‘Vinny’ urges ‘Pelle’ to sign this ‘Marquee’ bloke

CandH blogger Allen Cumming’s recons it’s great that we’ve got the World Cup going on to keep us football fans interested through the summer. But whatever might or might not go on in Russia, all true Irons know that what happens in August, when our season starts again, with our new manager and reshaped team, is what REALLY matters. My neighbour Vinny is “West Ham’s No1 Fan”. At least that’s what it says on his coffee mug. Mind you, he’s got another one that says “Keep Calm and Sack The Board”. Anyway, I digress. Before Vinny went off on holiday he wrote a letter to Mr Pellegrini. No mean feat for Vinny. The most he’s ever written before is a shopping list for Tescos. He specifically wanted me to share his letter with you.

Dear Manuel

Me and my mates will be off on our summer holidays soon. We’re going to Benidorm this year. Actually, we go to Benidorm every year. But we like it especially the English food. I know you’ll be back from your holiday soon and ready to start working on taking my beloved West Ham to the next level. Neat.  Big job I know, so I thought I’d give you a few tips before I went away.

Good to see our tight-fisted board have given a decent bloke like you the manager’s job in the first place. But don’t forget you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me and my mates. The two Dave’s would have brought in some other bloke on the cheap if we hadn’t piped up. Don’t know if you heard about it but we kicked off a bit at the Burnley game. Okay, we lost that one 3-0, but we were 1-0 down and we reckoned we were gonna lose anyway.

So we had a little protest to show our board that they can’t mess around with us. We were going to have a massive march, too. But that all went Pete Tong. We did have a few little marches around the stadium with our banner though. The board soon got the message we meant business. So they binned their cheapskate ideas and went out and got you. Nice one, eh?

I know you’ve been around a fair while and know a fair bit about football and you’ve brought in your mate Husillos to sort out some decent talent. Good old ‘super Mario’. Get it? He knows a fair bit about players, too.

But I reckon we know a bit more than you two about the Irons, and what we need to get us going. You need to splash the cash mate. Big time. Get some proper names and faces in. I can see you’ve made a half decent start. But we want more.

Don’t know who this ‘marquee’ geezer is everyone is on about. Sounds a bit French to me. He hasn’t got an Instagram account and I can’t see him on Facebook. But they’re all talking on Twitter about making this marquee signing, so he must be okay.

Sign him up I say – and quick before someone else grabs him. There’s a few other names I’ve seen on Youtube – dribbling, crossing, tackling and all that. You need to have a look mate. Don’t worry about the expense. The Dave’s have got loads of cash, and I reckon that Karren Brady bird could chip in a bit, too.

Once the team’s sorted you can work on our style of play coz that’s been bang average lately. We don’t want any of that ball up in the air stuff we had under big Sam. We don’t want any of that defensive rubbish we had under Moysie either. We are West Ham. We just wanna attack.

Those other clubs all used to hate it when we went for it down at the old Boleyn (RIP) back in the good old days. Fair quaked in their boots they did. I remember it well. Well I would have done if I’d been there. But there’s an old fat bloke down the pub who’s always on about it so I know what it was like. Goals, goals, goals is what we want to see.

When you’ve sorted everything else mate, and only if you’ve got time of course, can you have a word about getting those beer shelves put up.

Those pints can get well heavy when you’re stood there holding them all the time and that WiFi they promised us really winds me up. It’s not happened. When I’m trying to get on Facebook and sort out my Saturday nights and my phone screen keeps coming up ‘try again’ it’s well annoying.

I think that’s probably about it then Mr P. Enough to be getting on w

 

About Hugh5outhon1895

Hugh Southon is a lifelong Iron and the founding editor of ClaretandHugh. He is a national newspaper journalist of many years experience and was Bobby Moore's 'ghost' writer during the great man's lifetime. He describes ClaretandHugh as "the Hammers daily newspaper!" Follow on Twitter @hughsouthon