Jermain Defoe is looking forward to his second spell at Spurs.
Behind the enveloping loathing that one feels upon seeing Jermain Defoe returning to White Hart Lane is dormant, wounded love. Prompted by unwelcome nostalgia, the mind's eye turns inward and once more it's 1999 and Prince seems pretty upbeat about something and there's young Jermain in claret and blue; fresh-faced, fleet-footed and chip-toothed, a febrile one man hubbub of potential and opportunity, his story yet to unfurl.
To be honest, it was pretty difficult to avoid nostalgia when Defoe, for his on-pitch unveiling last Wednesday, was togged up like an extra from Bugsy Malone — actually not an extra, he was dressed as Baby Face who, if memory serves, was a depression-era itinerant worker expertly played by a tiny Dexter Fletcher in a cloth cap that after hibernating ever since (but for a brief interlude where it shielded us from Mick Hucknall's scalp crimes) burst back on the scene in a blaze of flashbulbs and flash bastards for Tottenham's Carling Cup semi-final against Burnley.
Tottenham are Defoe's defining club, not West Ham, and any feelings of attachment have to be severed; chew through the umbilical cord with gritted teeth and move on. Perhaps Defoe's dental anomalies can be explained by his willingness to gnaw through any bonding that prevents his ambition being fulfilled, like a trapped fox who can only taste freedom after he has first tasted blood, bone and fur and given limb-tribute to his resolute steel captor.
Once perception is exposed as illusion it must be demolished or we cannot leave its throes. Only saints can continue to adore once spurned; when I hear of former girlfriends marrying or having children I am confronted with a world beyond my control – life goes on without me. Ex-players, like ex-girlfriends, should not continue to exist; they should dutifully march into some canyon beyond the known where their triumphs play out in silence and I don't have to witness the children I'll never have and the goals they'll get for Spurs and can remain blithely fixated on the illusion of self.
The reference of the successfully departed is more painful still when the present is so fractious; the Carlos Tevez saga will not die, the investigation into West Ham's employment of the Argentinian continues. The East End hasn't seen such a long-term commitment to eking out justice since the quest to snare Jack the Ripper. While we're raking over the past and persecuting the Hammers, perhaps Lord Griffiths' arbitration committee should reopen the case of that bracelet Bobby Moore was accused of nicking in Colombia before the 1970 World Cup – yes, he was exonerated but perhaps there's more to this. Who knows, perhaps since that day West Ham have been buoyed by a sense of indefatigability and have accrued undeserved points as a result.
Because that is what ultimately has to be ascertained – how many points can one player's contribution be said to have garnered? I would concur that towards the end of the 2006-07 season Tevez's play did aid the team but when he and Javier Mascherano arrived they were a right couple of bumpkin nitwits; they upset everything with their clumsy, South American, unrefined ways. They lambada'd into Upton Park knocking over vases and treading on toes like a pair of swarthy Frank Spencers.
The unrest they caused among the squad and the disharmony provoked between Alan Pardew and the board must've cost points – in fact, I'd like to calculate that it cost six points, a cup run and a jam sandwich and I want them back. Where's my tribunal? I want Lord Griffiths to work out what would've happened if I hadn't taken drugs as a kid, then compensate or penalise me accordingly.
There's justice, then there's the TV show Quantum Leap in which Scott Bakula "quantum leapt" into the past to poke his nose into people's affairs, usually with the best intentions; well I'd like to tell Scott Bakula and Lord Griffiths to fuck right off – not least for his use of the phrase "oral cuddle" when describing alleged behind-the-scenes assurances offered by West Ham's board to Tevez's handlers when the initial inquiry was in progress back in 1892.
If the West Ham CEO, Scott Duxbury, is giving oral cuddles to Tevez's "agent", Kia Joorabchian, then financial irregularities are no longer my primary concern. Sexuality and linguistics must be given precedence.
I'd like to give the possibly soon-to-be-bankrupt chairman, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, a vocal rimming to assuage his economic adversity, then perhaps a quick verbal nosh job to allay his anxiety at the collapse of Landsbanki, which is one of those foreign words that makes you question whether or not foreigners really have a language or are just taking the piss. "An Icelandic bank? In which West Ham's Icelandic board were heavily invested? And what is it called, pray tell?" Landsbanki? Childish. "And your telephone communications company, what's that called? Phonio-plop-plop?"
Some bloke told me that the Icelandic consortium behind West Ham also invested in the frozen food chain Iceland; as if that wasn't influenced by the fact it's got the same name as their country. What a barmy way to make decisions. What else did they invest in? Ice poles? Vanilla Ice? I suppose we should be grateful that they didn't change the name of West Ham to "Frosty-Brrrr-Gets-Dark-Early United FC". The past cannot be retrieved or rewritten. Defoe, like Harry Redknapp, belongs to Spurs and West Ham's points belong to West Ham just as surely as relegation belonged to Sheffield United when they went down instead of us, and none of this can be undone but ought to be accepted with the agonised resolve of an exhausted, limping fox.
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