Tuesday 14 September 2010

Grant & Pulis. A Stark and Damning Contrast in Commitment!

So, Avram can't show up for the game at Stoke because it is a religious holiday. Some mumbo jumbo archaic nonsense dating back 3000 or so years means that Avram has to take the day off.

Dear God! Does the guy really BELIEVE that God is sitting up in Heaven with a big book, noting down everybody's fate for the following year? He must have been in one foul mood in the 1940s then! A Cohen. Die. B Cohen. Die. C Cohen Die. E Cohen. Die. Hang on, this is getting a bit repetitive. Let's take that whole block, how many is that? Six million. Phew, big number. What the heck. Die in the camps.

I don't mean to be facetious here about the Holocaust but come on, just apply a little bit of common sense and it sort of blows a hole in the idea of Yom Kippur doesn't it? Does Avram really believe that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust at the will of God? Does Avram really believe in this personal involvement of God, such a personalised determination of the fate of individuals? Doesn't history question the wisdom of this idea?

Look too closely at all these religious practices and they often assume a level of absurdity, but from the outside, this one just about takes the biscuit. I can understand the idea of a pilgrimage. I can understand a fast. I can understand daily prayers. But the idea of God writing an individual's fate in a book?  Of everybody's individual fate in a book? Get real surely!

So, Avram can't show up because of stories invented 3000 years ago, when people did not understand the world in the way that we now understand it, in a world where superstition held sway and in a known world where there were so few people that God, had he been so minded, might just about feasibly have recorded names on "Live, Die, Prosper and Flounder" pages in a big book and get through everybody in a single day.

But now? The very idea of God writing in a book is surely ludicrous. Can't the guy use an Apple Mac or a PC? Can't he work in Excel? Think about it just a little and it becomes a Monty Python sketch. Why didn't he tell Moses that he was noting the names down on a computer? Why did he use a tablet of stone and burning bushes? Why was God so behind the times 3000 years ago? Why couldn't he access computer technology back then if he is so clever and so ubiquitous. Just imagine the effect on the Jews if Moses had come down from the mountain with an ipad and iphone! Bless Moses with miracles? Why waste time turning staves into snakes and sending down plagues of frogs when, with a little help, Moses could have said, "Let there be light" and installed electricity into the Pharaoh's palace before dropping an atom bomb in the desert to reveal the unbridled power of God? "Let my people go or I'll nuke every one of you!" would have stopped the Egyptians in their tracks a long way short of the Red Sea. It's why Israel survives as a state in the modern world after all!

So Avram can't make it because of his religious beliefs, religious beliefs that do not stop Jewish doctors, nurses, soldiers and policemen working in Israel on Yom Kippur. But Pulis? His mother died yesterday but the Stoke manager still showed up at half time to give his boys a motivational talk: and they responded by fighting to the last and snatching a vital victory.

We head to Stoke at the weekend and I ask you, who would you respect more as your manager, who would you want to play for? Absent Avram or pugnacious Pulis? Stoke will go into the game with a winger and lots of crosses, without Etherington, our battleplan will be based on no wingers and Avram's prayer!

Sack Grant now.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Minus too much on Judaism, the point and comaprison was quite valid.

Hammersfan said...

The point is that the custom belongs in a different world, a world before the Premier League! Without exploring the nonsense of this custom, you can't really highlight the contrast properly. Cameron took a couple of days off from running the country when his Dad died; Pulis missed 45 minutes! What a guy! And what a contrast to Avram Grant!

Anonymous said...

Superb blog - get a job with the national press (if you don't have already!). I am an ardent Stokie and I think that what Pullis did was way beyond the call of duty and as for Avram, well you said it all - get a life Avram and turn up to lead your boys - it's what you are paid to do!

Hammersfan said...

Cheers mate. Handshake across the divide. Until the weekend!!!!!

el martillo said...

As the flood waters rose inexorably around Avram Grant today, he battled to reorganise his defensive planks in an attempt to stop the goals going in three by three along with the monkeys. Today is the first of the “days of awe” apparently and as atonement day approaches, Grant has thought about it and decided that at the next opportunity to launch his premier ship, he won’t do any work at all, he’ll make himself feel physically unwell and spend most of the day with his head in his hands. So how’s that different from any other Saturday?

When asked whether having presided over the worst start in West Ham history, his action might seem to ignore our position in the premiership table he said that we were not bottom of the table as the premiership was only six hours old. It had definitely not descended by natural selection from the old first division and anyway tables were just scientific mumbo jumbo. Awesome.

Anonymous said...

There is very little I agree with you hammersfan but even though im Jewish I find it disgusting that Grant will not be there to lead the hammers at Stoke. Is he giving up his wages for the week???? The guy has been a total flop since he has been at the hammers and now this rubs salt into the wounds. He needs to be removed from the managers job as the guy just cannot inspire either the players or the fans. He looks like an undertaker on the sidelines dressed in black or grey every week. Please Gold and Sullivan remove this man as he is taking us down quicker than Zola ever would have. Im disgusted in Grant and as for Ben Haim well send him back to Pompey he aint no great shakes anyway.

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah also Pulis is a thousand times the man Grant will ever be he inspires and leads from the front. Sorry for your loss Tony and heartfelt good wishes to you and your family. Id love you at the hammers but why would you leave Stoke for this shambles.

Julie Boothen said...

David Gold is also Jewish - will he be turning up at Stoke in his posh motor ? ( D9 OLD if anyone is a car-spotter )

but what does it matter, the question isn't whetehr ASvram turns up...will the Hammers defenders ??

Hammersfan said...

Ben Haim won't Julie, he's taking the day off too. Well Stoke away is a nasty rough house of a game for a central defender isn't it? I expect Tal saw what Huth did to Upson. Suddenly he's come over all Yom Kippur too! Now, I wonder, if it was a Champions League final and the pair were at Chelsea...?

el martillo said...

Hah! Wrote my mumbo jumbo before reading your mumbo jumbo! Do you think we might have a common ancestor? Perhaps Australo(taking the)pithecus? Good article.

Julie Boothen said...

Nasty rough house of a game ? You Arsene in disguise ? :-)

Hammersfan said...

Snap Marty.

I tell you what Julie, I've seen Huth in the flesh. I wouldn't want to take him on!

T.I.S aka beaten wife said...

If I wasn't so stupid I wouldn't watch the game. We all knew Rooney would 'recapture' his form against us, we all knew Bolton would turn us over at home AGAIN, we knew Chelsea would beat us, we knew Green had at least another huge mistake in him etc etc.


What I know will happen against Stoke will be Fuller absolutely TORTURING our defence with his trickery, Etherington beating our right back time after time, Pennant getting the better of Ilunga, having a legitimate goal disallowed because the ref has shit his pants at the sound of the Stoke fans, and us crumbling after 20 mins when we find ourselves three nil down.

Usually an optimist of course, I am failing to understand how depressed you older fans must be at the sight of this team. We all have the odd 'why is it always me? moment, but that has never been such an accurate cliché when regarding West Ham.

Anonymous said...

Once again you were wrong HF Avram will take us down - zola would have got better - shame on you. PS where are all your posters? even the anons have abandoned you/

Stani Army said...

HF? You've changed your mind about Grant? But what's happened since pre-season and where's that Grantazola index!? Does this mean Zola wins?

"who would you respect more as your manager, who would you want to play for?" My answer is Pulis, now and before the season and Grant's appointment too.

Anonymous said...

Who ever wrote this Blog is an idiot... making any comment about the Holocaust in the flippant way that you did just shows you small mindedness! Fair play to TP but surely if anything this shows there is so much more to life than football, if anything it is insignificant!

Bloggam said...

Really piss poor article. Incredibly hypocritical for someone who preaches tolerance and regularly denounces the BNP. Shocking. Oh and Avram out? Already? Didnt you have a "good feeling" about the appointment before the season started? Why not admit you were wrong? Or should I start pulling quotes from old articles of yours? Im 95% sure this wont get published but unlike you, I dont mind being proven wrong.

T.I.S said...

05:41, early post may I say lol. I wouldn't say football is insignificant at all. After all, Pulis came to the game afterwards, it's clearly a significant part of his life. Try saying football is insignificant to Mourinho, Ferguson or Wenger. You know as much as I do, when West Ham win I am happy and in good spirit, when we lose, I die a little inside....

Hammersfan said...

You think so Bloggam, others don't. I am not saying anything here that the BNP might support. I am not suggesting that people should be banned from our country based on the colour of their skin or religion. I am saying that there is a huge and evident contrast in the attitude of Avram and Pulis. Do you think Pulis wanted to go in to work on the day his mother died? I doubt it, but he put his job over his personal feelings and even above his family.

I do think that religion is bunkum personally. I don't understand how Avram can claim to be religious if certain rumours are true and given the way his employers made their money.

This is about how much Avram wants the job, against how much Pulis wants his. It is about how Stoke players will feel in the dressing room before kick off, seeing Pulis there, committed to the club, the fans and the players despite the personal loss; compared with how our mob will feel when the manager isn't there because of his religious beliefs.

Avram is welcome to those beliefs, I think they are incredibly naive but he is welcome to them, but they have come into direct conflict with the role he is paid to perform. I don't think that is tenable personally, especially after we have suffered four defeats in a row at the start of the season.

I want Avram to succeed. But if he isn't there for the Stoke game, I do not think he should keep his position. If we lose, people will blame Avram. If we win, people will say, well get rid because we do better when he isn't there. He can't win in this situation. He shouldn't have put himself in the situation in the first place.