Defoe Bid Lodged With Spurs Today

This is only single-sourced, but it is from the same person who told me Calum Davenport was about to sign for us in January, so I passi ton for what it is worth. It seems Eggert Magnusson has lodged a sizeable bid with Spurs to ecure Jermain Defoe’s services. He knows Defoe is nervous about returning to West Ham because of the likely reaction from a section of the fans, but Magnusson is hoping it will be clear to him that he will be fourth in the running for a first team place at Spurs now they have signed Darren Bent.

I remain of the view that Defoe is a class player who would be a brilliant acquisition for us. He scored plenty of goals for Spurs last season despite not being in the team some of the time. He would provide a good contrast to Dean Ashton and ought to play well off him. I hope this rumour has some truth to it.

Why Would Sven Want Marlon?

The rumours about Marlon going to Man City are surely wide of the mark. If Sven Goran Ericksson becomes the new Man City manager I suspect he will go for players he once chose for England. Marlon is not a ‘Sven’ type of player. Remember, he was on fire the season before last and didn’t get so much as a call-up from Sven.

I know tabloid journalists have space to fill in these barren months, but let the rumours at least have some semblance of truth!

It’s All Gone a Bit Quiet…

Things seem to have gone rather quiet on the transfer front since the Bent snub. He’s signing for Tottenham tomorrow. I’d love to think we had a chance of signing Benni McCarthy but I suspect he will be setting his sights at Stamford Bridge. Eggert Magnusson has made clear we are after a pacy player and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Defoe move was reactivated. Yossi seems to be on his way to Liverpool and we are said to have tabled a £10 million bid for Shaun Wright Phillips. On his day he is a world beater but there are too may days when he is not on his day. Wayne Bridge and Nickhy Shorey are rumoured to be left back signings. Bridge is beyond his best so I hope we stick to Shorey for that position. In terms of players leaving, Marlon seems to be attracting the most interest and it looks as if we will get around £4 million for him. Reo Coker must be disappointed that a big club hasn’t come in for him and we are surely right to hold out for £8-10 million for him.

We’ll see what the coming week has in store…

Bellamy is a Troublemaker says Shearer

I’ve expressed great scepticism about West Ham signing Craig Bellamy in several recent posts. Alan Shearer has now revealed exactly what kind of a troublemaker he can be. This is what Mr Shearer had to say today, warning Sam Allardyce not take him back to St James’s Park…..

Has no-one learned their lesson about signing him? If only Rafa Benitez had rung me I would have told him exactly what he was like. I was having a few days away in France with my former Newcastle team-mates Gary Speed and Steve Harper and the wives and I picked up the newspaper. I was having a fantastic day. But when I read Bellamy for Newcastle I thought I would definitely have to have another drink. I had several. I hope there’s nothing in it.

A Mark Noble Cause

Yet another big feature on Mark Noble, this time in the Sunday Times HERE.

The Feral Beasts of the Back Pages

I’ve never heard of the Daily Mirror’s Brian Reade, and in many ways I am quite thankful. Today he’s written a ridiculous column which seeks to blame West Ham for football’s ills. Read it HERE if you must. Here’s an extract…

West Ham chairman Eggert Magnusson says he’s doing nothing wrong apart from trying to take on the top teams. But he is. Forget morals if you will and look at economics. When Viduka was offered £75,000 a week by West Ham he used it as a bargaining tool with Newcastle, who were forced to pick up an extra £2.4m tab on his contract. Not that all players snub the Icelandic sugar-daddy, who is rapidly earning the nickname of Father Christmas. Look at Lucas Neill. He could have been playing in a European Cup Final with Liverpool last month, but chose a relegation fight for £60,000 a week. Think of the knock-on effect when agents thump these new numbers into their calculators. Andy Johnson and Craig Bellamy have reputedly been offered £90,000 a week by the East End Santa.

They might not take it but they may use it to win even heftier salaries. Salaries their agents will use as starting points when other clients’ deals are up for renewal. West Ham’s obscene rewriting of salary bands won’t affect the Big Four. They will still draw men who want medals as well as cash. But it will dramatically hit the teams below them who need a form of sanity in the wage market to operate. When the extra TV billions poured into the Premiership there was talk about significant cuts in ticket prices. A few clubs have, the majority haven’t. Instead they’ve decided the best way to stay viable is to hand the new wealth to agents and players. Magnusson’s Law says that the only guaranteed way of keeping your head in the Premiership’s deep trough is to bribe players with outrageous offers. And the likes of Newcastle have been forced to comply. But at what price?

The trouble is he is completely wrong. Magnusson has a £55,000 a week wage cap. The papers all seem to act, as Tony Blair might put it, in a herd. If one of them mentions Lucas Neill is on £70,000 a week, the rest follow like sheep. These feral beasts of the sports pages must be held to account. Brian Reade, hang your head in shame.

Bent Shoots … And He Scores!

From the gossip website Holy Moly…

Charlton striker Darren Bent struggled to hit the net last season, but his aim was rather better in the toilet cubicle of the Hammersmith Apollo, where he pinged a beauty of a lazy lob (on) right into the chattering anus of Charley from this year’s ‘Big Brother’.

Charley is fast turning into the Paul Ince of the BB house; cocky, self-opinionated and quite prepared to play the race card when it suits her. She has about the same amount of friends as… well, her only real ‘celeb’ friend (if you don’t count her cousin Kieran Richardson – and you really shouldn’t!), being that bright shining star Louise Beckham, who is famous for… nepotism. Well I never.

Charming…

I Remain Perplexed

I must admit to being a little perplexed at the reason for the breakdown of Darren Bent’s transfer. I am also a little perplexed by Yossi Benayoun. He was clear that he was signing a new contract and yet now appears determined to move to Liverpool, whose insulting offer was rightly turned down. Apparently they only bid £3 million. Why on earth would they want to sign a player they value at that amount? It seems we will now haggle over a swap deal involving Craig Bellamy. As I have said before, I am not a fan. Sure, on his day he can be a brilliant player, but he is too inconsistent and has been disruptive at every club he has been at. If we do swap him for Yossi, we shouldn’t add more than £2 million to the deal.

Robert Lee Junior & Junior

A reader emails to ask if I have spotted THIS article about Robert Lee’s two sons who are on West Ham’s books in the Daily Mail. I hadn’t, but I have now! Let’s hope they both get more games for the Hammers than their Dad did!

Mark Noble: Dontcha Just Love Him?

This is what Mark Noble told Sky Sports News this morning…

The sky’s the limit for West Ham. We’ve got a great chairman, a good manager and some fantastic players. I hope we keep the likes of Tev (Carlos Tevez), obviously Yossi (Benayoun) has signed a new deal and it’s looking forward for the club. I can’t wait for next season, and I’ll be going into the gaffer and telling him I want to play and finish off from last season, and I’m sure he’ll be happy with me doing that. It was amazing times when I was there – it seemed like we were playing like Real Madrid. We were passing it, we had Tevez scoring, Bobby (Zamora) was scoring and obviously we were on fire – it seemed like we can beat anyone, and it just showed because we beat Man U away and Arsenal away. We rode our luck a bit at times, but you need that when you’re in the bottom three. We just deserved to stay up at the end of it.

Dontcha just love him?

Reo Coker Burns His Boats

Nigel Reo Coker ought to know better. This is the interview he has given to The Times today. What a devious little shit he is.

For once, Nigel Reo-Coker allows his guard to slip. “As I’ve said many times,” he says with a sigh, “my main focus is on West Ham . . .” He stops, turns to Tony Finnigan, his agent, and laughs. Finnigan, deep in text mode on his mobile phone, shakes his head.

Reo-Coker reloads. Take two: “As I’ve said, my main focus is on England Under-21. We’re going to try to win the tournament and that’s all I’m thinking about at the moment. Everything else that happens will take care of itself.”

It is an amusing error, a rare departure from a prepared script. Reo-Coker’s focus is not on West Ham – his critics might point out that it has not been for some time – and he will join the probable exodus from Upton Park this summer.

A move to Aston Villa is likely and could be completed as Reo-Coker, the captain, leads England in the European Under21 Championship finals in the Netherlands. The squad left yesterday for their first group match against the Czech Republic in Arnhem on Monday.

“I truly believe we can win the trophy,” Reo-Coker says. “I’ve been in the under-21s for a while and it’s the best bunch of players I’ve been with. Everyone has played at least half a season in the Premiership and we’ve got so many talented individuals.”

Reo-Coker, 23, sits in the cramped Bellini Bar in The Hospital, a chic maze of function rooms in Covent Garden, Central London. He twiddles absent-mindedly on a computer console and endorses the XBox 5’s, one of the biggest five-a-side football tournaments in Britain, the finals of which are to be held in Birming-ham tomorrow.

Relaxed and softly spoken, he talks dispassionately about the chaos at West Ham last season. It is as if he has left the club already – his transfer request went in last week – and that his stay of more than three years has been swiftly consigned to the past.

Yet the criticism that he and his colleagues attracted, as West Ham lurched from one crisis to another, stings. Reo-Coker, the captain at Upton Park, was at the epicentre of abuse, bracketed among the overpaid underachievers at Upton Park, the “Baby Bentley” brigade.

“Yeah, it did get me down,” Reo-Coker says. “I’m not going to lie, I’m human. I was down, I was depressed, I was hurt. Some individuals went through a lot of personal issues, but we stayed in the Premiership and that meant a lot to the team and the squad. To go through all that at such a young age was priceless and it made me stronger. But it’s done now, it’s history.

Reo-Coker hit rock bottom during the 6-0 defeat away to Reading on New Year’s Day, after which Alan Curbishley, the manager, famously referred to the club’s money-obsessed underperformers. “Yeah, the Baby Bentley Club,” Reo-Coker says tersely. “Well, I’m not a member. I don’t have a Bentley. No comment.

“But that game was probably one of the lowest points of my career. It was such an embarrassment and I just can’t put into words how it felt in the dressing-room. When your own fans sing ‘You’re not fit to wear the shirt’ it’s heartbreaking.”

The bond between Reo-Coker and Curbishley, who succeeded Alan Pardew in December, deteriorated. “How was the relationship?” he is asked. “Leave that one, Nigel,” Finnigan advises. Reo-Coker does not name names, anyway, politely deflecting every potential curve ball.

He is happier talking about potting plants at his home, a newfound love of golf – “though I’m not really the patient type” – and a shared interest in horses with Anton Ferdinand, his soon-to-be former teammate. And the under21 campaign, too.

Reo-Coker has no regrets. “That’s life,” he says. “What happened happened.”

Yet when he returns from the Netherlands he will refocus, probably in the direction of Villa Park. He will not escape the claret and blue that easily.

Craig Bellamy No Thanks

Today’s Times is predicting that Yossi Benayoun will be used as bait in a deal with Liverpool to get Craig Bellamy. Not sure I approve of that. Bellamy has been a troublemaker at every club he has been to – Norwich, Coventry, Newcastle, Blackburn and Liverpool are just the ones I can remember. Not sure how would be conducive to a good team spirit…

Defoe About to Sign?

Rumour is that West Ham have agreed a fee with Spurs for Jermain Defoe. He’s worried about the fans’ reaction, though. Views? Personally, I’d take him back like a shot, as long as the fee isn’t higher than what Spurs paid us for him originally.

Good Luck Marlon!

Marlon Harewood is on his way. He’s been told he is surplus to requirements at Upton Park by Alan Curbishley. I’ll be quite sad to see him go in many ways. On his day he could be frightening, but when he wasn’t on his day he could also be frightening… His reaction to the news spoke volumes about the man…

“I think it’s time for me to leave West Ham. I’ve had four good years at the club but now it’s time for me to find a new challenge. I’ve had a chat with the new manager and he obviously wants to bring his own players in — it happens everywhere. I want to be playing football, I love it. I had a great season before last for West Ham playing 43 games and scoring 16 goals but last season wasn’t the best for me. I’m so up for next season. I just can’t wait to be scoring again and winning games for a team — that’s what I want to be doing.”

No bitterness, no recriminations. Good luck Marlon, we’ll miss you.

Informed Gossip

I don’t know how many of you look at the KUMB forums or are onthe West Ham Mailing List. For those that don’t, there is a chap called Brownfatwa on KUMB who is apparently quite reliable in his predictions. So I thought you’d be interested…

Right chaps and chapesses am now back from a rather splendid luncheon not too wankered to get to tonights shin-dig avec messrs Bonds, Cottee and Gayle.I’ll do my best to recount tales of matters claret (lots of it) and blue (no need to be). As I’ve said before the source is genuine but obviously he needs to keep some decorum as do i on certain matters.
but here’s the gist of things.

1. The Icemen are mustard. very ambitious, very committed and apparently absolutely loving it, Eggy big-time. Was saddened by the prospect of relegation but remained confident to all staff throughout and never flinched from the ‘just a setback’ line.
2. Backing for Curbs is very resolute and £30m gross (of sales) is not am unrealistic assessment of our fire-power if required. However…
3. it seems that the investment in the team is being prioritised for this year. The new ground will become priority from next year – big committemnt to this. So team overhaul this term then more of a ‘one or two here one or two there’ therefater.
4. Impression was that Curbs (and Day) were tough cookies and had very principled views on what the players should do, behave and be responsible for. Not keen on ‘individuals’ and ‘flash types’.
5. Transfer activity this summer will attempt to build the nucleus of a top 6 side for the next 2-3 years.
6. very positive feel about all aspects of the club and staff now. investment to be made in the academy and to broaden the overseas scouting resource.

Nothing to really add on the door marked exit and has been well trawled on this site already. The priority is to slim down the overall size of the squad and only bring in quality. Curbs believes that there are too many ‘Ok only’ players. maybe worth saying that Baby Rio has got a stay of execution until January at least. This is due to a) improivement in form at tail end and b) unable to get maximum value due to court case c) wants to stay. my man still gets the impression that Gabbs is the odd
one out of the 5 CBs. Pards loved him but Curbs sees him more as a RB – not big or striong enough for CB. expendable.
Dont be surprised to see a net reduction of about 7-8 this summer.

Tevez – could not really enmlighten us. Kia i sense holds the cards and its probably all in the hands of barca/real mad. We will fight damn hard to hold him but if we do then probably just for anither year on effectively a loan-fee basis.

Northern Monkeys etc – no worries. Eggy seems to have assurances fron FIFA itself that we are fine. Coulnt be arsed to debate this at length just kept saying ‘don’t worry your cotton socks’.

Transfer strategy &n targets – do i have your attention now?? Priority is midfield. NRC out and want 2 CMs plus a RM or one that can play either flank as a wing-man.

PARKER was Curbs #1 choice and that uis a done deal. terms agreed with both Newc and player in principle. Will sign after medical this weekend in early part of next week.
BARTON – not to my mans knowledge. if we have approached then it is via agent, no contact with City over fee etc. he did not see barton as Curbs sort of player i.e. trouble with a capital T for Tit – a complete one. And Curbs does not like to gamble on miscreants.
TOURE – name has been mentioned in-house but this one would be down to Eggy first and foremost. Interest could have well been registered but felt was likely to stay in europe with a top Spanish or Italian club .
MAKELE – possible. Are asking to be kept informed shopuld Chelski giove the green light. Fee is nop more than £1m wages high.
?? – also loooking at a Scandi kid (u-21s) to be brought in and grounded for 1-2 years time. cant recall the name i’m afraid but playing in sweden.
CAHILL – there is some fire to the smoke i detect. our stance here seems to revolve around NRC. we seem to be hoping the scouse want him and if so a px deal for cahill could well be a runner. Is on Curbs list and Lucas is desperate for a team mate to join us.

the wide player RM was hoped to be Giles Barnes buit now unlikely sionce Derby made it up. ( Poss go again in Jan if Derby struggling). Had dismissed koumas and offered Eagles and dismissed him. the names still on the list are Barnetta (agent informed), Routledge (as a back-stop) and surprisingly Young (Villa) still crops up. Looking outside Uk for this slot too.

LB – want a first choice over george macca. No surprise here SHOREY has been approached and i Reading contacted. Mullins may be bait here. fee is £4-5m. Will talk with player & agent within the next 10 days. Not imminent but hopeful. If that fails there is a target in germany – no name given. Baines is a no-no due to Wigan stand-ofv and Curbs not a bifg fan.
Robinson of WBA also on the list.

Strikers. Situation muddled by tevez and Ashton – should be ready fro August but hinted all is not yet 100% with him. Boobby stays, Cole goes and Hare is dispensible. No ineterst in Bellamy at all. Viduka wont shift family from NE though we were very keen.
thjere is clearly business to be donme with Charlton. bent is Curbs #1 choice and this is regardless of whether tevez stays or not. trying to tie up a deal before the Tevez situation clears so as not to be held to ransom. dDelegations meeting next week from clubs to discuss formal offers. Agent and player are aware and behind the scenes terms have been discussd alreadfy. Think its Tuesday. we would offer PX from Mullins, hare, gabbs, walker, davenport i.e.all players known to be liked by pards. Bent comes even if tevez stays. We are in poll position on bent but Charlton may play hard ball. Liverpool thought to have bigger targets
annd Yids only interested if defoe goes. Fee for cash is £12m minimum. very hopeful.
YAKUBU – is the second choice and he is thought to be gettable. No go on Gudjohnnson – he has no ineterst, we did.

Phew I need a drink.