playing well atm.
Same in the 2nd half could nick it.

we'll never know,but with that ambition against
Liverpool we might have won.Brighton beat them
tonight.
Coufal MOM,imo.

Grealish class player,he don't normally
switch positions cos' he can't get a sniff.

goalie should have saved both

Yes a good all round performance today and we were far and away the better side.

Fulham Sheffield next both going be hard games as
Fighting stay up , we want keep rolling hard what you do with Antonio
Cos needs a goal

Lingard,that might do him a favour,
put alot into tonights game.1 chance
in the cup,must go for it,surely.

no to alot of supporters.
The F.A Cup is still worth winning,
to me anyway.Sickens me when we put
weakened teams out.

We have now achieved our highest points tally after 22 games in the top flight since our best ever season 1985/86.

Wrong thread, Capt.

Moyles running **** out Antonio

Wonder what Moyles as planned for Tuesday trip
At old Trafford ?
Safe in the league , got  horrible run of games coming up
Will he play the second string 11 or go for it ?
We where completely out played Saturday looking very tied
Definitely need to keep rashford quiet maybe some sort tag team approach
On him ,
We need to wear the black kit that’s for sure spark Some much needed life into us
I’ve got feeling club foot , lanzini toenails Ben Johnson Fredricks noble might start as well as goal keeper change

Don’t get why Moyles didn’t rest Antonio Saturday for Tuesday
Now definitely ain’t going risk him from the start ,
Comfortable in league this should be our cup final tomorrow night but
After Saturdays lack lustre display worry where we are going to get levels needed to beat Manchester Utd side playing a lot better than they where when school us in that second half at home a while back
No lingard
Bowen tonails benrahma need games of there lives
And who ever sits up top for us too

If the right sort of player is not available then why spend money for the sake of it as we have learnt to our cost with Haller and Anderson etc.

Sparrow agree with what your saying
But where badly light up top and needed cover bad
Should paid 3 million for Dawson
Got a loan in striker
No point being up the table , I think fall away as injures take course 2 games a week Antonio can’t do
He’s not fit , not nowhere near imo player he was last year
Been million times better than lamp post we had but
Last few games don’t look 100%

Someone posted the payet free kick
Sent more chills down my spine
Than being out in snow this morn
He was unbelievable
Can’t think of any player that impact a team like he did that season

Sparrow didnt you see Benny's pass for Soucek's 1st against Villa.  I doubt Toenails has that in his locker.  We are starting to get a lot of intelligent runners in the squad(Soucek, Lingard, Bowen, Fornals etc)once Benny gets up to speed I can see him being our main creator.

Came across this today good read two weeks old

What do they want?
By Mike Cawston Filed: Saturday, 30th January 2021
With their rag tag bunch of cast-offs, stalwarts, Czech bargains and converted strikers, West Ham United find themselves in the quite surreal position of fifth place just past the halfway point of the behind-closed-doors Premier League season.

'They say the devil's water, it ain't so sweet, you don't have to drink right now'
But you can dip your feet, every once in a little while'
The Killers - When You Were Young

The Irons are the leading side from the capital, sitting proudly above Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal and Chelsea, while last year's champions Liverpool, who lie in wait next, sit just two points ahead. They are six points off Manchester City at the top, who are the only side in the division in better form. They are playing their best football since we left Upton Park, when Slaven Bilic's Dmitri Payet-inspired side produced an unforgettable final season at the old place. They also crucially have a steel, bravery and fight not seen in in claret and blue for much of the Premier League era.





Most importantly to most, they are fun and likeable, with cult heroes being created in the shape of Tomas Soucek, Vladimir Coufal, Craig Dawson and Pablo Fornals to add to those already deep in the supporters hearts such as Lukasz Fabianski, Angelo Ogbonna, Michail Antonio and of course the clubs favourite son, the best holding midfielder in the country, Declan Rice. They also still carry the old West Ham gene too, of missing countless guilt-edged chances and making each and every game an insufferable wait to close out the points. The manager, David Moyes, is vindicated in his second spell at the club, and now respected and lauded by the fans after initial concerns over his record post-Everton.

So, with all the above taken into account, why are we, the fans who sell out every home and away game (when pandemics don't get in the way), follow the team through 41 trophy-less years of hurt and largely disappointment, still being sniped at, demonised and abused at every opportunity by sections of the media for still having the gall to be unhappy with the ownership of our great club?

After a fine win at a bogey team of recent times in Crystal Palace, where the scoreline gave the impression that the match was close, when in reality there should have been many goals difference between the two sides, we should be basking in the glory of this fantastic team that is currently representing us. But here we are, being yet again targeted by Talksport in particular, who are absolutely fuming that West Ham fans won't give David Sullivan, David Gold and Karren Brady credit for the marvellous work being done by David Moyes and his threadbare squad.

This week's momentary (albeit brief) rise into the top four has meant we have had chief cheerleader and puppet Jim White repeatedly denigrate the support for their continued stance against the owners. The latest to be rolled out on his show to deride the support is former Arsenal defender Martin Keown, who has somehow got it in his thick skull that the fans need to lay off the owners and get behind the team when they return to the stadium post-Covid and are 'a really hard bunch to please'.

Having attended the excellent Hammers United (more on them later) march in late February 2020, where over 8,500 disenfranchised fans marched from Plaistow to the Olympic Stadium along the Greenway, before roaring the team on to an impressive 3-1 win over Southampton, I can guarantee that this wonderful bunch of people are very much behind the team and always have been. More disappointingly, both Carlton Cole and Trevor Sinclair, both big favourites of mine who served the club impeccably during their time on the playing staff, have also suggested on that channel this week that the fans should be giving the owners credit for the situation we find ourselves in. So much for #GSBOUT a few months ago, eh Trev?





On Thursday 28th January, Hammers United were unexpectedly awarded almost 15 minutes of uninterrupted airtime on Jim's show. Clearly expecting Jim and Simon to come back at him armed with the same old responses about the owners being fans and with scripted figures of the money invested by Sullivan, spokesman for the group, Andy Byrne, attempted a different approach to try and outfox the veteran broadcaster. Sadly, not just for Andy and Hammers United, but also for the wider fanbase, a golden opportunity was passed up with a waffling, politician-style monologue, which was hard to follow and most damning of all failed to explain to this chief agitator exactly why the fans are sick to the back teeth of those running the club.

Simon Jordan, who listened patiently, stuck the knife in, and before you knew it, that was that. The response from the fanbase on twitter was scathing. Hammers United had produced two excellent marches, re-uniting a fractured fanbase and put genuine pressure on the owners for the first time in their lacklustre, mediocre reign. But here they were, being slaughtered after what can best be described as a complete car crash of an interview. Andy was absolutely gutted, expressing his guilt over how it went. Having listened to Andy on many podcasts, he has always come across as knowledgeable, intelligent and most of all clearly cares greatly about the club. His performance on Moore Than Just a Podcast recently was excellent, providing an excellent breakdown of the work Hammers United do and what they hope to achieve.

The weekly pod hosted by Sean Whetstone and the ying to his yang, Nigel Khan, a board critic who holds reservations about the group being both a fan group who wants dialogue with the board and a protest group (he argues they should be one or the other), both seemed impressed by his answers to their often probing and difficult line of questioning. However, when you could argue it mattered the most, Andy fluffed his lines. It was a first real misstep from the fan group, who will now be under pressure to find their mojo again once we have all been vaccinated and can go back to games. Personally, they still have my support, and I look forward with interest to their next campaign against the board.

Following this, and another day of West Ham fan-hating on the station, I thought I would take this opportunity to answer Jim's most asked question (which for some reason he insists on always shouting), 'WHAT DO WEST HAM FANS WANT?!, and put it down in black and white for him, his boss Lee Clayton, a West Ham fan who for some reason allows Jim free reign to demonise the support base on behalf of his Napoleonic mate who runs our club, and all those who think that West Ham fans are moaning for no good reason during probably the most impressive set of team performances in the Misery Bowl era of West Ham United:


Leaving Home, a migration failure of epic proportions and the Misery Bowl

The biggest millstone around these owners' necks, above all the ridiculousness that they bring to the club, will always be convincing the fanbase (including the idiot writing this piece) that to compete at the top level, West Ham United needed to leave that crusty, ramshackle, hard to get to, even harder to get out of, home of 112 years. Upton Park for this fanbase was our church. The pull to a new ground, to take West Ham to the next level, to compete with Arsenal and Chelsea, even to those up the road in N17, was incredibly tempting. Even more so when you saw the plans.





State of the art retractable seating, with no sight line worse than Wembley or the Emirates Stadium. Karren Brady uttered the famous words, 'a world class stadium for a world class team'. Sullivan spoke of the Champions League. David Gold (he was born in Green Street you know...never likes to mention it), promised that on camera that we couldn't leave Upton Park without the pitch being as close to the stands as it was at the Boleyn. The ability to take on an iconic venue, while not having to put ourselves in a difficult financial position to do it like Arsenal did, was another big sell. We could double our capacity, have modern retractable seating to cover that pesky running track, and would elevate ourselves financially to challenge every season in the top six or eight, rather than constantly looking over our shoulder at the trapdoor back down to the slog of the Championship.

The reality has been something different. The migration should have been the first warning sign. You went along to book your seat, but the whole thing was shrouded in secrecy by undertrained and underprepared staff. You couldn't take any photos of the images given of where your seat would be, and each season ticket holder was given the option to add extra season tickets to their group, meaning people in higher bands could bring mates to skip the queue ahead of those in the lower bands, pushing their chance of getting a half decent seat into unlikeliness.

It was also done so poorly that it didn't take into account the dynamics of the groups built up at Upton Park. Groups of people who had sat in an area with other characters for years were suddenly separated and now sitting in different parts of the cavernous bowl. The Bobby Moore Lower at Upton Park was well known for effectively being a standing section, yet when people were relocated to the new site, lots of fans who had previously enjoyed the comfort of their seat were having their view blocked. It wasn't any of the fans fault, it was the awful planning that went into the move.

Where to start on the Misery Bowl? I still love going to games every other week to catch up with my mates, drink in the Abbey Tap and even the drink in the ground either side of the game. I still try to get involved in any singing that occasionally breaks out around the vast spaces of the ground. I continue to throw my weight behind the players at every opportunity, begging the often unbalanced and poorly-assembled side to push forward and dig themselves out of another hole. But the place is awful. It's completely unsuitable for football and without a major re-design it never will be.

The seats are way too far from the pitch, the matchday experience of getting to and particularly from the ground is hellish and the friendliness of the place for visiting teams is there for all to see with our record at the place. Don't get me started on all the other things that make the place the subject of much derision, such as the regular appearances of fans from the opposition mixing openly in club colours in the home end, the actual bouncers that have been employed to take out any fans who have the temerity to complain about issues that occur each and every matchday, the stewarding or the completely dreadful experience that is trying to get a beer and a pie in the building.

When Chelsea fans of all people, with their dodgy Russian money, are singing that we've sold our soul for this ****, you know something has gone badly wrong. And it's not just them, every set of fans who visit complain about the awful away end and regularly rate it as the worst place in the country, let alone the league, to watch football. Also never forget the Baroness telling us that our fixtures would always take precedence over any other event at the rented arena, only for us to play the first three matches of the 2017/18 season (the second ****g season!!) away from home.

WHAT DO THEY WANT?! - Well Jim, we would quite like what we were promised. A ground suitable for football that would be the envy of our rivals. As it stands, the Tottenham Hotspur stadium (built at great cost) absolutely puts ours to shame. We would like retractable seating that goes right up to the pitch, we would like better sight lines, we would like to leave the ground and not feel like we are being herded into a sheep pen every bloody week by stewards that couldn't give a ****. None of this is possible at the Misery Bowl, and it basically needs knocking down and building again.


Recruitment and the playing squad

Now, I get writing this while the club are on a six-match winning run, with a first eleven of real quality, seems a little mental. But for eleven years under the dictatorship of Sullivan our recruitment has been absolutely woeful for the vast majority of the time. For every Payet, you have countless South American hit and hopes like Wellington Paulista, Jonathan Calleri, Nene and Brian Montenegro. For every Soucek, you have multiple Carlos Sanchezs, Jack Wilsheres, Gokhan Tores and Abdul Razaks. For every Fabianski you have Roberto.





It has often been the go to tactic of the likes of the Claret & Hugh blog et al to blame Manuel Pellegrini, Slaven Bilic and even David Moyes (hello Jordan Hugill!) for the signings, claiming they are the ones who often want these players. However, the owners' inability to put in place a modernised scouting network, a director of football and a data-driven analytics department means that we are always falling well behind other clubs of similar size in the transfer market. On the one occasion that they did in fact appoint a Director of Football, they bizarrely gave the job to the choice of manager Manuel Pellegrini, showing that they have absolutely no idea on the role, and that in fact the Director of Football should indeed be selecting the manager first and foremost with a clear blueprint on how the club should play, on top of overseeing the recruitment of players.

It has led to a series of wasted investments, with the owner often punting on players who have no re-sale value and in many cases are past their sell by date. Leicester City and Southampton, clubs on our level below the top six, are built to bring in young, upcoming players and develop players before selling on at a massive profit, West Ham have rarely made a profit on a player in 11 years. David Moyes' current squad, which is at breaking point, also remains incredibly unbalanced, with one senior striker who is actually a converted winger, no back-up whatsoever in midfield or at left back, and for some unknown reason about five players who can play at number ten. The 'sell then buy' strategy leaves the club regularly short and scrapping around on deadline day for any bargain we can get our hands on. Sullivan promised on camera to shake up the recruitment and analytics department at the club following the departure of Slaven Bilic. We still wait.

WHAT DO THEY WANT?! - Well Jim, we want David Sullivan, with his disappointing record of signing players, absolutely nowhere near the process. We want a recruitment department set up at the club, where currently only one scout is employed. We want a system in place that allows us to buy Europe and the UK's top young players, with the ability to sell on for big profits in the future, rather than buying players for too much money when they are past their peak. We want a Director of Football with the experience and knowhow to revolutionise the club and bring it into the 21st century, and one that actually appoints the manager in future, rather than the other way round! We want analytics used to judge players like all the clubs with progressive ownership do, such as Leicester and Southampton.


The Baroness, the commoners and £9m

Karren Brady joined the club alongside the joint owners in 2010. Including bonuses for such things as winning the bid to rent an athletics stadium and for finding Tripp Smith to invest in the club, she has taken a shade under £9m in salary and bonuses out of the club as of 2020. £9m for someone who:

- Effectively works part time, combining her role at Stratford with that in the House of Lords

- Has overseen, according to many, quite possibly the worst stadium migration in English football history

- Has set up OSB after SAB to bounce her ideas off lackey after lackey and largely avoided meaningful discussion with supporters who might ask difficult questions





- Has frequently embarrassed the fans and the club itself in her weekly column in the rag that is The Sun, alienating other footballers and clubs (and costing West Ham a signing from Leicester City). This is when she isn't trying to get the football season cancelled due to health and safety concerns from Covid and absolutely definitely nothing to do with West Ham's perilous league position, or is wishing Tottenham ****g Hotspur win the league. Don't forget too that our actual current manager has also been the subject of her ramblings in that rag.

- Tweeted to her followers on Twitter to tune into her new show on ITV, shortly before West Ham were kicking off yet another relegation six-pointer in the Misery Bowl against Stoke, suggesting 'Brand Brady' takes precedence over the club, its supporters and the team.

- Claimed to be a champion of women's rights while working alongside the disgraced Sir Philip Green and our esteemed owners, with their history in the adult industry.

- Uttered the words 'A World Class Stadium, for a World Class Team.'

WHAT DO THEY WANT?! - Well Jim, we want Karren Brady out of our club. When you consider that Leicester pay their equivalent just £300k a year, to somebody who does the job full time, it really shouldn't be too difficult to find a competent replacement.


Portakabins and League One training facilities

Another stick to beat the owners with is the cheap, tacky job that was done at Rush Green. With the club desperate to upgrade the antiquated facilities at Chadwell Heath the owners moved the club down the road to the old Ford Sports Ground. In doing it up, the club spent around £10m in total on turning it into the club's first team base, plus upgrades to the existing site at Chadwell Heath.





Now, what exactly that money went on is questionable, with tacky portable buildings dotted around the place. The club continue to claim it is state-of-the-art, despite very few if any media outlets having filmed in front of it, one presumes for the fear of more shots of the Portakabins going viral. For comparison of the £10m investment in the facilities, Leicester City recently showed of their £100m (Yes...ONE HUNDRED MILLION) facility, while Liverpool and Spurs both spent around £50m on theirs. Even League One Fleetwood spent just under £10m on their facility. It is beyond belief that the club continue to claim this shoddy, below standard place is good enough for a team who are apparently going places.

WHAT DO THEY WANT?! - Well Jim, we would like serious investment made into the training facilities to match those of our peers. Leicester City have put the club to shame with their world class new facility, and it is beyond belief that a club like West Ham United are being compared to Fleetwood Town, who were in non-league just a few years ago, in terms of the quality of the training facilities. Imagine being a prospective signing and rocking up at Rush Green...embarrassing.


Leaks and the Media

A huge frustration to the fan base is the level of information that is leaked from the club. It is embarrassing enough that the co-owners have their favoured journalists to leak stories out through but the level of information/propoganda that is published by the Claret & Hugh blog is beyond belief. The website has become a figure of fun and hatred for the online fanbase, with few interacting in a positive way with it.

On top of this, and much worse, is the apparent use of Talksport as its public relations arm. Station Head Lee Clayton is a West Ham United season ticket holder yet openly allows the Jim White Show to aggravate and abuse the team's supporters on a daily basis. The release of videos on social media of the latest bit of fan bashing is a hostile way of smearing a fanbase that follow the club through thick and thin.

WHAT DO THEY WANT?! - Well Jim, we'd quite like the board to not air its dirty linen in public frequently via favoured blogs and would also quite like Talksport not to imply that it is in fact the fans that are the problem at the club.


Club debt, interest rates and asset stripping

A huge frustration for the fans is the owners' insistence on claiming that they don't take a salary for their positions at West Ham, while at the same time receiving millions of pounds in interest on the loans that they have put in the club. Now, a regular defence of this system is that it is their money, so they can do what they like with it. However, how can you claim to be fans of the club when you are taking not-insubstantial payments out of the club, allowing the debt you promised to clear go absolutely nowhere?





For comparison, Tony Bloom, lifelong fan and owner of Brighton & Hove Albion, charges no interest on the loans he has put into the club. Roman Abramovich also charges no interest on his investment in Chelsea. Most strikingly out of every comparison, is that Mike Ashley, the big bad wolf of Newcastle United, and only other owner in the league with a record of ownership as controversial as Sullivan and Gold's, charges no interest on his loans at the club.

As of 2019, according to the website Swiss Ramble, Sullivan and Gold have taken in the region of £19m in interest on loans out of the club. In the last five years they have taken £17m of that, while the rest of the league have taken just £12m between them, with only Southampton (£5m), Liverpool (£5m and they have now stopped taking interest), Leicester City (£1m) and Sheffield United (£1m) doing so. The only person who has invested money into the club who doesn't charge interest is Tripp Smith, the American businessman who has an interest free £9.5m investment in the club. Absolutely damning on the owners.

At the end of 2019, West Ham's net debt was £65m according to Swiss Ramble. The club had debts of around £100m when the owners took over. In that time we have sold our beloved ground for £40m (of course it was then flipped for £60m by the property company that bought it), pay under £3m a year to rent the Misery Bowl, and particularly over the past 18 months, the net transfer spend has been minimal. It's therefore difficult to see how the club is still in so much debt? Of course this doesn't take into account the impact of Coronavirus, which has saddled the club with further, unknown levels of debt in the loan from Barclays taken this season.

The fact the owners elected to put another £30m into the club to keep it running via a share rights issue suggests that it has been poorly managed over the last 11 years. Last summer, the owners pleaded poverty due to the virus, and aside from taking full season ticket money from a section of the fans (I personally chose the 30% option, I wasn't giving them an interest-free loan) they also spent in the bottom three of the twenty Premier League clubs on transfers in net spend. They have sold and released a lot of big earners, getting wages off the books, without really ever replacing players.

Yet here we are still with a massively-unbalanced squad and, it seems, little to no money readily available to bring in much needed reinforcements. It strikes me that the owners have led the club to breaking point, and David Moyes and the playing staff have dug them out of a massive hole by over-performing on the pitch this season.

WHAT DO THEY WANT?! - Well Jim, we would quite like the owners to stop charging high interest on the loans they put in. If Mike Ashley can do it, surely they can? We would also quite like the owners to lower the debt levels and by cancelling interest payments they could at least potentially kickstart this process.

So in summary Jim, isn't it obvious what we want? We want our club, who were uprooted from their home with the promise of greater investment and the lure of European football and trophies to be run with view to achieving the aims set out by the owners. Apart from one summer under Pellegrini, they have, in my view, failed to suitably fund the series of managers that they have employed.

If the club were still at our much-missed home in Green Street, the level of resentment would still be high, but not at the level of disrepair it currently is. I hope this goes a long way to explaining exactly why, even though we are thrilled with the progress on the pitch under the management of David Moyes this season, many supporters remain deeply unhappy with the ownership of our wonderful club, and wish them to sell as soon as possible.

The relationship is beyond repair, and that is the fault of three people only; David Sullivan, David Gold and Karren Brady. The fans are the best in the country, we love our club and are enjoying this fantastic season under David Moyes' and Declan Rice's leadership. But we deserve the right to continue to push for change of an ownership who have achieved nothing of note in football in nearly 30 years. And that's our choice. Not your's. Not Carlton Cole's. Not Martin Keown's. Ours.

Young boy like rabbit in headlights
He’s our back up striker

Honestly did they pick him from Asda this morn
Young kid shocking