Hammers doing Turkey trot? Give it a swerve

Burak Yilmaz

The number of links between West Ham and Turkey and Turkish players has been a major feature of life for Irons supporters over the past few months.

Remember Burak Yilmaz, the 30 year old former Galatasaray stiker who, if we had believed all that came out of the country’s media, was nailed on to wear the claret and blue for a fee of around £15m.

ClaretadHugh wrote at the time that the story was tripe but hey, people believe what they wanna believe and we certainy don’t claim to have a permanent handle on what rumours the fans should accept, although we do have a Rumour Rater which we hope helps!

What we did know however was that nothing coming out of West Ham suggested a deal would ever be done for a player who had hit 30 and had never played in the Premier League.

Gokhan Tore – if we believed all the hype – was on his way to the Irons at anything in advance of £12m upwards until we were told from an insider that the only deal under discussion was a season’s loan. It’s still some way away.

Finally today came the bizarre suggestion that Robin van Persie could be a new arrival from Fenerbahce after scoring 14 goals last season but for the first time a very top insider at the Irons told ClaretandHugh the truth.

That is that the Turkish Super Ligue is poor and the leading goascorers are in the main elderly players whose best years are behind them – as demonstrated by Samuel Eto’o whose official age is given at 35. Says it all really!

ClaretandHugh Facebook Group member Mark Wiseman wrote today when the RVP story broke: “The Turkish league is very poor, I live in Turkey and see enough of it. As for Van Persie, his legs have completely gone. Fenerbahce fans want rid of him, he was terrible last season.”

Of course with the manager Slaven Bilic having been manager at Besiktas it’s very easy to link him to various Turkish based players. Easy but incorrect and misleading.

It also does the boss a disservice and leaves the impression he has limited knowledge of players outside of Turkey, which we know is a nonsense.

So my tip as we go into the transfer window is to give stories of the club doing the Turkey trot for players a big swerve – we are a bit bigger than that these days.