Allardyce shows his true colours

In the Wife of Bath's Tale, the Knight is given a choice: does he want to be married to a beautiful woman who he can never trust, or would he rather have an ugly hag for a wife who would never sleep around because nobody would ever fancy her. Well, I know what I would prefer, but it seems there's a whole crowd of West Ham fans out there who would opt for the ugly old dog to walk up the aisle with them. In fact, why am I surprised? I've seen what passes for women in the Boleyn and the Duke of Edinburgh!

I have already blogged that last night's performance was just about the most depressing I have ever seen from West Ham. Keeping with the Chaucer analogy, what is the point of having sex if it makes you feel physically sick whilst you are doing it, and actually vomit when you think back to the experience? Watching our performance last night was like going into a prison's showers! In fact, the prison's showers might just about rate above it!

But even more depressing is the fact that Allardyce is boasting about the performance. Whilst Poyet sounds like the West Ham managers of old, Allardyce is talking like an old lag proud of his crimes. Listen to him! "Our task was to capitalise on the opposition and the way they play, and if we got the first goal to defend it properly," he said. I beg to differ. Our job was to go to Brighton and wipe the floor with a very average team who were in the old Third Division last season.

Allardyce is raving about "an outstanding victory". If Grant had gone to Brighton last season in the Cup, we would have been outraged if we had left with anything other than a victory. Doctor Evil is talking this up as if we have beaten Chelsea on their own dung heap! Brighton will finish in the bottom half of the table - mark my words! They are a poor team. But we allowed them 70% of the possession! That is a disgrace!

Tell me, what would have happened had Brighton taken one of their chances? Perhaps the Mucky-Smith shot just before half time? A better team would have engineered a chance or two and, had the equaliser come, there was only ever going to be one winner. We had handed the initiative over to the opposition so utterly that we might as well have been in the prison showers, bending over to pick up the soap with a pot of Vaseline resting on our backs and an arrow pointing down to the Rotherhithe tunnel!

Allardyce's approach is crystal clear and he set out the plan with brutal honesty after the game when he said: "It's a great three points and it determines automatic promotion, generally, how many 1-0 wins you can get. That's what takes you where you want to go."

So, forget the West Ham way, forget the Academy, forget attacking football, forget what our club stands for, forget entertainment, forget Greenwood and Lyall, forget Moore, Hurst, Peters, Brooking, Di Canio and co - forget it all! We are the new Bolton, West Ham Wanderers, Doctor Evil's ugly monster, El Hadji Diouf's club, a spitting image satire of what was once West Ham United.

There's many of you happy to shag an ugly old hag it seems, and even pay for the privilege. Me, I'd much prefer Beauty to the Beast, even if I want to strangle her from time to time!