Hammers Injury Curse Strikes Twice Within Two Days

Carlos Sanchez, signed from Fiorentina on transfer deadline day, has sustained what is rumoured to be a cruciate injury which will keep the 32 year old out of action for possibly the remainder of the season, this news quickly following that of new starlet Xande Silva sustaining a class 2 hamstring injury has put a bit of a dampener on the positive energy generated by recent results. The 'Malheureusement' surrounding the team is that despite not being a popular signing Sanchez was able to 'do a job' and his services will be missed, as will those of Silva who no one had heard of prior to him announcing his arrival with an U-23 hat trick against those lovely people in Milton Keynes and Wembley.

Injuries are part and parcel of the modern game, but West Ham do seem to get more than a fair share of injuries, usually long term, or as the acronym about servicing Lotus cars went: lots of time, usually serious! Sanchez joins the injury legend that is Andy Carroll as well as Winston Reid and Manuel Lanzini on the lengthy long term injury list, not forgetting Jack Wilshere who might pip all the others at the post if his historical habit of getting one niggle after another repeats itself.

Hopefully Silva, having not been at the club for long, will recover in the appropriate time frame for his injury having not been 'attacked' by the dark forces of Hammers' supposedley Gypsy induced curse. The curse itself is a matter of conjecture, the basis of the story is that during planned extension works to the old Boleyn Ground a compulsory purchase order was granted for a bit of waste ground that had been used by 'travellers' as a very cheap used car lot comprising of 'scrappers' that had been abandoned at the roadside, back in the day you could apply for a replacement log book for any vehicle and were not required to know the address of the original owner.

It was a very lucrative sideline as a business, there was also a 'firm' operating from the site which specialised in dodgy 'tarmac jobs' inflicted on house owners with more money than sense or those who had been subject to a bit of 'low level' intimidation after answering a knock on their door for a quote they hadn't requested. The various business misdemeanours including non- payment of what was then called the Rates, were why the purchase order was granted by the courts, the action was not contested due to the huge amount of fines owed on the premises and for some reason West Ham became the villains of the piece whereas it should have been the council.

Call it superstition, bad luck or whatever, but there are many of those who thought 'the curse' would stop once the club moved from the Boleyn, who will now be thinking it as returned with gusto! - Ed