17 Comments

Let’s wave the reject days goodbye PLEASE!

greavesRemember the days when we bought the likes of Arsenal’s John Radford, Ian Wright, Teddy Sheringham and Jimmy Greaves and others who ended their days with us having given the best years of their careers to other London clubs.

Then there was Mitchell Thomas, Ilie Dumitrescu – bothe from the Spurs who saw us coming of course.

They were rejects whom the Irons were happy to take on board given that we were what we were the fourth biggest club in London.

Radford scored 149 goals in 481 games for Arsenal managed a big fat zero for the Irons Β in 28.

Ian Wright did better – nine in 28 during 98/99 and Sheringham managed 28 in 76 games which wasn’t bad but for all that they all had the same thing in common – their best days were behind them and we were taking rejects who had served London clubs and in Sheri’s case Man United. They were over the hill when they came here.

JohnRadford_zps6d9f2347Greavesy was a prime example when arriving from Spurs, didn’t do bad and then disappeared to the likes of Brentwood, Chelmsford, Barnet and Woodford.

Us buying ageing players generally has been a recurring theme in our history and it’s now something we are changing and why the club needs every penny it can generate from the new stadium.

Enough has been said about the standing issue but something mind-boggling is going on here if we let it.

We will- as David Gold said on this site exclusively yesterday – become the biggest club in London in terms of capacity and as the money flows the days of buying rejects and ageing players will be over forever.

Do we want to be the biggest club in London? Do we want to end Β the days of OTT rivals bought cheaply from rivals who were done with em, do we want the best our new home can give us?

I do.

COYI

 

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

17 comments on “Let’s wave the reject days goodbye PLEASE!

  1. Well said Hugh, couldn’t agree more!

  2. Great post Hugh, the only trouble is you are appealing to the selfish minority and we know from life’s experience where that gets us. I watch games from near the back in the BML where, as you know, everyone stands. There are a lot of people around me who would sit but can’t because there are a minority who want to stand come what may. Good luck to anyone who can get a peaceful conclusion to this problem.

  3. The Celtic plan seems a success but it’s early days and a foreign land.

  4. We weren’t borrowing money from the mickey mouse club then Hugh ? Or being given 100 mill by the TV mob πŸ˜‰ we do not need them now ! Not only that the owners didn’t need to spend fortunes on players to succeed cos they had mugs like us turning up every week no matter what while they pocketed the dosh πŸ™‚ πŸ˜‰

  5. Mainly agree with you, Hugh, but I have to say, Teddy Sherringham was effing brilliant; put his incredible football brain to work. I’m so proud he played for us.

  6. One of the best players I loved seeing at West Ham was Liam Brady – Arsenal reject and definitely past his best when he got to,us.

  7. Could not agree more. But, you didn’t mention Titi Camara & Davor Suker. Surely two of the very worst !

  8. Great post Hugh, in terms of capacity we would be the second largest in the PL behind only Man U, we’d are already third largest but that would change next year, Sean wrote a good post on that other site, one of the few I have read on it recently, in theory with safe standing rails they could fit an extra 0.8 people per one seated, he suggested the BML I think in which case you could increase the capacity from 66000 to 70800 based on 6000 seats being converted. It remains to be seen whether we can keep those supporters if the season ticket prices were to go up, if we continue to be successful though and play a brand of football that is good to watch I am sure we could πŸ™‚

  9. Ok to buy rejects from Barcelona and Real Madrid though I assume?

  10. Teddy sherringham was great for us both as a player and as a so called attacking coach he certainly got Valencia and sakho firing. for half a season anyway until they all got wind that something was afoot behind the scenes.

  11. So having 66,000 is automatically going to make us a global power that never buys so called has beens? I’d say that the owners would need to double there transfer budget, sign more lucrative shirt and sponsorship deals and find a way of shifting millions of shirts as well, but if they don’t or can’t we can always say to those plastic fans in West London” You might have won the league, the CL but our stadium is bigger than yours” πŸ™‚

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