a goal down and reduced to ten men after barely a quarter of an hour. Allardyce complained it was the only time he’d ever got a response like that after winning – he just didn’t get it at all.

Then, just as Allardyce appeared to have seen the error of his ways and changed the system to incorporate two men up front rather than a lone striker (and had West Ham playing some of the best football we’ve seen in years), his old mate Sir Alex Ferguson chipped in with: ‘I hope that, before I die, someone can explain the West Ham Way.’ Well, if the crowd of naysayers would care to let me through for a minute or two I’ll do my best. You see, WE ARE THE FAMOUS, THE FAMOUS WEST HAM! And we’re famous because of a football genius who laid down a (claret and) blueprint for the club that has now become an indelible trademark. His successors ignore it at their peril.

Ron Greenwood was not a man to go out of his way to win friends. He didn’t like his own captain (a certain Robert Frederick Chelsea Moore) and he didn’t have much time for West Ham supporters or the East End as a whole. ‘This community and this area doesn’t understand or appreciate anything that this club stands for,’ he is quoted as saying by West Ham historian Charles Korr. The problem, according to Greenwood, is that we ‘don’t understand sincerity and intelligence’.

Maybe not. But we do know a thing or two about football, and we came to appreciate the way he believed the game should be played.

Greenwood joined West Ham from Arsenal in April 1961 – the same month that Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space (personally I’m in no doubt which was the more important event). His footballing philosophy can be traced back to the day he saw the brilliant Hungarian team of the mid-1950s trounce England 6–3 at Wembley – the first time England had ever lost at home – with a performance that revolutionised the way the young Greenwood thought about the game and convinced him he wanted to become a coach when his playing days as a centre half were over.

He said later: ‘I knew then for sure that football was a combination of thought and intelligence, and fun and concentration, and vim and vigour, and everything, if you like, even art, if you want to call it that.’

In short, Greenwood’s way – the West Ham Way – is about playing open, attacking football by passing the ball quickly and accurately, based on the concept that it is more important to score goals than it is to prevent them. That’s not to say defence isn’t important: Greenwood built his team around the best defender the world has ever seen and was even prepared to go out and buy some big lads to play alongside him who – in Bobby Moore’s words – could ‘do some kicking’ (as long as they didn’t do too much of it).

But the main objective of the game, in the gospel according to Ron, is to break down the opposition using skill plus intelligence and put the ball in the back of their net more often than they put it in yours. And it doesn’t always mean playing on the floor, either. While Greenwood liked his players to pass their way through the other side’s midfield, repeatedly trying to get two on one so they could play the give and go, he was quite prepared to put the ball in the air – only he wanted to do it in such a way as to produce panic in the defence rather than frustration in the stands.

Sir Geoff Hurst is rather better qualified to explain Greenwood’s thinking than me, so why don’t I let him do the talking?

‘What he took specifically from the Hungarians was the near post cross, a tactic that was to become one of West Ham’s trademarks during my time with the club,’ says Hurst in his autobiography, 1966 and All That.

One of the wingers expected to master this particular skill was Harry Redknapp, who was to go on and make his own distinctive mark as a West Ham manager in the years that followed.

If ever West Ham has produced a love-him-or-hate-him character, it has to be H. I know he’ll never again be flavour of the month with most West Ham supporters but, for all his faults, I still have a soft spot for Redknapp. But then I like Marmite.

Like most Hammers, I had mixed feelings when he got the manager’s job at Upton Park in 1994. The way Billy Bonds was eased out was nothing short of a disgrace. But there was a feeling that Redknapp could take us to the next level. He certainly understood the concept of the West Ham Way.

I wonder what his early predecessors would have made of him? Syd King, West Ham’s first gaffer, would have undoubtedly approved – if for no other reason than, like me, he claimed to have a taste for the sort of foodstuffs that divide a nation. In his case it was a stock cube.

‘When training, Oxo is the only beverage used by our team and all speak of the supreme strength and power of endurance they have derived from its use,’ appeared above his name on the back of a promotional postcard featuring a team photograph in 1904. And you thought commercialisation was something new?

King ruled the club for the best part of thirty years. Arguments about formations didn’t take up a whole lot of his working day; teams played 2–3–5 and that was that. But, as with H, King had an eye for a transfer target. Among others, he signed Vic Watson – who will never be surpassed as the club’s record goal scorer.

Charlie Paynter replaced King in 1933, remaining in charge until 1950. Like Redknapp, he took over at a difficult time for the club and turned things around. (When isn’t it a difficult time at West Ham?) And he, too, was never short of a few words when asked his opinion about footballing matters. I was lucky enough to meet Paynter’s daughter Olive, who was still a regular at Upton Park well into her seventies. She was a friend of my parents-in-law, and a lovely lady she was, too.

Next up was Ted Fenton, who had a reputation as a skinflint and was intensely disliked by many of his leading players – not least club captain Malcolm Allison. The flamboyant Allison, who, like so many West Ham players of that era, went on to have an influential career in management, must take some of the credit for changing the football philosophy at Upton Park. Although Fenton was no great tactician himself, he was prepared to listen to new ideas and give the youngsters a chance and, just as Redknapp was to introduce the likes of Rio Ferdinand and Joe Cole to the first team, he promoted John Bond and Ken Brown – who went on to become club legends.

Fenton’s successor was Ron Greenwood, who clearly thought enough of Redknapp to give him his chance in the first team. He certainly had a huge influence on the younger man’s thinking when he, too, went into management.

Greenwood’s West Ham Way is often dismissed by its detractors, since a club that had Hurst, Moore, Peters and Brooking should have won far more than it did. But the lack of trophies is due more to his failings as a man-manager than any flaw in his basic thinking about the way game should be played. He couldn’t motivate, and often he couldn’t communicate. ‘Ron talked about the game at such a high level that sometimes he went straight over the head of the average player,’ Bobby Moore told Jeff Powell in his authorised biography. ‘Some days I believe there were only a couple of us who understood a word he was on about. He never seemed to realise that he should have been talking down to more than half the team.’

One man who did understand Greenwood’s way of thinking was his chief disciple, John Lyall – who, many years after his mentor had left the club, came within a whisker of winning the League playing the West Ham Way.

John Lyall is without doubt my favourite manager of all time. He won us two FA Cups, brought us some fabulous nights of European football, masterminded our highest ever League finish and got his teams to produce some breathtaking football. Best of all: he took the time and trouble to write to my wife and me with some very kind words when we got married even though he’d never met us.

Remember Simon, our best man? You met him briefly at Villa Park in the semi-final against Forest. He wrote to Lyall explaining that Di and I were two lifelong supporters who were about to tie the knot and he hoped to surprise us at the reception by including a few words from him when he came to read out the congratulatory telegrams. And the West Ham manager sat down and penned a letter that we both cherish to this day. It’s in the album with the photographs if you’d like to have a look. No? Maybe later, then.

The year we got married turned out to be disastrous for West Ham. Two years before, the Boys of ’86 had been in with a sniff of the first division title until the penultimate game of the season, finishing in third place just four points behind champions Liverpool. Now the Bozos of ’88 were about to embark on a campaign that was to get us relegated and cost Lyall his job after an astonishing thirty-four years with the club.

So, as my old English teacher used to say, let us compare and contrast.

At the start of the 1985/86 season, the game of association football was at an all-time low in England following two appalling tragedies. On 11 May 1985, fifty-six people died and more than 250 were injured as fire swept through the main stand at Valley Parade in Bradford. The disaster was shown live on television. I watched it in the newsroom of the Mail on Sunday, surrounded by hard-bitten journalists who could only shake their heads in disbelief at the horror unfolding in front of them. Then, eighteen days later, thirty-nine people died at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels, which was staging the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus. Again, the TV cameras were there to record the sickening scenes. In fact, the BBC was heavily criticised for then showing the game while other countries opted not to as a mark of respect to the dead.

There was, however, to be no television coverage of the first half of the new domestic season when it got under way in August. Football League chairmen, ignoring the falling attendances concerning everyone else, demanded more money from the TV companies to show games that fewer and fewer people could be bothered to watch. They finally had to climb down in December, by which time West Ham had snuck up on the usual suspects and joined the likes of Man Utd and Liverpool in the title race.

November had been a particularly good month. We had won all five games, including a victory over defending champions Everton. Frank McAvennie’s goal in a 1–0 win at Coventry took his tally for the season to seventeen – the highest in the entire Football League.

December and January brought mixed fortunes, then in February – just before the weather turned nasty and put a temporary halt to proceedings – a 2–1 win over Man Utd at the Boleyn Ground made the more optimistic among the West Ham congregation start to wonder if this really, finally, could be our year.

After the snow cleared we played Man Utd again in early March – this time in the fifth round of the FA Cup. The first game, at Upton Park, was a 1–1 draw; then the following week we went to Old Trafford and won the replay 2–0. Forget the League title – now we wanted the double!

That little dream went up in smoke three days later when we crashed out of the Cup at Sheffield Wednesday. Hopes of becoming champions seemed to be fading fast too as we lost at Arsenal and Villa. However, revenge against Wednesday at home, followed by a thumping 4–0 win at Chelsea and a 2–1 victory against Spurs at Upton Park, meant the bandwagon was well and truly rolling once more.

Phil Parkes was brilliant in goal. Ray Stewart, at right back, never put a foot wrong. Alvin Martin and Tony Gale, in the centre of defence, were imperious. The tireless Alan Devonshire and an assured Alan Dickens were running the midfield. Mark Ward was causing havoc on the flank. And, up front, McAvennie and Tony Cottee were simply too hot to handle.

At the start of April we were fifth. What a month that turned out to be. It began badly, with defeat at Nottingham Forest. Then came a run of eight games in twenty-two days, which was to prove almost as exhausting for the supporters as it must have been for the players. Di and I were living in west London back then. But if we’d spent any more time in East Ham they would have made us pay the poll tax there.

It was obvious that we weren’t the only ones going straight from work to midweek games. Guys sitting near us in the West Stand, who would turn up in jeans and a sweater on a Saturday (replica shirts had yet to become the garment of choice for dedicated followers of football fashion), took their seats on a Wednesday wearing the sharp suits and loud ties that were de rigueur for their loadsamoney jobs in the City. It’s funny how a volley of foul-mouthed abuse directed at a referee seems strangely incongruous when it comes from someone who is suited and booted.

After the Forest game there were two home wins, against Southampton and Oxford. Next up was Chelsea and 29,360 of us packed Upton Park … only to watch us lose 2–1. There has never been much love lost between the supporters of West Ham and those of Chelsea, and after the game the police had their work cut out keeping the rival thugs from kicking the crap out of one another in Green Street. My God, the atmosphere was ugly. Nights such as that can make you question why you go to football matches.

On the Saturday we won at Watford, then, two days later, came a game that will forever stick in the memories of the West Ham fans who were lucky enough to be there. The scoreline will give you a clue as to why: West Ham 8 Newcastle 1. Or, as it used to say on the teleprinter when Grandstand broadcast the results as they came in: West Ham 8 (eight) Newcastle 1.

Not only was it a remarkable goal-fest, this game also produced one of the best pub quiz questions of all time:

Q: Who scored a hat-trick against three different goalkeepers?

A: Alvin Martin.

The comings and goings of the Newcastle keepers that night read like a plotline from Casualty, so I’ll spare you the gory details. But I will just mention Glenn Roeder, who was to go on to manage West Ham and somehow contrived to get possibly the most talented set of players we’ve ever had at the same time on the books relegated. That night he scored an own goal and conceded the penalty Martin converted to take his improbable place in the record books. To be honest, Glenn, you and West Ham were clearly never meant to be an item.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to tip my hat in the direction of the Newcastle fans who were there that night. As the goals rained in they never stopped singing. It was a fantastic show of support, and I’ve had a soft spot for the Geordies ever since.

Next up was Coventry, then Manchester City. Both were nervy affairs, and both ended with 1–0 victories that really did put us in with a serious chance of winning the League. Then came Ipswich, our final home game of the season. A capacity crowd in excess of 31,000 was there to see it – blimey, it must have been cosy on the terraces. As ever that season we were seated in the West Stand – at least we were at the start of the match. By the end of it we were standing on the seats, celebrating a 2–1 victory that put us up into second and left the title within touching distance. The bemused, beaming face of my future father-in-law as ecstatic fans poured on to the pitch summed up how we were all feeling better than words ever could. Sid had supported West Ham since time began. This was the first occasion he had stood on a seat at Upton Park.

In the end it all turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. In the penultimate game of the season we did what we had to do at West Brom, but Liverpool beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge to squeeze us out of contention for the greatest prize in English football. Ah well, you can’t win ’em all.

Fast forward a couple of years and it was a very different story. While my wife and I were enjoying our honeymoon, West Ham were in the process of signing two of the worst players who have ever turned out for the club. Striker David Kelly was awful; goalkeeper Allen McKnight was worse. The rest of the team were either past their best or not very good in the first place. The 1988/89 season started badly. And by Christmas it was obvious to most people that we were in serious trouble.

It was certainly crystal clear to the old boy sitting behind Di and me in the West Stand. He came up with the finest piece of analysis I have heard before or since as we watched a Spurs side inspired by Paul Gascoigne tear us to shreds.

It was half time in a game we were clearly destined to lose when Waldorf turned to Statler and announced that he was far from impressed with what he was watching. In fact, he had some quite trenchant views about the capabilities of our brave lads.

In front of me now I have the programme listing the players who represented my beloved West Ham United that day. Before I give you Mr Waldorf ’s opinions of those warriors (which I can remember word for word), let me give you a flavour of Hammer as it was back then.

This particular copy cost me £1.25 and has brought back a legion of memories. The cover features Alan Devonshire, complete with a very questionable moustache and an Avco shirt, doing his best to avoid having lumps kicked out of him by Sheffield Wednesday, who we’d played the previous week. Hmmm, I can see that has whetted your appetite. So make yourself comfortable and we’ll flick through the pages of history together.

Inside we are told that this will be the eighty-third meeting between West Ham and Tottenham in the Football League, and Spurs have thirty wins to our twenty-nine.

John Lyall concedes that we could have done with the extra two points in the 0–0 draw against Wednesday, but remains optimistic even though we are second from bottom – and even that is because of goal difference rather than a greater number of points than Newcastle. Norwich are top of the table. Coventry are third. And The Hated Millwall are fifth. Millwall! How shocking is that?

However, there is good news on the south London front. Two weeks previously we had beaten the Lions of Lewisham 1–0 at the Den to record our 1,000th League win – and there is a selection of very iffy pictures in the programme to supposedly prove it.

There are much nicer photographs of a very young Gazza and a very old Phil Parkes, too. Big Phil, in fact, is profiled as Hammer of the Week, even though he wasn’t actually playing that Saturday. At thirty-eight, his knees weren’t all they should be – but that didn’t stop him turning out for the Guinness Soccer Sixes in Manchester, at which we did rather well. Six-a-side soccer, it seems, was about to become all the rage. Wonder what happened to that?

Parkes wasn’t the only one in the treatment room according to the programme. Stewart Robson, Ray Stewart and Stuart Slater were all in there with him. There’s no mention of Rod Stewart, though.

Page 7 is a particularly good read; in addition to a couple of very upbeat letters predicting an imminent improvement in our fortunes and the Crocker’s Corner segment, which records that West Ham’s contribution to Children in Need that year was £800, there is also an extremely useful guide to the misinformation surrounding drink-driving. Excuses such as ‘the pub only sold alcohol so there was nothing else to drink’, ‘there was no other way to get home’, and ‘booze improves the way you handle a car’ are all – it turns out – ‘drivel’! I can’t believe I didn’t cut out that panel and stick it on the fridge years ago.

A few pages on, you find details of ticket prices for the forthcoming third-round FA Cup tie against Arsenal (which we would draw 2–2, with the Gooners’ goals coming from Paul Merson). Season ticket-holders are asked to apply using Voucher F; paying punters can get in for as little as a fiver.

There are season tickets to be had in the programme as well. The best seats in the house could be purchased for £63. And if you wanted to see out the rest of that miserable season standing on the East Terrace – aka the Chicken Run – you could do so for just £35. And if this offer wasn’t tempting enough, they were prepared to throw in a free bottle of wine as well. I think that’s a nice touch, although admittedly it wouldn’t have gone far if your dinner guests had included Gazza and Merse.

Fascinating though all this is, the real story lies on the back page. No, it’s not the fact that the match ball sponsor was TUA of Islington Green (suppliers of quality office furniture), nor that the referee was Daryll Reeves from Uxbridge, who would officiate with the help of linesmen G. H. Bargery (red trim) and A. C. Williams (yellow trim).

It is on the back page where we find the two teams who were being discussed in the row behind me that day. Specifically the team in claret and blue.

‘Bloody West Ham – nothing but has-beens and wankers,’ was Waldorf ’s verdict.

‘How d’you mean?’ asked Statler. It was a question I was keen to hear answered myself. Waldorf then went through the team, one by one, and made his case.

McKnight – wanker. Potts – wanker. Parris – wanker. Gale – has-been. Martin – has-been. Devonshire – has-been. Brady – has-been. Kelly – wanker. Rosenior – wanker. Dickens – wanker. And all this in a calm, measured tone that brooked no argument. The only one to escape his forensic analysis was a certain Paul Ince, who our resident expert conceded was a decent player and therefore wouldn’t be at the club much longer. How right he turned out to be.

Try as I might, I couldn’t fault his assessment (although Steve Potts, who hadn’t yet played thirty games for us, did go on to be a club legend). The professional pundits are paid handsomely to come up with more drivel than a drunk driver facing a breathalyser test – the bloke in the row behind nailed it in a few, short, Anglo-Saxon words. And not a single mention of ‘stardust’.

The football we were playing was rubbish, and the man at the helm had lost the plot. Hard on the heels of masterminding the club’s highest ever League finish, the dignified and thoughtful John Lyall was facing relegation and, soon after, the sack. It was a remarkable decline in anybody’s book, but a roller-coaster ride is part of the deal at Upton Park. It may not be the West Ham Way, but it’s certainly the West Ham way.