Rice: 2000 fans is great but we need to be better

Declan Rice is a busy boy right now what with appearances on  TV shows, interviews with Sky Sports,  the club website and various newspapers… quite apart from producing top performances on the pitch.

Mind you that wasn’t fully the case against Villa and the skipper has become the first to make it clear the boys will need to be a lot netter when Manchester United come visiting on Saturday.

Whether 2,000 Irons fans inside the ground – seated in the Billy Bonds stand – will make a big difference remains to be seen but surely a few fans are better than no fans at all.

And it’s good to see some degree of what life may be again within a couple of months on view at the stadium this weekend.

Certainly, Declan is well chuffed that at last there will be spectators inside the stadium but knows we will need to step up if it’s to become four wins on the bounce.

Speaking to Sky Sports he said: “I think it’s a been a really long time coming. “We’ve wanted the fans back for so long now, especially in a stadium like this, where we have had some special nights.

We wish it was a full stadium, obviously with us playing against Manchester United, but that’s obviously not meant to be, so 2,000 is great.

“We know it’s going to be a massive game. We know we’ve had some great results against them here in recent times, but we know we need to go out there and perform much better than we did on Monday night if we want to get another result.”

 

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