“The centre does not hold.”

An everlasting river flows between opposites. Sir Roy Hodgson’s Fulham was all central with inverted wingers pressing play inward. Maarten Jol’s Fulham is all wing play and no centre. This may be a mistake, but insofar as he is a thinking man, perhaps it is no accident. Our fulcrum removed not once but twice since my last Fulham match attended in May, our once vaunted and ineluctable shape was not even a shadow of its former form. Instead, our play sought to start from the backs, and the burden to switch from defence to attack proved overwhelming. If for no other reason, the possession our central mids used to hold, shifted to the backs, and showed their mental vulnerabilities. This was a match that cried out for Danny Murphy.

“Things fall apart.”

I have a lot of time for West Ham United as a community based small business. I often arrive early at grounds and first experience them in this way as they awaken for trade. When one arrives at Upton Park particularly, there is a bustle and not a frisson. Down the grimy steps of the Hammersmith and City line, crossing the road past the Halal butcher and there lies Queens Road Market, a smaller but more diminutive Albert Square market stall. “There’s only 12 Billy Mitchells!” we Fulham sang to the East stand and they mostly laughed along with us at our stereotyping of their confederacy of geezers. One such, who did slightly resemble a character from Minder sold rolls loo rolls just outside the Boleyn Ground post match labeled “Arsenal toilet paper” and his enterprise “Ministryoftoiletroll.co.uk” (at £5/roll or 5for £20, he actually had some trade as I bypassed). Along Queens Road, the scent of diesel from the East London Bus terminal mixes with Chicken Balti pies and a very faint scent of something like mosquito repellent drapes the many market stalls and all shapes and sizes of people and things coloured light blue and dark red. From the many initiatives of West Ham United FC and the Bobby Moore Foundation in and around Newham and Barking, it seems a fair trade exchange to me. From the Sir Trevor Brooking stand, one sees the low slope of the Lea Valley’s hills in the horizon from the east corner of the Bobby Moore stand, beyond which, industrial Greater London fades into Essex and then, the sea. When this business does leave this place, a small bit of the Modern England I love will die.