Forum | General Discussion

Manuel Pellegrini seems to have become the Asp that keeps on biting, not only did he and his accomplice fleece the club of all it's funds by buying expensive players unsuited to the Barclays Premier League and then not using them correctly, but also there is now visible evidence that those same players are now performing admirably elsewhere, albeit in Leagues that suit them perfectly, is it something to do with the old curse?

Rumour has it that a figurine was burned in a ceremony at the London Stadium not long after David Moyes rejoined the club on a permanent basis, 18 months after having been 'jilted' for the flare of Manuel Pellegrini. Apparently druids were rumoured to have been involved at the behest of board members, in a desperate attempt to finally lift the Gypsy's curse that had been hovering over the club ever since the previous owners had arranged to have an old family of travellers evicted from property near the Boleyn Ground with a compulsory purchase order that had only a derisory settlement. The 'Lot', that was used to store old scrap and recycling materials, had been earmarked as part of the proposed ground expansion plans to increase the capacity to 48,000.

Whichever way you look at it our tongue in cheek observation, which is based entirely on rumour and gossip and could be completely without foundation, it is incredulous how appalling Hammers transfer record has and the dreadful luck associated with it has been ever since then, that was until NOW. Well, not exactly now, more like since the Moyesiah returned, suddenly the lame began to physically and metaphorically walk out of the club to be replaced by their polar opposites!

For Yarmolenko and Wilshere, read Bowen and Soucek, but the glaring expenditure and huge financial loss on both Sebastien Haller and Felipe Anderson refuses to go away. You can only imagine the board grinding their teeth as the reality dawned that these players were Pellegrini play things ill suited to the rigours of what is the most frenzied league in World Football!

Or was it the curse as well? How can players arrive, play well initially and then become useless? It became a growing trend at the club made more noticeable because the players were expensive duds as opposed to the usual cheap duds fans were used to. Anderson and Haller have both excelled at clubs that are suited to them, we will know if their performances at West Ham were as the result of poor utilisation or bad juju soon enough if they continue in their current rich vein of form.

The positives are, that the club has now seemingly broken free of it's transfer curse, we will discover if there REALLY was any truth in the curse rumour if Roberto manages to win this year's Golden Glove award! - Ed

At the Org we are split into two 'friendly' factions as to the stewardship of West Ham United since Gold & Sullivan took over the club from those venerable 'families' who had previously 'looked after the club, the Cairns and latterly the Brown's dynasties. For the term 'looked after', you can legitimately substitute the words 'didn't invest and took all the cash', so just remember how easy it is to 'vision', with claret & blue spectacles, how perfec' everything was back at the jolly old' Boleyn Ground.

Believe it or not, a thousand years ago our founder was employed by Galaxy Publications who produced such high brow periodicals as Knave and Fiesta to sell 'legitimate' advertising to the booze and cigarette agencies in the hope that the smut on offer would be accepted for distribution in mainstream media outlets like WH Smith and Menzies if it had a lot of high profile 'respectable' advertising, and it worked!

Amusingly, the person that Nev replaced in the role of director of advertising was none other than....Mr David Sullivan, who quickly saw the opportunities on offer and set up his own organisation called PRIVATE to sell border line' content and products, to achieve this he used a venerable advertising man named Mike Milne through his company Adaction to place adverts that no one would have accepted if they had known they were coming from Sullivan, particularly Russell Gay at Galaxy who had originally employed Sullivan to take the company's advertising to a different level, perversely Sullivan just did that by taking a great chunk of the smut market away!

Sullivan is the chief protagonist now that David Gold is getting increasingly senile, and yes Sullivan has made plenty of errors, especially when he repeatedly tried to use his 'barrow boy' negotiating 'skills' for player acquisitions, with ultimately only a ONE in TEN success rate!

So the Org should be jumping on the GSB out bandwagon and should be firmly behind the Hammers United 'protest' planned to coincide with the home game against Barclays Premier League newcomers Brentford shouldn't we? Well the answer to that one is a big fat NO, YES they have been embarrassing and have generally been stingy with their expenditure, but it is what it is and any remonstrations, in our opinion, should be made when the season is over. Of course feelings run high and we understand fans' frustration, but there IS a time and a place to make representations, during what could be yet another landmark season, we see no reason to do anything that will have a negative effect on the club's current incredible upward trajectory.

Or do fans really want to shoot the club in it's own foot? If that's what you want, please demonstrate with gusto! However remember that despite earning vast amounts, some say obscene amounts of money, players are only human and anyone who thinks the players are unaffected by demonstrations before, during or even after a game are ill-informed or deluded or both.

Like we say, Gold Sullivan and even that other one are not the most popular people here at the Org, but to demonstrate when the club is enjoying it's best spell for at least 15 years is absolutely ludicrous, there IS a time and a place for everything, however this is neither the time, nor London Bowl the place, to offer constructive criticism only negative pessimism, there is plenty of time off season to protest, or do Hammers United want to wreck the club's tenuous progress merely to perpetuate their own existence and follow their own agenda?- LN

For years and years Hammers fans have gazed enviously at other clubs from the capital, as they progressed up the food chain, in Chelsea's case, or maintained their 'top club' status from the past inexorably. Arsenal were serial Champions League qualifiers and Tottingham did their best to actually win something without success.

Before fans smirk at the misfortune of Arsenal and to a lesser degree their neighbours, it should be remembered that the gulf in facilities available to those clubs as opposed to West Ham is the reason why it has taken so long for all three clubs to be on a level playing field.

The flip side of aiming to maintain a top six slot is the levels of expectancy and also the added commitments that success brings, initially Hammers faced a minimum of SIX Europa League group stage fixtures. Should the club successfully navigate the group stage, which it seems there is a good chance of, then the serious fixtures begin with the knockout stages which feature clubs that have dropped down from the Champions League.

After the Group stage there is a play off for those that finished 2nd in their group, then there is a round of 16, followed by the quarter-finals, semi-finals and eventually the final to be held at Sevilla's Estadio Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán in Spain.

Asked how his players will cope with the increased workload of playing the Europa League games, David Moyes responded by saying " It's a nice problem to have isn't it? he continued "We'll just go again, we have a great bunch of lads who will give it their all and play for each other, we have got some strength in depth, maybe not as much as I'd like, but we'll give it a go, we go again!".

Although Hammers have Champions League aspirations, it is important to remember just how far the club has come in the last 18 months, after the group stage there are only three games required to reach the final! As David Moyes so succinctly said " We go again". - Ed