Just read some extracts from a book by a West Ham stadium announcer, posted on Newcastle online.All about Pardew
Pards was big on creating an atmosphere. He spoke a lot about building a ‘positive stadium’. A lot of this fell on my shoulders. For this reason Alan Pardew’s time at West Ham has a special place in my heart. He made the announcer’s role a lot more important. However, he also criticised me more than any other manager before or since, and often in public. I’m in two minds about where he rates in my all-time West Ham managers’ list. He was inspiring and committed, but he was also arrogant and cruel
Pards told me he wanted me to have a cup of tea with him in his office before every game. We'd have a chat about how to get the fans buzzing.
The going for a cup of tea in Alan's office before the game wasn't such a success. I went twice but only sat down once. The first time he had someone with him, so he asked me to come back in ten minutes. I did, but he'd gone. He saw me later in the tunnel. ‘What’s your patter for today?’ he asked, clearly mistaking me for a shopping channel presenter trying to shift some dodgy vegetable chopping invention. I told him the various messages I was planning to make. He nodded his head sagely, clearly rubber stamping them. For a fan like me it was great to be working closely with the manager of West Ham, but announcing details of tickets on sale for upcoming games didn’t really need his approval. Pards went into the dressing room still nodding. Clearly our meeting was over. It hadn’t taken long, it achieved nothing and I didn’t get a brew.
Still, the next week I knocked on the door of his office again. He looked a bit surprised to see me, but invited me in. We sat down, me on a chair and him on the edge of his desk. It meant I had to look up at him, which was a bit odd. He had a mug of tea in his hand, but I wasn’t offered one. I felt a bit like a kid who’d been called to the headmaster’s office, except I hadn’t done anything wrong. Then he asked me what he could do for me. I reminded him that he’d asked me to come and see him in his office before every game. ‘That’s right,’ he said nodding thoughtfully, his lips pursed. He reminded me a bit of a Thunderbirds puppet, maybe Scott or Virgil, but definitely not Brains. ‘I want you to get the crowd rocking today. I want them 100 per cent behind the team. What I want you to do is to play ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ just as the team are running out!’ So that was his brilliant plan.
He wanted me to play ‘Bubbles’ as the team ran out. What an incredible idea. If only we’d thought of it ourselves! Thank goodness a former glazier had arrived at the Academy of Football to give us the benefit of his knowledge of East London and its traditions. I sat in my seat looking up at him, wondering how to break to him the news that we’d been running out to this particular tune for as long as I could remember. His hair was virtually white, apart from a little bit of greying black at the front. He has an intense way of looking at you that suggests that you will agree with him. He was completely still, a bit like the Thunderbirds pictures on the wall at Tracy Island. When the brothers contacted base, the eyes on their picture would flash on and off. Actually thinking about it, there was an Alan in Thunderbirds and he had white hair. He was the astronaut, or was it space cadet? The real Alan’s eyes showed no signs of flashing, so I had to think quickly. I didn’t want to make our new manager feel uncomfortable, so I replied that it was a great idea. I would ensure that we played ‘Bubbles’ every week as the team ran out. He nodded his approval, slid off the desk and opened the door. It appeared that this meeting was over, either he was leaving the room or I was. It turned out it was me. I never did get a cup of tea from Alan, so I popped into the press lounge for a brew. I wrote on my clipboard ‘Bubbles’ in big letters, just in case I forgot.
The next two matches I knocked on Alan’s door and he wasn’t there either time. After that I stopped going. Any more memos from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious would have to be delivered to me at impromptu meetings in the tunnel. There weren’t any more memos, just the same one, over and over again. Every time Alan saw me pre-match, he’d say, ‘Get them going today, remember Bubbles really loud before kick-off.’ It was like he had a pre-match checklist. 1. Have a mug of tea on my own in my office. 2. Find a place for Hayden Mullins in the team, any position will do. 3. Tell Jeremy to play ‘Bubbles’ before kick-off. 4. Check in with Tracy Island that there’s no mission today. 5. Take seat in dugout briefly, before pacing about shouting. 6. Stand up at the press conference, so the reporters look smaller.
Pards not only bent my ear about having a positive atmosphere in the stadium, he also made the training ground a positive place to go to work. He had pictures of Bobby Moore taken down at Chadwell Heath, because he felt the club lived in the past a bit. They were replaced with motivational messages. Nothing wrong with that, psychology is a big part of the modern game. But then he sanctioned a range of West Ham T-shirts in the club shop which read ‘Moore than just a football team’. Now in my book, if you are going to start wrapping yourself in the name of Bobby Moore, you’d better be very special indeed. Maybe ‘I’ve bitten off Moore than I can chew’, would have been more appropriate. Defoe and James were sold as the board balanced the books. The football we were playing had little to do with the traditions of Bobby Moore, maybe the shirts were about Dudley Moore? But, dire as it was to watch, Pards did start to grind out some results. We crept up the table and eventually finished fourth, earning a play-off semifinal against Ipswich.
I was summoned to a meeting at the training ground to discuss the pre-match build-up. Ipswich had won the first leg by a goal to nil. The atmosphere at Portman Road had been electric. Pards wanted to make sure we dug deep and gave the Tractor Boys a rough ride. A positive stadium was called for, he told me. Brilliant plan, Alan, I never would have thought of that. Surprise, surprise, he wanted me to play ‘Bubbles’ before the game. Even more surprising I was offered a cup of tea, but he didn’t make it. Still, I nearly fell off my chair in excitement. Other plans included the playing of the ‘Post Horn Gallop’ as the teams emerged from the tunnel. This is a fox hunting fanfare played on a long straight instrument called a post horn. West Ham used to run out to it in the 1950s and Pards had been promised by his coach Roger Cross that it would generate a terrific atmosphere. I couldn’t quite see the relevance of a fox hunting tune in the East End, but it’s hard to argue against tradition. My mission was to create a wall of sound. Alan wanted it loud.
On the walls at Chadwell Heath were lots of these motivational messages that he loved so much. This time there were new posters about the Ipswich game. They were all about the number of ‘golden crosses’ that Pards wanted to see flying in on the night. We were clearly going for an attacking policy, with crosses in the box the key to winning the contest. Pards told me on no account was I to mention to anyone the ‘night of the golden crosses’ plan. Even though I was a lifelong West Ham fan, who’d been charged with creating a game-winning atmosphere, he still felt it necessary to tell me not to give the tactics away. On the day of the game Pards contacted me via press officer Peter Stewart, asking for a certain song to be played that night. I told you he was hands on! The tune was ‘Luck Be A Lady’ by Frank Sinatra. So, with all his talk of a positive stadium and how it was all about belief, he had panicked at the last minute and decided to throw himself at the feet of Lady Luck.
Pards had a new slogan T-shirt for the final, something about us being the original academy. In his mind he was Stephen Fry, but in reality he came across as Barry Fry. Having ridden the Bobby Moore wave, he’d now gone back even further in time. But, Malcolm Allison never plotted tactics like these with the salt and pepper pots at Cassettari’s Café. We didn’t pass mustard; in fact we hardly passed the ball. It was a shocking performance and Crystal Palace were worthy winners by a goal to nil. Hayden Mullins played out of position at left back. Pards loved Hayden and though he was a good determined midfielder, he was no full back. The other thing I’ve never understood about that game was Pardew’s decision to take off his three strikers: Marlon Harewood, Bobby Zamora and David Connolly. We were a goal down, needing to score to get back into the final and he took off the three men most likely to score.
In January 2005 we lost 2–0 at home to a Sheffield United team in bright orange shirts which were far too loud to be worn in a built-up area. It was like losing to a team of stewards. If you’re serious about promotion you can’t be losing home games to your rivals at the top. I was disappointed and for the FA Cup tie with Norwich I wrote what was perceived by Pards as a negative column in the programme. It pretty much echoed what he’d said after the Sheffield United game, but I’d forgotten that I was chief cheerleader. Pards was allowed to moan, but my job was propaganda not free thinking. I was told my column was being rested for the next three games. The offence must have been more serious than I first thought, because I never returned to writing for the programme, which is a real shame.
Another time I was publicly criticised by the manager at a press conference. After a bad run of results we were winning a game when the stadium manager asked me to do an announcement about problems on the District Line. It meant people would have trouble getting home, so he felt it would be best to give them a chance to leave early. I queried this, saying that it would lead to a mass exodus which would kill the atmosphere, just when we needed a boost. However, he was adamant and I’m duty-bound to follow his instructions. Pards went nuts. He glared at me as he left the pitch, but didn’t say anything. He saved that until he was in front of journalists in a packed press lounge. He ranted about how his team had just had a great result, but hardly anyone was left to applaud them off the pitch, because the announcer was more interested in giving out train times. I sat quietly at the back thinking that was a bit harsh. A few journalists asked me for comments but I just smiled and left. I’ll always back the manager of my team. I think Pards did some great things at West Ham, but I found his style of belittling people in public rather cruel and unnecessary.
With six games to go, we were seventh in the table, two points outside the play-off positions. We were playing Coventry that day, and I did my best to get the crowd going, but I made another big mistake according to Pards. Championship leaders Sunderland were playing fifth-placed Reading in the day’s early kick-off. Visitors Reading were the surprise winners and I announced the score before our game. It seemed perfectly reasonable to do so, as Reading, previously managed by Pards, were one of the teams we were chasing. My mistake, according to Alan, was to completely kill the atmosphere. By announcing bad news, I had destroyed all positivity within a ten-mile radius of Upton Park; never mind that most of the fans had watched the closing minutes of the Sunderland/ Reading game on the plasma screens in the concourses before taking their seats. I had actually verbalised the bad news and that meant we would surely lose. In fact we won 3–0, our third win in a week, but I was still in the doghouse. Pardew thought the fans’ sole purpose in life was to cheer his team on, they weren’t allowed to have any thoughts of their own. They weren’t to be fed any information, just good news or no news. It was all a bit 1984 for my liking. I was waiting for Pards to invite me to room 101 and not serve me a cup of tea. I can’t help thinking that having won 3–0 he might have created a more positive atmosphere himself by praising his team in his post-match interviews, rather than laying into the poor old announcer, who was just doing his job. Instead Pards slaughtered me in public, not for the first time, and then moaned about a fan protest after the game, which was aimed at the board not him. Why mention it? Come on, Alan, let’s keep it positive!
But I can’t do much about a positive stadium once the game is under way. It’s up to the players after that and with the manager getting increasingly anxious in the technical area, we threw away the lead to finish two-all. Pards had an argument with Ipswich boss Joe Royle on the touchline as the pressure began to tell.
The trouble with Alan Pardew was that he interfered in everything. He was the manager of the football club, but he wanted to poke his nose into everything else, all the non-football bits. He wanted input into the look of the programme, the merchandise and from my point of view he wanted to pick the music we’d play in the ground. Once before a game, the manager said he needed a few words about an important matter. He took Sue the marketing manager and me into a small room just off the tunnel. It’s the room the broadcasters use for their TV interviews. To a backdrop of sponsors’ logos, he outlined his latest idea to raise the atmosphere at the ground. Pards had been to Sea World in Florida with his family. He’d seen the announcer at the dolphin pool conduct an interactive crowd-pleaser of a quiz. Everyone got involved and it was brilliant, he told me. The TV camera at the pool homes in on someone in the crowd and they are asked some trivia questions to try and win prizes. If it’s an adult the questions are hard, if it’s a kid, the questions are easy. To keep it simple, they don’t bother with microphones going into the crowd. Instead the answers are all multiple choice, with three possible answers. You held up one, two or three fingers to indicate your answer. Alan loved this simple digital technology and gave the whole idea a big thumbs-up. The look of excitement on his face suggested he was reliving the excitement as he held up his fingers, in case I hadn’t grasped the complexity of the format. I agreed it sounded great, but our game was kicking off in fifteen minutes’ time. I was wondering if I wouldn’t be better occupied building up the atmosphere in our own ground, rather than reminiscing about Alan’s holiday. Especially as the interview room is a very small room, with bright lights and no windows, and I was wearing a thick fleece and coat. I was dressed for sitting outdoors for a few hours, not standing in a windowless bunker discussing Sea World. I believe Pards is a big fan of Free Willy, but I am not.
I may have momentarily lost consciousness due to the heat and accompanying dehydration, but when I came to Pards was still banging on about the Florida crowd-pleaser. ‘So the kids hold up one, two or three fingers, depending on the correct answer.’ It’s brilliant, he said, we should do it here at the next game. It works because the kids always win. Their questions are much easier, Alan explained, just in case I thought Florida children are much brighter than their parents. I’ve no knowledge of the Miami schools system, but I’d already guessed that, with no need for any fingers. The more excited Alan became about the brilliant Sea World quiz, the closer he got. He was dribbling with excitement. I hadn’t seen dribbling like it since the days of Eyal Berkovic. My face often gives me away and although I was trying my best to look just as excited as he was, my beaming smile may have wilted slightly in the heat. He was obviously expecting a better reaction to his brilliant idea, because he looked slightly disappointed. Pards is a bit of a spin doctor. In his mind as long as you are enthusiastic about a plan, it will work. It doesn’t matter if the plan is flawed and ill thought out, as long as you are positive it will surely work. If it doesn’t work, it’s because other people weren’t enthusiastic about it. They let you down. It wasn’t because your plan was a pile of crap in the first place.
By the way, I’m still talking about the Sea World idea, and in no way am I suggesting that Alan Pardew’s team tactics were ill thought out. How could I possibly suggest that? He took us to consecutive play-off finals and won us promotion. Without a brilliant plan we never would have finished in the play-off positions. Critics will say that he led the best squad in the division to fourth place and then sixth place in the table. Maybe we should have finished higher, but that was nothing to do with Pards’ tactics, that was because some critics didn’t believe in the plan. His game plans were spot on. The players gave their all. It was just that sometimes the supporters who should have been cheering their hearts out decided not to. For some reason fans thought that having paid for their tickets they were entitled to a view, and chose not to behave like lemmings. This saddened Alan. Anyway, back to that night against QPR in the cup. I tried not to sound too discouraging about the brilliant Sea World idea, but pointed out that our cousins from across the pond are very different to us.
My worry with the Sea World quiz would be to do with hand gestures, or to be more specific, fingers. If the answer is one, an American child would hold up one finger. A London child is more likely to hold up the middle finger and a cheeky grin. If the answer is two you can pretty much rely on the Little Hammer to hold up the same two fingers that his Dad might use to wave goodbye to the foreman at work. We can only pray the answer is three. Even then, there’s no telling what the surrounding fans will be doing in the background. I pointed out the differences in behaviour on the other side of the pond to Alan, but he said it wouldn’t be a problem. People are the same the world over, he claimed. I hadn’t realised he’d studied human behaviour to that extent. It almost sounded as if he didn’t want his word to be questioned.
I badly needed to take onboard some liquid and besides there was a match about to start, so I made my excuses about going out to talk to the crowd and left. Alan shouted after me that he wanted to try the Sea World quiz at the next home game. It was good to see he hadn’t let the small matter of a last-minute team talk get in the way of his mission to bring entertainment to the Boleyn. I would have preferred entertaining football and decided this dolphin-inspired quiz could not happen. Fortunately after consulting with the camera operators at the ground, it emerged that we don’t have the ability to zoom in tighter than a section of the crowd four seats wide by three seats high. So twelve people in shot, it just wouldn’t work. I broke the news to Alan, who looked crestfallen. What about the Sky cameras which zoom right in on the players, he asked, with his bottom lip rolling out to full Thunderbird villain mode. Sadly we don’t have control of them, I replied. We have our own cameras high in the gantry, but they are no use for a fish quiz.
On the day the transfer window slammed shut in August 2006, West Ham signed two players. It was strange because the manager had nothing to do with the signing and they were top Argentine World Cup stars. Javier Mascherano and Carlos Tevez were both twenty-two. We’d had big-name foreign stars at West Ham before, but usually they were old and knackered before we could afford them. It didn’t make sense. How on earth had we afforded them? I still don’t fully understand the deal, but there was clearly a problem. A third party owned the players’ rights and that’s not allowed. It was a guy called Kia Joorabchian, who was actually trying to buy West Ham at the time. So this should have been brilliant news. I introduced the two Argentinians to the crowd and they waved and received huge cheers from the West Ham fans who couldn’t quite believe their luck.
Then we waited for them to play for the team, and we waited and waited, and still Alan Pardew didn’t pick them. For some reason Pards couldn’t find places in his struggling side for two World Cup stars. Nigel Reo-Coker and Hayden Mullins were preferred in midfield to Mascherano. Whenever I’ve watched Mascherano starring on the European stage since, I’ve wondered how on earth he couldn’t get in the team. Maybe he wasn’t match-fit at first, but even on crutches he should have still earned a place in the starting line-up. Carlos Tevez was kept out of the attack by Marlon, Teddy and Bobby. How was that possible? Looking back at it now, it’s laughable that Pards couldn’t find a way to integrate them into his side. The problem of course, was that Alan hadn’t sanctioned their signings. He’d built a side around pace and stamina and now these foreigners had turned up with their clever skills and he didn’t quite know how to fit them into his team without upsetting his players. Nigel Reo-Coker had the hump because there’d been talk of him leaving to join a bigger club in the transfer window. The move hadn’t come off, and now he was expected to slum it with us, and what’s worse he had to fight for his place against Pards’ all-time favourite player, Hayden Mullins and some fancy Dan from Argentina.
So we struggled down at the bottom of the table again, the fans started getting restless, the players underperformed, the atmosphere in the stadium was poor and Pards told me I wasn’t doing my job properly. It never occurred to him that no matter what I said or what music I played, if the team played consistently badly, the atmosphere was going to drop. West Ham fans are passionate and vocal, but they’re also lovers of good football and watching this rubbish week in, week out was enough to silence anyone.
Pards was still calling for Upton Park to become a fortress, but on the pitch his players were showing no signs of battling like soldiers. The new owners decided it was time for a change. Alan Pardew wasn’t bringing home the bacon and Eggy decided he’d had his chips. Out went Pards and in came Curbs.
Season in a Nutshell 2006/07 - Argentinians Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano arrived in a ‘too good to be true’ deal. It turned out to be a disaster. Alan Pardew had no idea how to integrate the World Cup stars into his team which was based on pace and determination not flair and skill. The club were taken over by an Icelandic consortium. There was discontent off the pitch and Alan Pardew was sacked after losing the dressing room. I don’t know what he did, but it was felt it was best that he left. Alan Curbishley took over and stabilised the club.
International highlight – Signing two big-name foreign stars.
Awful moment – Realising our manager had no idea how to utilise players of that quality.