mondays gossip 7th march includes west ham

[Hammer Smith]

thanks mate

[AChicagoHammer]

Cheers CH.

Love the picture of Noble celebrating before Ba's goal.

[Marky]

Sun says we are signing Matt Mills off Reading by the way near the back of goals not sure if its posted

[Adie64]

Thanks CH. Great being a Hammer at the moment, shame the season isn't starting now. COYI :raver:

[cockney hammer]

Redknapp - "I am not a paedophile"
"Harry Redknapp admits he has struggled to keep his mind on his work as Tottenham manager as he prepares to fight tax evasion charges which will come to court in July.

As Redknapp, who denies any wrongdoing, prepares his side for a Champions League clash with AC Milan the Spurs boss also has the court case with which to contend.

"If it wasn't me this wouldn't be happening," Redknapp told the News of the World."I'm not a paedophile and I'm not a bank robber. I've done nothing wrong.

"I'm hurt by it, and it hurts my wife and family.

"I just want to get it out of the way and move on. It has been difficult to concentrate on the job at times, but I've managed to do it."

Redknapp, whose house was raided by the police four years ago, claims what has happened to him has been treated with disbelief by people who know him.

The High Court later ruled the search warrant used by City of London Police for the raid was invalid and Redknapp received £1,000 in damages.

"If I had done something wrong I'd be the first to hold my hands up and say 'yeah, okay'.

"What I've had to go through is unreal, absolutely farcical. What happened to my wife, Sandra, was a disgrace.

"I'll wait for it to finish and then I'll have my say."


i see this in the news of the world yesterday bit can not get the site as it is ppv


thanks to eddie b from who

[warp]

twitch in a few months! he's gonna twitch in a few months! twitch in a feeeeeeeeeew mooooooooooooonths!

i'm never worried when accused of things i didn't do, by the way.

[hornsey]

That's a shame.

[jimmy dean]

Yes you are H !! :lol:

[Bobby Orangeboom]

Redknapp -
"I'll wait for it to finish and then I'll have my say."

" I didn't want to pick up the Soap but......... "

[Croydon]

This title made me laugh so much hahaha

[ereford ammer]

Does Wormwood Scrubs FC need a manager?

[Zola4ever]

:lol:

title is brilliant hall of fame

[aaronhammer]

A dig at Wenger?

[Hugh Jargon (Old)]

In other words "I've broke the law but I ain't a filthy nonce" I reckon the old fella is going down...cheat the VAT man at your peril. Pardon?

[Jigga]

....but you are a slippery ****!

[helloducks]

late addition from the New York Times[urlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/sports/socce ... CER07.html][/url]

Clubs Won’t Go Down Without a Fight

West Ham forward Demba Ba scored the opening goal against Stoke City, propelling the team to a 3-0 victory. Ba was signed by West Ham after two other clubs turned him down.
By ROB HUGHES
Published: March 6, 2011

LONDON — In sports, as in life, the scent of glory is usually more attractive than the struggle for survival.
By those criteria, we could all just tune in to be entertained every week by Lionel Messi and his pals at Barcelona. Nothing could be sweeter than the way Little Leo drew three hulking opponents to him on Saturday, outpaced two of them, withstood the attempt of the third to upend him, and set up Barça’s winning goal against Zaragoza.

The genius of Messi is that he makes extraordinary things happen virtually every time he plays.

Yet in another league, on another plain, the act of just staying alive in the top division starts to become almost as compelling a rite of spring.

In England, for example, only Manchester United or Arsenal is truly in contention for this season’s Premier League title. But 10 teams — half the division — are playing so poorly they are at risk of relegation.

And that carries a forfeiture of £50 million, more than $80 million, for each of the three clubs that fall.

England is unique in major European soccer in that the revenue from its global television rights is equally distributed among the 20 clubs, with income of £50 million a team per season from that one source alone.

The English have a ritual. Every season except for one since the league began, the team that lies at the bottom of the table at Christmas goes down.

The one exception, West Bromwich Albion, is fighting for its Premier League existence again. In February, the club in the English Midlands fired Roberto di Matteo, its very likeable team manager, and hired Roy Hodgson.

Di Matteo’s soccer was pleasing to the eye, but defensively unsound. So far, three games into his tenure, Hodgson’s West Brom is unbeaten, and the board members who made the switch are being acclaimed as saviors of their season.

West Ham United, however, was in a bigger hole than West Bromwich at Christmas. The East Londoners’ club, West Ham was at rock bottom, and ready to dismiss its coach, Avram Grant.

But Grant is a survivor if ever there was one. His late father, Meir Grant, came through the Holocaust after he was shipped out of Poland to Siberia, and later buried his parents, his sister and his brothers with his own hands.

Avram Grant’s survival is altogether different. No one’s life depends upon his work, but for two solid years now he has been in charge of teams occupying last place in the Premier League.

Last year, it was Portsmouth, a hopeless club that reached the F.A. Cup final but was forced out of the league because of debts incurred by foreign owners. Grant stayed calm, but his feet might as well have been in quicksand.

He had to shed players whose salaries added to the indebtedness of the club.

He fought against a nine-point penalty imposed by the league because the club was placed in financial administration. He didn’t quit, and his team didn’t go down until the last days of the campaign, mainly because its spirit refused to surrender.

That spirit, and the style that Grant somehow adhered to in adversity, prompted West Ham to fire its popular coach, Gianfranco Zola, and hire Grant.

But, up to the turn of the year, West Ham’s team, beset by injuries that seemed endemic, seemed fated to the same course as Portsmouth.

Grant’s job was hawked to would-be successors. They wouldn’t take on the challenge. But Grant, with as doleful a countenance as an undertaker, is a fighter. He actually seems to thrive on the pressures of a failing club, and on the fissures that those pressures bring between the owners, the players and the fans.

Like Portsmouth, West Ham is going strong in the F.A. Cup. Unlike Portsmouth, its luck in the Premier League appears to be turning, reviving almost.

The injured players are running again. New players, lured to the club in its darkest hours in January, are breathing fresh hope. Grant, the survivor, is overseeing something incredibly heartwarming at the foot of the Premiership. In its last three games in the Cup, West Ham has hammered Burnley, 5-1, beaten Liverpool, 3-1, and on Saturday beat Stoke City, 3-0.

“We have momentum at the right time,” Grant said. “We will not score three goals every game, that’s for sure. Nobody is doing this.

“But I believe in this football, I believe in attacking football. You need balance, and we’re getting the balance better and better every game. We have many players now that can score.”

One such player, Scott Parker, has been there through thick and thin. Two others, Demba Ba and Thomas Hitzlsperger, are imports new to the cause.

They are on fire. Ba was signed in January from Hoffenheim after at least two other clubs — Saturday’s opponent, Stoke, and Everton — turned him down on medical advice that he has a knee injury that could buckle at any moment.

West Ham took a chance because West Ham must. Ba, born near Paris but a Senegal national team player, has scored in four of his five West Ham appearances. His movement, his desire and his striking ability are, for as long as he sustains them, a revelation.

Hitzlsperger, schooled by Bayern Munich from the age of seven, played for Aston Villa as a teenager, returned to Germany to win the Bundesliga with VfB Stuttgart in 2007, and had six months in Italy with Lazio.

West Ham signed him last June, but before he could kick a ball for the team, he injured a thigh so badly in training that he could not make his debut before the Burnley game. His time in London was hardly idle because Hitzlsperger has an exceptionally bright mind.

He is on first-name terms with Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England. Hitzlsperger can discuss the dynamics of economics, or blog in Germany on the problems of xenophobia and racism.

And his moniker, Der Hammer, derives from his ability to set up or strike goals from midfield with stunning left-foot velocity and surprise.

An Israeli, a German and a Senegalese trying to save West Ham. You couldn’t make it up.

Hitz a pal of Mervyn King could be handy