According to Sky Sports and the Sunday Mirror newspaper, West Ham are ready to ship off Anton Ferdinand to Aston Villa for £10m and get in Kevin Doyle from Reading for £7.5m.
As a hammers fan, I am totally outraged by this “potential” move. We should not be shafting out the youngsters the club want to build a future on, they should be trying their hardest to bring in young players who can take the club forward.
Let’s face it, last season was not an enjoyable season, it was satisfactory… mid table, Quarter finals of the League cup, beat Man Utd and Liverpool at home, then losing 4-0 THREE times on the spin… and how are we going to improve on that?… “we’re selling Anton”
Curbs, do us a favor and bring in some quality talent, someone with flair like Benayoun and Di Canio once gave us. Kevin Doyle is OK but west ham can bring in bigger and better, we have done it before and why should we stop.
If I wanted to go watch some oldies play for west ham, I would go to the London Masters.
So Alan we want talent, we want a future, with the players we got, it looks like our future is only going to be 2 years long, Neill, Ljungberg, Bellamy, Bowyer… that was the dream team… but of the 2000 season, its 2008/2009 now, we are 8 years behind every club. Whereas in 2006/2007 (yeah we only just escaped relegation, but those players are quality) we had the team of 2008, a year in front, maybe we thought too far forward. BUT, where are they now? playing UEFA Cup football for another team in claret and blue, helping Liverpool get to another semi-final and helping Man Utd win the Champions League…we saw 5 ex-hammers feature in the final… that should be us!!!!
Respect and keep up the west ham faith!
Adam
NB: This post is purely representative of one ardent fan’s opinion. If you would like to get your voice out there, please get in touch with Sam on whu9105 [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk, and I’ll see what it can muster.
Sam
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Wore these to every game this year. They may not be lucky, but they're comfy:
Adam – I feel your pain.
Hopefully it’s just yet more crap paper talk. Selling off Anton would be bad enough (I still think he could really mature and improve in the next few seasons – a lot CB’s do, Dunne at Man City is a good example) but Doyle? And for that much? No, no, no. What has he ever achieved to be worth that amount. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against the player but he’d only ever be a good squad player at WH and should cost no more than a couple of mil IMO.
What we really need is a quality playmaker in our team. Someone in the mould of Di Canio, Berkovic, Joe Cole or Benayoun…
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if you look at the talent that has come out of our club over the years its fantastic.
It’s it time especially with new owners that we start to show some ambition and spend some money on a team for the future instead of selling all our good young talent that is the only way WHUFC is ever going to grow and compete with the big 4
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£7.5m for Doyle is an outrage. DONT DO IT CURBS.
Also, when was the last time we gave a youngster the chance to flurish at the club rather than selling them at the first big bid? Anton is a good defender, sure he needs improving, but at 22 he’s got plenty of time.
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I agree, we should never sell our own ‘homegrown’ players least of all to other prem clubs. But what happens when the player wants to go?? What happens if the player has become a disruptive influence in the dressing room? what happens if a player doesn’t get on with the manager? (ok don’t answer that one in this instance but you know what I mean) what if the player just won’t stay?? I hate the thought of losing Ferdinand as much as I hated losing his brother but I have a feeling there is much more to this than meets the eye and he’ll be the next one out the door.
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We’re used to bigger and better signings? No, we’re not. West Ham have always been a team that have struggled, but the thing before was, we knew we were crap, but we accepted it. The fans made following West Ham something to be proud of. Too many poxy plastic fans packed into Upton Park nowdays, “we want success NOW! Waaaaah!” *Throws toys out of pram*
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Well done Mack, great contribution. NOT.
Let’s just accept that we’re crap, sit back and see what happens??? Doh! What a plank. I don’t know about plastic fans but fans with your attitude we could certainly do without! We’d never get anywhere.
IMO great fans, great football, a great youth academy and a great history make WH something to be proud of.
We all know that we’ve always struggled that’s why we’re talking about how to overcome exactly that and move forward. We can do that by keeping our best young players instead of selling them and also trying to attract some quality players that can do something a bit out of the ordinary. And YES we have attracted some good signings in the past. They’re not always BIG signings but usually a little bit of a gamble on a player with good potential that may either be unproven or has struggled at other clubs (e.g. Di Canio, Berkovic etc.). Harry was the expert at finding them and is still doing it a Pompey (e.g. Defoe, Johnson, Sol Campbell etc.).
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west ham are a selling club. whats wrong with that statement?? its always been the case. When a big team like villa come sniffing around theres not much we can do about it, apart from overpricing our youngsters, that is!!!
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‘tim’… villa a ‘big club’? yeah right pal. they sign players from us that we simply don’t want. ‘rejects’ is a more appropriate term, you could say.
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Where exactly did I suggest I wouldn’t like us to progress in my post PC?
I was only mentioning the attitude of some of our “fans” who seem to want a £20 million signing every day.
Building a club up slowly is the way to do it. Not splash a load of money on new signings, going bankrupt and doing a Leeds!
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Mack – ‘we knew we were crap, we accepted it’. Bollux. I never have, and no West Ham fans of my acquaintance (which are many hundreds) have either. I agree that managed, genuine progressive growth is the better way forward but poopooing ambition with such disdain is not acceptable. Plastic fans at UP? Where? And why would we have any anyway? Plastic fans are gold diggers, we don’t have any for them to dig up. Yet. And I suspect if you had your way, we never will.
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@Mack: Can’t say I have ever consistently thought (and accepted) that we are a crap team.
It is true that we expect big things from our club…but let’s be honest we have also often been promised big things too.
At the end of the day, we reserve the right to demand big things from our club (within reason)…being that we pay to see them week in week out.
Expecting big things though doesn’t always mean wanting £20m in C&B….it just means (in my opinion) preserving what West Ham are about, and then running with that.
For example, investing in younger talent. Making sure that youth players are continually brought through the ranks. Seeing a good crop of English players. In those areas we can expect big things…and I think that would bring a lot of happy faces to Upton Park.
And, if I may dare to say, success?!
Sam
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Where are the plastic fans you say? They’re the ones who have been sitting in silence all season, only making noise to boo our own players. There are too many of them at Upton Park nowdays.
Also, I know the exitement of football wasn’t great last season, but 10th is one of our highest Premier League finishes. I don’t see why people are so unhappy about it?
Yes, everybody wants success, me included. But don’t let that come in the way of what’s important about West Ham. Billionaire owners are 10 a penny nowdays, and ours is nowhere near the richest of them.
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I say take the £10 million he hasnt done it for us for a while now and look how well harewood has done at villa??
we have a lot of central defenders with tompkins looking class,upson should be ready, gabbidon back, collins
with bellamy,dyer bowyer all coming back and also freddie up and comin its looking good!!
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Ferdinand will go because Curbishly is a prat…..watch us deteriorate next season and remember I told you……(didn’t you just hate BB’s Alex?!!)
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Firstly – Tim… There is everthing wrong with the statement that ‘West Ham are a selling club’. It may be true but its certainly nothing we as fans should be willing to accept on an ongoing basis. Why should it be?
Sport is about entertainment and the constant strive for improvement. In the past ten years WH have probably developed more of todays top english players than most other clubs (barring the Beckham generation at Man U). You only have to look at the England squad or the teams at this year’s CL final for the evidence.
If we’d managed to hold on to even half of those players we’d have a far better team today and in turn, the next generation coming through would be less inclined to look elsewhere or be attracted by the ‘bigger’ clubs and BTW I’ll accept that there are plenty of clubs bigger than WH but I’d hardly use AV as a good example. They’re not that much bigger than us.
And now to Mack, making statements like “we knew we were crap, but we accepted it.” doesn’t inspire me with confidence in your level of ambition for our club. Equally, I (or anyone else on this blog) never mentioned expecting a £20mil signing every day, let alone one £20mil signing.
I do however believe that for the first time in a long time we have a good owner and management team, one that can enable us to compete financially in the PL. We may not have the richest billionaire but he can certainly provide more hope than Brown, The Warners or The Cearns ever could. We as fans should thrive on that hope. I certainly do.
Why shouldn’t we be ambitious? Why Shouldn’t we want to keep our best young players? Why shouldn’t we try and move on from being a selling club? because that’s what sport is all about, that and entertainment. Without it we might as well all give up supporting now and go shoppig with the wives.
No one expects us to win the league or get in the CL but for you say that we shouldn’t voice our criticism is way off the mark for me. Do you really feel that WH can attract plastic fans? What have we got to offer them?? We never win anything. And do you really believe that back in the good ol days players never got booed if they were crap? Steve Potts, George Parris and Iain Dowie got bad treatment from the crowds for years…
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Great point PC
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Hmmmm,
Plastic fans?????
Well, having been a regular at UP from the mid 70’s till 87 then emigrating all I can say is one thing. I came back to blighty in March and was lucky enough to see the Blackburn game (God love you Sears), however, I did note the following:
1. No support for the manager (West hams Claret & Blue Army)
2. No support for dean Ashton ( untill he scored)
3. No f**k**g loyalty! (What west Ham is about)
and finally, the thing that really really got my goat, NO ONES sings unless that w**k of a DJ starts bubbles!
FFS, what happened? and start about all seat stadia.
Enough from a tired old man who remembers all those great away days (Castilla included) where we supported OUR team. and didn’t need a total T**T tolead the singing.
COYI
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curbishley is about as exciting as roeder was!!!
what we need is a manager with passion for the club ie a certain italian who has stated he would love to manager us!!!! could you imagine 2-0 with 10 minutes to play the passion paulo would give, curbs done ok to keep us up and get mid table last season but we dont want to be charlton mark 2!!!!
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To hammer on the beach…
I definitely agree with you that the atmosphere has changed for the worse at UP in the past ten years or so but I’d say that’s now typical of most PL clubs. Don’t think that it means that fans are plastic though, just different to those in the ‘good ol days’ that we all hear so much about!
In terms of loyalty, I think that even the ‘great’ fans of the 70’s and 80’s would be quiet or moaning watching the cr*p we had to it through last season.
Curb’s tactics where woeful and in the main negative and to be honest, based on his effort levels Deano needed a kick up the a*se from the fans not blind loyalty and undying support. For a good run of games he looked like he simply could not be bothered. If my idol Paolo Di Canio had played with that attitude I wouldn’t have cheered him either!
And the fans do sing, think you’re being harsh basing your judgements on one game in past 20 odd years.
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[...] we managed to survive and even a top ten finish. It’s quite a different tune i am singing to last week, but notes of hope now, with Anton now pledging his future to the Hammers, ignoring teams like [...]
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