There was the talk about Zola, about Clarke and also our sound financial footing. There was also the talk of not selling to Spurs…which I loved reading about. It was also mentioned that Duxburry reads the online West Ham media (at least he certainly used to, but stopped because of a few mindless idiots – he now has someone keep tabs on what the sites are saying).

Bearing that in mind, there’s just a quick point I wouls like bring up. Why on earth are we doing business with Neill Warnock (Sears) and Sheffield United (Reid). It is beyond me why we would help them out. To think that there were a whole host of clubs after Sears, yet we let him join up with Warnock – who made it explicitly clear how much he wanted to sue us after he got Sheffiled United relegated. But even more so to think that we have let Kyel Reid go to Sheffield United themselves – wasn’t their payout enough compensation or do we insist on continuing to line their pockets?

OK, Reid never made it but he was a product of our famous academy and the poor chap now has to go there to be soiled on by Blackwell and McBaby.

I loved what I read in all of the interviews but these two deal should never have taken place.

Not selling to Warnock and Sheffield United should be named up there with not selling to Spurs.

Sam

5 recent posts you may have missed

Report This Post

So there is a lot of transfer talk circulating right now – I suppose it’s a given seeing as we’re currently in the transfer window. You could be forgiving for thinking that the term “transfer window” actually translated in red-top journalistic terms, means “make up what you want and print it”.

However, some of the rumours that are looking to come to pass are that Etherington, Louis Boa Morte, Lee Bowyer and Callum Davenport are all heading out of Upton Park. Etherington appears to be on his way to Stoke for a fee around the £3m mark Edit: has gone to Stoke for an undisclosed fee, LBM probably to Hull for about £2m, Bowyer to Birmingham and finally Davenport to Bolton for approx £3m.

I would definitely consider all these as peripheral players and all are perfectly expendable – and it is encouraging to see as it could well be considered a sign that the club are infact willing to sell in order to keep hold of the bigger names. Just what we all wanted really!

Looking at the whole transfer window situtation (this one and the summer one that we were all disappointed with), could it prove to be that actually the youngsters that Nani pulled in was actually a very shrewd bit of business? Yes, we were all a touch narked that big name players didn’t come in, and that we sold some players that we didn’t want to see go, but it all fairness we havn’t really missed the like of Anton and McCartney. The younger players that he did sign do admittedly still need to prove themselves, but if they do (and I believe under the guidance of Tony Carr they will) then we will all look back and consider the summer window to be particularly profitable. I hope.

As for my mention of Tevez in the title. It is pretty well known at the minute that for CT, things at United are not really how everyone expected them to be. It would seem that he is struggling to nail down a place in a strikeforce that includes Rooney, Berbatov and Ronaldo and it is also becomming apparent that perhaps United are not willing to part the asking price of £32m for someone who could essentially turn out to be a bit-part player.

So, I know there was a light sprinkling of uneccessary controversy surrounding the original deal that brought Carlos to Upton Park, but seeing as Tevez is only on loan at United could it be that we could also loan him back if noone is willing to pay MSI’s asking price?

Just a thought.

Edit: Turns out we are now under investigation…again. I wrote this minutes before that news came out.

Live West Ham v Newcastle Stream:

I will be showing the live feed of West Ham v Newcastle this Saturday…please follow the link below, bookmark it, and tune in on Saturday – COYI!

Newcastle v West Ham: Free Stream

—————————

If you have enjoyed my posts over here at The West Ham Process, stick your email in the box below to get regular updates direct in your inbox…

5 recent posts you may have missed

Report This Post

In fact, it wasn’t injury or precaution that forced him off in the behind-closed doors friendly, but instead that he has flu and was feeling a bit rough.

Have a look at the OnYaHead.com Top 10 Gory Injuries Of All Time list anyway – but not if your just sitting down to lunch.

As for Eggert Magnusson, he couldn’t have picked a better time to kick a mate when he is down. Something between him and BG must have gone seriously wrong for him to want to be sueing his old friend, particularly in the financial plight he finds himself in.

According to KUMB.com he is “chasing Gudmundsson for fees in the region of £1million, fees that were promised to him upon his dismissal a year ago. Magnusson claims to have received just £100,000 so far, when he was promised £200,000 plus €1million”

At least Sheffield United are becomming increasingly likely to receive closer to what they deserve in light of the Tevez saga. The fee we are now likely going to have to pay them is a far cry from the £50m they thought they should have got. The figures being banded around now are closer to the £10/15m, which is incedently closer to the figure most people think they deserve…

Nothing.

COYI!

Sam

5 recent posts you may have missed

Report This Post

Now correct me if i’m wrong but £25 million worth of new players from January 1st until the end of the season should buy them back into ‘the land of milk and honey’ But at what other clubs expense?!

West ham could be forced to pay for the effect that one player had in just the 3 remaining games of a season. Of course this WAS the only reason Sheffield Utd were relegated. The £25 million is also the only reason Sheffield Utd can get promoted and at the same time, unfairly doing another Club out of the wealth and trappings of Premier League football. Why should what happened 2 seasons ago effect your clubs chances of promotion now?

Sadly McCabe and his merry followers, desperately grasping thir swords of justice, have all but assured that real end of season football results are decided in  the Courts by players in team colours of black and grey and wearing wigs!

But so be it – let the game commence under McCabes new rules of Association Football. Come the end of season Sheffield Utd.. if they suceed in buying promotion, would have to agree that sueing them is the new and only fair thing to do.

After all, it wouldn’t be football if you didn’t !!!

from twobob

Other News

- Liverpool are considered unreasonably huge favourites in tonights game at Anfield. Now I’m not saying that we will definitely go there and get a results, but personally I think that having us at nearly 10/1 (betNOW.co.uk – use the code ‘onyahead’ for a free of charge bet by the way) is a little extreme. I would like to say that we will get something from the game, but I think it all depends on how ‘up for it’ Bellamy is.

- We have drawn Championship club Barnsely in the third round of the FA Cup at home. Good draw by all accounts although they will be remebered for a long while for their heroics recently against Liverpool and Chelsea. Could be a concern…

I hope you have enjoyed my articles over here at The West Ham Process. I do my best to regularly update you with news, views and opinion from Hammers fans all over the globe. If you would like to get our news with slighly more ease, then stick you email address in the box below, and you’ll get it in your inbox. Thanks for your support, Sam

5 recent posts you may have missed

Report This Post

Either that or we are improving the amount of money we can ask for him in the transfer window….depending on your opinion on Scott Duxbury our financial situation will determine on the outcome of that debate.

Upon signing the contract, Freddy had this to say:

I am obviously delighted to have signed for another five years with West Ham,

I am looking forward to concentrating on football now and getting ready for the next game that is coming up.

It’s nice to know the club wants you here, for that long as well. I am enjoying my football and all that I have been doing and hopefully I can now show there is more to come

Obviously I am learning every day, I am 19 tomorrow and just trying to get better all the time and see how far I can go

That, Carlton Cole, is how you respond to signing a new contract with West Ham. Sears has shown maturity beyond his years with this comment, and I am delighted to hear that he has signed. If you haven’t done already, have a read through freddyfreddy’s post a couple of days ago entitled More Bad News For West Ham Fans….

He is demonstrating a desire to be playing football, to improve and to go places with West Ham and that is exactly we need.

Have a read of this if you want something that will get your backs up

COYI!!

If you enjoy reading what The West Ham Process has to say, then make sure to stick your email address in the box below to get regular updates from Sam and the other writers…COYI!

5 recent posts you may have missed

Report This Post

The guy is world-class, there is no doubt about that  and I won’t be forgetting his free-kick against the Spuds for a very long-time…particularly his celebration! Stuff what legends are made of! I have no doubt there will be rapturous applause for Tevez if he plays tonight, I just hope he doesn’t decide to go and score himself a wonder-goal like last season!

(For the record I personally don’t think he was the only reason we stayed up. It’s just some money-grabbing chairman up north seems to think he has proved it. Banter)

Team News

Man United: Ferguson has the option tonight of recalling ex West Ham midfielder Micheal Carrick back into the side after a spell out with injury.

Man Utd (from): Van der Sar, Kuszczak, Foster, Brown, Neville, Rafael, Ferdinand, Vidic, Evans, Evra, O’Shea, Carrick, Ronaldo, Park, Fletcher, Anderson, Giggs, Nani, Rooney, Berbatov, Tevez.

West Ham: Carlton Cole will be missing tonight, althuogh not necessarily missed. He is suspended after his late red-card against Arsenal on Sunday. Mark Noble also remains out with a calf injury. Lucas Neill also misses the game with a virus but we are able to recall Valon Behrami back into the fray. Diego Tristan will not be playing tonight as Zola still doesn’t think he is fit enough.

West Ham (from): Green, Faubert, Neill, Upson, Ilunga, Behrami, Parker, Di Michele, Bellamy, Etherington, Sears, Lastuvka, Lopez, Boa Morte, Mullins, Davenport, Bowyer, Collins.

Noises From Zola

We just have to accept that sometimes there are bad moments and things don’t go your way. When that happens you have to be strong and believe it is the right way to make it work. ‘If you analyse the last three matches, the defensive part of our game was not that bad

We have conceded goals but in general I am happy with the way the defence is working. We are going to be fine, I am one hundred per cent convinced about this. We have a few problems at the moment but we will sort them out… Daily Mail

Personally I completely agree with him, we have been playing decent football and defensively we have been sound. Quick mention for James Collins on that note, he was immense against Arsenal mid-week and when Neill is fit, Zola is going to have some selection problems defensively (should Neill replace Faubert?)

His optimisim and enthusiasm continues to impress me…if we can find our shooting boots, I think we are in with a chance tonight. But I am ever an optimist.

Prediction

Well, as I said above, I am ever an optimist, so I am going for a 1-0 Win. Realistically however(!) I think that Man U will probably be just too strong for us over the 90mins and we will go down 2-1. Which would mean 4 defeats on the trot…time to panic? I don’t think so…

Sam

5 recent posts you may have missed

Report This Post

Donate To The Bobby Moore Fund, with the West Ham Blogs

I felt it important that we as West Ham fans, in the face of everything that is happening to us and to football, showed the rest of the footballing world a sign of solidarity and selflessness. And in the meantime showed the West Ham board what Bobby Moore means to us.

The West Ham blogs on NewsNow (myself, Joe J of Cmonyuirons.com, Joppe of Bubble-View, RapidHammer, Ryan of West Ham Daily News and Simon from Westhamblog.co.uk) have got together in order to encourage a splurge of donations to the Bobby Moore Fund. We felt it so important that in the light of everything, we got together on this and did something life-changing. Expect some articles about this from them in the very near future! (if you would like to promote this too using your blog, drop me an email westhamprocess[at]onyahead[dot]com)

Donate to the Bobby Moore Fund by clicking here

We may never get the BMF logo on the shirts and it would appear that no amount of making our own versions and sticking them on will change that. But a simple donation to the BMF from everyone of our readers will literally put it in writing to the club what he means to us and to football…and change lives on the way.

Donate to the Bobby Moore Fund by clicking here.

I have set the bar high with a target of £5,000, but I reckon we can do it. (Especially because a little known club at the foot of the table are able to raise substantial money just to keep websites going!!)

Come on you IRONS!!

Here’s Joe J’s article: West Ham United Have The Richest Fans

Sam

if you use facebook, you can also invite people on there using this link: Bobby Moore Fund  Facebook Group

5 recent posts you may have missed

Report This Post

In the light of a couple of horredus penalty decisions last week (one against Bolton and one against Man City), I thought it would be interesting to track every ‘dodgy’ or controversial refereeing decision across the entire season. Every penalty and every dubious offside, and see what would happen to the league standings had the officials made the correct decision at the time.

I will update it regualrly and at the end of the year post the standings as they should be.

This way, any relegated clubs can feel comfortable sueing the respective teams for their demise. It’s an opportunity for teams for ignore responsibility for their own fate and blame other people.

It gives them an excuse not to perform well in, say, their last 11 games. Or infact, even win the last game of the season to keep themselves up.

This is the future of football, how exciting.

Here also, is an interesting article giving the hard evidence that Tevez actually had a negative effect on our team performance: West Ham Weaker With Tevez. I did in fact argue this very point in an article titled What If Sheffield United Were Just A Better Team?

Thanks for reading, and thanks for everyone’s support in my post about us sueing Spurs!

COYI!

Sam

5 recent posts you may have missed

Report This Post

It’s most definitely been talking to me these past few days and it has been saying the following, “Some people have too much, and some can’t get enough”

We have heard in the news recently that Cole had been arrested for drink-driving in his £50k car? With all due respect to Mr. Cole, who has tried so desperately to win over the fans, are you really not all with it? You know, £20k a week would hire you a decent chauffeur to drive you around Westminster at 4:30 in the morning. But then a £10 cab fare and a donation of your absurd money to the Bobby Moore fund would change a lot more people’s lives, and put a whole lot less in danger.

Carlton Cole, I don’t care if you are sorry because the likelihood is that you are only sorry because you are facing two whole weeks out of your life whereby you will have to be scrimping and saving. Hard life.

To do what he did is a pure unadulterated act of stupidity, yet he earns more than all of our highly talented Olympians who represent their country with pride and with honour. People must have been pulling my leg when he was being tipped for England a couple of weeks ago, but it’s OK now, he has just given me another reason why he does not deserve it.

I am going to phrase this as politely as possible, I never really warmed to Cole when he joined us. For a player to join West Ham and say that he sees it as a great stepping stone onto bigger clubs is officially one of the worst things you can ever mutter. Even if it’s quietly, under your breath. He has clearly recently realised that he actually isn’t good enough for ‘bigger’ clubs and hence publicly committed his future to us. Just what we need, and over paid, foolish player. Great.

That leads quite nicely onto what I can only describe as the immoral greed of some of the Sheffiled United players. How in their right minds do they honestly believe that they deserve to claim for loss of wages? Maybe I am over exaggerating, but it physically makes me sick.

Have they seen the state of the world lately? There are poverty stricken areas even our own country, yet they feel that in their heart of hearts, that tens of thousands of pounds a week is not good enough.

As a quick rain check for the players who are considering sueing, maybe it has slipped your attention that actually the very reason of you not actually being good enough to beat Wigan on the last day of the season is why you got relegated. You are not good enough at what you do, yet you are demanding other people pay for your mistakes.

The Daily Mail published pages 37-47 of the arbitration report yesterday, and it said in there that Sheffield United were equally responsible for their own relegation. That is what the court ruled. So for any Blunts fans out there who honestly believe, and I quote, that you “should be getting closer to £60m compensation” (for whatever reason I don’t know), unfortunately for you the reality is that it more likely the fee (if any within the next 2 or 3 years) will actually be £15m. Making each club half responsible for your relegation.

But then if you live by that rule, every club in the Premier League should owe you £1.5 because surely everyone is responsible for your relegation. But then you could argue that actually we owe you a little less because you actually beat us. (see how stupid it sounds when you look at it like that?)

No matter what way you look at the court ruling or the individual players sueing, it is just arrogant, selfish, immoral and positively sickening greed that is driving these people. It’s not even justice any more.Your problem is no longer with West Ham United, it is with the Premier League.

My prediction is that so long as McCabe and his cronies drag out this affair, Sheffield United as a ‘footballing’ team will never fulfill what they could be capable of.

Sam

5 recent posts you may have missed

Report This Post

On the totality of the evidence, we have no doubt that West Ham would have secured at least three fewer points over the 2006/07 season if Carlos Tevez had not been playing for the club.

Indeed, we think it more likely than not on the evidence that we heard, that even over the final two games of the season, West Ham would have achieved at least three points less overall without Mr Tevez. He played outstandingly well in the two wins that West Ham secured in those last two games

The words that I unfortunately expected based on our lack of activity in the transfer window, although I do not think they should be accepted.

This statement is quite literally a group of ‘what ifs’, so on that basis here is my personal ‘What If’ journey…

What if Tevez  had not been playing? Would we have still kept a clean sheet at Old Trafford on the last day of the season?

Yes.

Would Sheff Utd still have lost their last game?

Yes.

Would we have still beat Arsenal at the Emirates?

Of course, Bobby Z scored a blinder, and Green played out of his skin.

Would we have still lost to Sheff Utd and Charlton and fellow strugglers?

Yes, because as a team we played awful for both of those games.

What if we never signed Tevez in the first place?

Well for sure the team and structure of the club would not have been so disrupted. There would have been more unity and maybe Pardew would never have lost his job. The same Alan Pardew who led us to the Premiership, a top half finish and the FA Cup, all without Tevez…and playing some of the best football I have seen West Ham play.

We may not have been in a relegation scrap in the first place. A relegation scrap saved for boring, ugly and scruffy footballing teams…just like Sheffield United and Wigan. Teams who rely on everything other than winning their own games to survive.

I usually try to be impartial when I write on here, but I’m afraid this is the last straw.

Maybe we could have watched the Blunts fight a relegation battle that THEY got THEMSELVES into from a distance knowing that we were safe because we were a settled team playing good football.

What if we didn’t have Terrence Brown as a chairman?

He would not have snatched any incentives waved infront of his money grabbing boney fingers. That means that Kia would never have been on the scene and neither Tevez. It may mean that Magnusson and Co would have taken over our club with a peace of mind regarding the players who were at the club.

They could have comfortably funded Pardew and his well grounded team knowing that their investment was more secure.

But, Brown was chairman, so he did get involved with Kia. We did sign Tevez, it did cost Pardew his job. It did mean we appointed Curbishley. Who spent awfully the money he was given leading the board to have to sell players off and putting us in severe financial turmoil. Right back where we started.

At this point, from what I can work out, we havn’t actually gained anything from Tevez playing at the club.

There is plenty more I can go on with. So I will

Once again, what if Terrence Brown was never chairman?

We would have never signed Glenn ‘The Rodent’ Roeder. We would never have got relegated.

We would never have sold Joe Cole, Frank Lampard, Rio Ferdinand, Jermain Defore, Michael Carrick, Glenn Johnson. We would by all accounts therefore be one of the best teams in the country, playing high quality football.

Sheff United fans, ever had class like that come from your club? No.

We would be playing Champions League football, and we would once again be a feared and respected club across the continent.

But here, for everyone, is just a very quick reality check.

You cannot base a decision that is going to cost a club £30m on possiblity alone. Because as far as I am concered if certain things had never happened in our past, our club would be far better off than it is now and I have just proved that. So Sheffield United, how about you concentrated on playing football last instead of concerning yourselves with other clubs. You could certainly do with maybe changing a few things yourself.

I mean your style of play is boring and it deserves to be in the Championship for one.

To the panel who have made this decision, I would like you to consider maybe charging Terrence Brown personally, rather than us. The evidence I have just provided does in fact suggest that the whole reason West Ham are where we are today is because of him.

I’m not sure I like where we are at the minute to be honest and I would quite like to change that. So yeh, I think we should sue him. Yeh. That is actually a good idea.

Perhaps we could sue him for the £56m we lost on Joe Cole and company because from what I can work out, they should technically still be playing for us.

Yeah, and infact while we are at it, I think Leeds deserve something. That’s right. You see because if Terrence Brown wasn’t in charge of West Ham then we would never had sold Rio to them. And after all they couldn’t really afford him in the first place.

So, something else I would like to add, is that maybe Leeds deserve to be promoted back to the Premier League. All the players who are rightfully West Ham’s should be returned and I feel that we should calculate ‘what could have been’ and move us up the league accordingly.

I hope you have got to the end ofthis article thinking, “That’s pretty stupid because none of those things did happen, so you can’t say ‘what if they did’”.

Neither can anybody every prove that having Tevez in our team gained us any points. If anything it caused us more trouble than good, how about that perspective?

You may as well just say that if Tevez never played for us then we wouldn’t have just lost 6-0 to Arsenal.

It is a stupid and dangerous court ruling, that may set an unprecedented wave of clubs that are not good enough for the Premier League, saying they don’t deserve to be relegated.

Outrageous

Sam

5 recent posts you may have missed

Report This Post