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On Clive Allen's prodigious goal v West Ham, 1984 Rob Smyth, Guardian, 4/2/20
'Allen, like all great goalscorers, spent his career trying to find space. That generally involved running on to the ball rather than trying to manufacture it while in possession. But he did a nice sideline in goals that involved the sort of imagination and spatial awareness associated with hipster darlings. Bergkamp or Dimitar Berbatov would have [...] loved the one at Upton Park.
It started with the mundane act of stretching away from goal to control Mike Fillery’s cross, while trying to keep his balance on the muddy surface. Allen turned just outside the D and stopped to front up Billy Bonds, the West Ham captain. Bonds was leaning towards him like a sumo wrestler, waiting for the signal to engage. Their brief stand-off was interrupted when Neil Orr, appearing to Allen’s right, decided to stick his surname in. As he approached, Allen dragged his studs over the ball to move it slightly away from goal, thus partially shielding it from Orr and buying himself a split-second to work out what to do next.
Allen’s instinct told him to drag the ball again, this time to move it completely away from Orr. As he did so, Bonds saw his chance and lunged optimistically towards the ball. Before he got there, Allen produced a third drag-back to take him out of the game. Orr, meanwhile, was transfixed just outside the area, engaging in a ferocious internal debate as to what day it was.
“After the second drag-back I still had my back to goal, so I had to move it again,” says Allen. “That’s why I did another drag-back. Each touch led to the next one.”
One at a time. It’s the footballer’s cliche, usually used for taking each game as it comes. But most individual goals are created one step – or, in Allen’s case, one drag-back – at a time. There’s no bigger picture, no bird’s-eye view or medium-term planning. It’s like an arcade adventure game, where your only concern is to avoid being zapped by the nearest defender.
For all Allen’s eye-catching drag-backs, the best touch might be the one that followed, an instant push into the space in front of goal. “The ball actually got away from me a little,” he says, “and I had to stretch to finish it.”
The weight of the touch was less important than the angle. Had it been any straighter, Alvin Martin would have been able to beat Allen to the loose ball. Instead he arrived a split-second after the striker, who guided the ball past Phil Parkes and into the bottom corner.
The finish was admirably clear-headed; most of us would have been so high on our own skill as to over-excitedly leather it into Row Q. It was a goal of unique brilliance, a Zorroish swish through the West Ham defence, and even more striking in the context of 1980s English football. It belonged on the Copacabana.'
How is he a 'charlatan' exactly? He's been there, done it, again and again, with multiple promotions, play off finals, and cup semi-finals, with a number of clubs. It's just a ludicrous statement.
Of course, Neil has his flim-flammery, like just about every manager, but he's the real deal.
Yes, that anti-celebration from Clive always struck me - he was more unhappy at not scoring himself than his team doing so. I suppose that's the selfishness of (great) strikers for you.
Stan was, of course, gone the following month for his period of 'communication by rumour' under Brian Clough, and incomprehensibly out of top flight football by the age of 31.
Peter Springett was in goal, according to the match programme (who played for us till 1967 and then got swapped for his brother Ron in what is probably a unique fraternal transfer of its kind).
I and the programme may stand corrected of course . . .
Mty first thought was the 7-0 Burnley game in '79, though of course that was quite a bit later (no Venables or Francis). I think it was on MOTD with Barry Davies commenting, with 19-year-old Billy O'Rourke making his traumatic debut between the sticks. (I saw myself sitting in the Paddocks on the TV coverage, which gave me a bit of a thrill at the time, a day before my 12th birthday.)
Otherwise, a bit before my time, there was the 8-2 League Cup win against Sheff Wed in the League Cup game in Nov '73 - could that be the one you're thinking of?
You really are a bile-filled and bitter poster, and, with irony so extreme it's positively indecent, an absolute walking advert for everything you delusionally castigate and scapegoat me for! Do you even register the from behind your lens of nasty fury the multiple positive, engaged and discussion-oriented posts and polls I publish about the club? Of course not. You just pursue your own rancid agenda and obsessional need to cut me down for crimes and connections you alone fantasise about like some tuppenny conspirator - the latest being, apparently, I'm trying to stir up some race war on LfW, when I made a general/mild observation about the criticism of Paal, which one or two other posters actually agreed with! And you call me a 'sad tw*t!
Though it's ultimately water off a duck's back to me, your slander aside, it's can't be good for your mental or physical health. I worry about you, to be honest, and hope you'll feel better one day. In the meantime, why not take a break yourself?
I suggested no such thing - I said, which is true, there was a nasty undertone to the criticisms of Paal, and one wonders where it comes from. Your attempt to pin the 'race card' on me shows the colour of your mind, not mine, which makes you the abusive idiot in my book, with your pathetic and bullying obsession with me - you even admit other posters expressed similar sentiments, yet you selectively scapegoat me for a mild and justified opinion.
I've reported your post, and others can/will avoid you as they see fit. Now kindly shut the f*ck up!
A good result with some very good goals that should now set the bar for the team for the run-in, so plenty to applaud. However, I agree with the poster who qualified his praise by reminding us that it was against a very leaky Derby, and there will be far sterner challenges ahead. For that reason, for me, this game, enjoyable as it was, wasn't in the same ballpark as the Leeds one.
The next three games v Portsmouth, Sheff Utd and WBA will tell us a great deal. 6 or 7 points from them, with some proper performances to match, and I might lump on for the playoffs.
They're retained as pets or rehomed, I believe. If the former, though, how would they definitely know they'd retired? If only from force of habit, wouldn't they be following their owner out to cross the road from time to time.
You idealise your supposed faculty for 'discrimination', and then insult/abuse whoever's in your abusive sights as 'f*cking idiots'! I think the adults on the board can rest their case, but hopefully the mods will do their jobs and edit you out.
You're so propelled by a need to dismiss other fans and their views as 'armchair', 'contrarian' and 'boring' etc. (three contrasting insults in one post - well done you!) it doesn't occur to you how boring, smug, self-righteous and repetitive you yourself sound. (I think that gives me four - ha!)
Congratulations on your being in a geographic position to attend games in person, but if you think that means your opinions have more value than those of us who watch on TV/streams, read everything we can about the matches (in some cases drawing on decades of watching QPR/football) and, most importantly, think for ourselves rather than in a cultish/conformist box, you're deluding yourself.
The proof of the divinoty of the world is that it lends itself to so many interpretations, as Henry Miller (channelling Nietzsche) put it. Which a few on 'ere would do well to read up on. Basically, you're saying you can't understand why more people aren't (like) you, right?
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