Daily WHUFC News - 28th February 2018

Four April fixture changes for West Ham United
WHUFC.com

All four of West Ham United's Premier League fixtures in April have new dates after being selected for live TV broadcast. The Hammers' game away at Chelsea will now be shown on Sky Sports on Sunday 8 April, with a 4.30pm kick-off, although this fixture is subject to change should the Blues be in UEFA Champions League action the following Tuesday.

Next up is the home match against Stoke City, which has been moved to an 8pm kick-off on Monday 16 April, live on Sky Sports.

The Hammers are in Monday Night Football action again the following week, when they travel to Arsenal on Monday 23 April. Kick-off is again 8pm, live on Sky Sports.

Sky Sports will also broadcast the home clash with Manchester City, now to be played on Sunday 29 April at 2.15pm. Again, this date is subject to change should Manchester City be scheduled to play in the UEFA Champions League the following Tuesday.

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Rice looking forward to Coaching Association session
WHUFC.com

The Academy of Football host their third Official Coaching Association session on Monday 5 March at Chadwell Heath and there is plenty in store for those attending to look forward to. First team stars Declan Rice and Josh Cullen – who both came through the Club's famous youth ranks to be part of David Moyes' first team squad – will open the evening with a Q&A, and it's a great opportunity for local coaches to pick the brains of young players who have come through the elite Academy pathway. Rice made his first team debut at the end of last season and has gone on to become an important member of the Hammers' squad this campaign.

Coaching AssociationSigned as a youngster from Chelsea, the defender – along with Cullen, who has been with the Club since he was nine ­– has been coached through the ranks at Academy. And the 19-year-old is looking forward to what should be an intriguing evening for those at Chadwell Heath.
He said: "I'm really looking forward to the evening. It will be great to meet all the coaches who at a local level do so much for grassroots football and hopefully the Q&A with myself and Josh will be valuable for them. "We'll be there to answer any questions about our experiences coming through the Academy, so I think it's set to be an interesting night for those who come along."

Along with the Rice and Cullen Q&A, Academy Director Terry Westley will also be running through the Academy's Individual Development Plans, before first team coach and former Hammer and England full-back Stuart Pearce takes a practical training session. Rice continued: "Stuart is also doing a training session, so the coaches will get a chance to see what our training is like in action and that will be great, too."

The Association has been set up by the West Ham United Academy of Football to provide opportunities for grassroots level coaches to learn from some of the best and most experienced staff in the Hammers set up and the professional game. The evening on Monday 5 March begins at 6pm. To book your place on the session, click here. You can also book a spot on the final session – in April – by clicking here and finding your chosen evening.

Alternatively, visit https://www.eticketing.co.uk/whufc, head to 'find tickets' and look for the Coaching Association.

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Visit our free Bobby Moore exhibition - late opening this Wednesday
WHUFC.com

To mark the 25th anniversary of the tragic passing of Bobby Moore, West Ham United are hosting a memorabilia exhibition in honour of our greatest-ever player.

The unique display is free to visit and located on the lower ground floor of the Stadium Store from Saturday 24 February - and will be open until 7pm on Wednesday 28 February, giving even more Hammers fans of all ages the opportunity to gain a close look at some of most prominent and prestigious artefacts and honours from Bobby's life and career.

These include the actual shirt he wore on his West Ham United debut against Manchester United on 8 September 1958, his 1964 FA Cup and 1965 European Cup Winners' Cup winning medals, his 1964 Footballer of the Year award and his 1966 World Cup finals cap, along with a replica of his World Cup winner's medal, a matchday programme and a match ticket personally signed by all eleven England players on that famous July day at Wembley.

Bobby Moore: West Ham United remembers – 25 years gone, never forgotten
Alongside the memorabilia collection is a stunning three-foot high bronze sculpture of Bobby, seen in public for the first time after being commissioned by his daughter Roberta as part of a series of six sculptures to mark the 25th anniversary.

West Ham United's Stadium Store will also be open until the later time of 7pm on Wednesday 28 February and Thursday 8 March.

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West Ham feature in new Kick It Out LGBT+ inclusion initiative
WHUFC.com

West Ham United striker Andy Carroll features in a new Kick It Out film promoting LGBT+ inclusion in football and emphasising that homophobic, biphobic or transphobic (HBT) discrimination has no place in the game.

LGBT+ inclusion remains a central part of the work done by Kick It Out, football's equality and inclusion organisation, and the film encourages supporters to report any abuse they witness or suffer – whether it's to a steward or to Kick It Out via its free reporting app.

The 90-second film, which you can view on this page, features Carroll alongside stars from all 20 Premier League clubs, including Tottenham Hotspur's Jan Vertonghen, Chelsea's Eden Hazard and Alvaro Morata, Manchester United's Juan Mata, Manchester City's Vincent Kompany and Arsenal's Danny Welbeck.

Roisin Wood, CEO of Kick It Out, was delighted to work closely with every Premier League club and release the film at a time when the country is marking LGBT History Month.

She said: "Kick It Out have been campaigning for LGBT+ inclusion in football for a long time and it's wonderful that we've been able to bring all 20 clubs together for the first time in our history to take a stand against HBT discrimination. This is about the collective force of the game uniting to eliminate behaviour that has no place in the game.

"We also wanted to send out a positive message to fans across the world and make it clear that LGBT+ supporters are part of the foundations of football – just like any other fan."

Bill Bush, Executive Director of the Premier League, gave his endorsement to the film, adding: "This film produced by Kick It Out features all our member clubs and highlights the need to challenge homophobic, biphobic and transphobic behaviour across the sport.

"The Premier League is embraced across the world and we are proud to show our continued support for LGBT+ inclusion in football."

West Ham United are proud supporters of Kick It Out and the annual Football v Homophobia and Stonewall Rainbow Laces campaigns, all of which are aimed at eradicating discrimination and making LGBT supporters feel welcome at London Stadium.

The Club has also worked closely with its official LGBT Supporters Group, Pride of Irons, towards the same ends since its formation in 2015.

Pride of Irons founder Jim Dolan endorsed Kick It Out's campaign: "We don't want to be a group of people who go around grassing people up. What we want to do is challenge things and get people to understand we are not here to try and get people chucked out and change the culture of the Club – we want people to realise that we are part of that culture."

For more information about Kick It Out's Premier League and LGBT History Month inclusion initiative, click here.

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Collins: We need to focus on Swansea, go there and get a good result
WHUFC.com

James Collins says West Ham United 'cannot dwell' on their defeat at Liverpool and instead must focus all of their attention on Saturday's Premier League trip to Swansea City. The former Wales international and his teammates matched the high-powered Reds for 45 minutes at Anfield, only for a weak second-half display to allow Jurgen Klopp's team to run out 4-1 winners. Defeat on Merseyside saw the Hammers drop to within three points of the relegation zone ahead of a visit to the Liberty Stadium to face the 18th-place Swans. "We're going to have to go to Swansea and then host Burnley in the next couple of weeks and pick up our points from those games," said Collins. "I said to the boys in the dressing room that we cannot dwell on what happened at Liverpool, as better teams than us have gone to Anfield and been steamrolled, so we've got to look at the video, look at what we did right and what we did wrong and move on to a huge game in Wales on Saturday. "Morale in the camp is good. We had a good result against Watford and then a couple of weeks of good training, so spirits are high. We've got some great characters in that dressing room and we need to focus on Swansea, go there and get a good result."

Reflecting at greater length on Saturday's loss at Anfield, Collins felt it would have been a different game if West Ham had taken one of a number of first-half chances they created. Marko Arnautovic was denied by two acrobatic saves from Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius, while the Hammers also worked the ball into dangerous areas on a number of other occasions, but could not find a way past the German. Emre Can headed the Reds in front from a corner on the half-hour mark before the hosts took control after the break, adding further goals through Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane, rendering Michail Antonio's breakaway strike a mere consolation.
Collins admitted the east Londoners were disappointed by their second-half performance. "If you look at the first half, we played well, but conceded from a set play. In the second half, they went up a few gears and scored three goals. Obviously, we're not happy with the way they went in, but they're a very strong team at Anfield. "We said in the dressing room, if we'd gone 1-0 up, it would have given us something to hang on to, so we were disappointed to go into half-time 1-0 down when we thought we'd played relatively well and coped with them. So, to come out in the second half and not play as we wanted to and concede some goals, we're obviously disappointed. "Liverpool have got a bit of everything. They suck you into a false sense of security and then, when they get around the box, it speeds up. We didn't deal with that in the second half."

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All change - April schedule altered
KUMB.com
Filed: Tuesday, 27th February 2018
By: Staff Writer

Each of West Ham's four April fixtures have been moved to satisfy TV companies, it has been confirmed.

The four matches - two at Stratford, two away - have all been re-scheduled at the behest of Sky Sports starting with the trip to Chelsea which will now begin at 4.30pm on Sunday, 8 April (unless Chelsea play the following Tuesday in the Champions League).

The following weekend United host Stoke City in a vital relegation battle - a game that has now been moved to Monday, 16 April (an 8pm start).

Following the visit of the Potters, West Ham visit the Emirates for another trip to North London where David Moyes' side will be hoping to take revenge for the Carabao Cup defeat back in December.

Finally, the re-jigged month ends with a trip to Champions elect Manchester City on Sunday, 29 April - a 2.15pm kick off, also to be broadcast on Sky.

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Liverpool 4-1 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)
KUMB.com
Filed: Tuesday, 27th February 2018
By: HeadHammerShark


"You say you lost your faith, but that's not where it's at
You had no faith to lose, and you know it"
- Bob Dylan, "Positively 4th Street"


I never admire our away support more than on days like these. On a morning when you can create clouds with your own breath and the cold can descend upon you like a blanket, it takes a certain type of person to make the trip to a fixture like this. It isn't so much that we we ended up losing this game 4-1, but that it always felt like we would lose 4-1. Not everyone can march so readily North knowing that cannon shot and thunder and Mo Salah are lying in wait.

Even though we knew this was coming, it still stings when it happens, mind you. There is always hope until there isn't, after all. But the Premier League is becoming less competitive with each passing transfer window and each UEFA subsidy to the bigger teams. And so it is our lot to travel to places such as Anfield and play a team assembled at vast cost by cherry picking the best players from Southampton, Hoffenheim, Southampton, Bayer Leverkusen, Hull and, well, Southampton and wonder just what exactly is the point of all this. Maybe we have always been cannon fodder, but I don't remember everyone being quite so readily understanding about it.

We haven't got Salah, or Money Money.

It's a curious time to be a fan of a Premier League minnow. The top six are so far away now that it isn't terribly realistic to expect very much when playing them. We've lost 4-0 at Old Trafford, 4-1 here, 2-1 at the Etihad and drawn 1-1 with Spurs. We've spent roughly 80 per cent of those games defending, earned a single point, and apart from the second half at Old Trafford - when we seemed unaware that the season had actually started - overall I think we've done alright.

It's not that I don't want us to be more competitive but these are shoulder shrug games. You take what you can get, hope it doesn't get too embarrassing and then focus on next week. For fans of smaller clubs, trips to places like Liverpool are just about reaffirming our place in the established order. Four goals. Four goalscorers who cost a hundred million quid between them. Four hours drive there. For shame.

Whether we should actually be considered as a minnow is perhaps a different question and one I'm not sure I have the energy to revisit today. Gross mismanagement and too many Sunday nights writing this blog will do that to a man.

But to those who go and watch games like this, I salute you. It's easy to write these fixtures off as one sided and predetermined when you don't go to watch them, but when you're there in the ground it can be chastening. Of course, when you win 3-0 it can be exhilarating too, but we all know that was a beautiful aberration. At a time when we all seem very focused on what exactly constitutes a "real" West Ham fan, I think those who undertake trips such as these deserve to be foremost in our thoughts.

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"Cause you give it all away, you give it all away now
Don't let it come apart, don't want to see you come apart"
- Doves, "Caught By The River"


I believe that when watching a Premier League football team, if you ever arrive late for a game, you should never have to turn to a fellow fan and ask the fatal question - "Jesus Christ, is that Willie Nelson playing centre back for us?". And yet, these days, you never know at West Ham. We started this game with a back three of Aaron Cresswell, James Collins and Angelo Ogbonna and flanked them with nominal wing backs Pablo Zabaleta and Patrice Evra. That's a back line with an average age of thirty two, a Boer War veteran, one guy with rickets and three country music stars who think electric guitars are a bit fancy.

And which one of you was supposed to be marking Mane?

The cumulative effect of our nonsensical transfer policy was laid bare here as we faced up to one of the fittest, fastest teams around with an octogenarian defence and simply dared them to run past us. And they did. Zabaleta was up against Andrew Robertson, and the Scot had the time of his life gallivanting around like a West Brom player at a Spanish taxi cab rank. On the other side, Evra fared little better and seemed to be suffering from the same disease that afflicted Zabaleta when he first arrived whereby he thought he was still playing for a Manchester side. So up he pushed, and sure enough we frequently lost the ball and the hosts exploited the gaps in behind him. I am seriously wondering if having wing backs with a combined age of sixty nine is a great idea, guys.

In fairness, it wasn't just the defence where we struggled. Of the entire line up only Joao Mario and Manuel Lanzini were under 28 and one of them isn't even our player. I have despaired of this transfer policy for long enough that I hope you will forgive me a brief moment of schadenfreude when I say to David Sullivan - I fucking told you this was going to happen.

And so the slowest team around played the quickest and it went pretty much as you might expect. While it's easy to be critical of West Ham, it's only reasonable to acknowledge that Liverpool are an electric side. Between Jurgen Klopp and their enormous budget, they have weapons that we simply cannot cope with, and have destroyed far better sides than us. Going forward they attack with quicksilver precision, and Salah could have scored as early as the second minute. Then we were saved by the woodwork, as the game settle into a pattern of Liverpool swarming all over us, while we tried to break with pace on the counter-attack but failed to do so because breaking with pace is hard when half of your team were teenagers during Suez.

For all that, we were not without threats of our own. Having Marko Arnautovic up front allows us the luxury of having a top six player in a bottom half team, and that is something that most of our relegation rivals cannot say. The Austrian was on his own here as Javier Hernandez was dropped for Lanzini, and had a frustrating afternoon getting annoyed that his team mates weren't a bit better. Which is saying something when you think he played with Ryan Shawcross for all that time at Stoke.

At 0-0, Arnautovic latched on to a rare decent through ball and brilliantly conjured a chip on to the crossbar from just outside the box. Loris Karius did well to tip it on to the woodwork and with that probably went our best chance of getting something from the game. Even with all of Arnautovic, Mario and Lanzini on the pitch, we struggled to keep possession and without a truly dominant central midfielder who can carry the ball and get us forward, it is bordering on impossible to ever create very much in these sort of games.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing was the way we defended, as our calling card under Moyes has been to set up with a well-drilled defensive line and rely on the general excellence of our defenders to repel teams. The problem with that is it relies on us having some sort of parity further up the pitch and with Antonio on the bench and Lanzini looking every inch like he'd just returned from injury, we didn't have the necessary class to keep the ball in advanced positions.

And so it was that even though I thought we were fairly competitive in the first half, it was that special brand of competitiveness that requires you to be a fan of that particular side and be squinting very hard indeed. Football fans see positives everywhere because we are conditioned to do so. Thus, when Antonio arrived and scored immediately with a fine angled finish we all briefly began to construct a theoretical scenario in which a comeback was plausible. I thought that if ever Hernandez was going to come on, it was then, when that shaky Liverpool backline was rocking, but Moyes is glacial in his decision making and the moment passed, Mane scored the fourth, and by the time he brought him on it kind of looked like a punishment.

In the same vein, I took some positives from Zabaleta's continued Herculean efforts and conveniently ignored the way Robertson was breezing past him with alarming frequency. I similarly lauded a couple of fine Adrian saves and glossed over the remote controlled malfunction that saw him somehow being twenty yards from his goal when Roberto Firmino scored the Liverpool third. You can apparently buy drugs very easily on Merseyside, after all.

This went about as well as it looks like it would

So while we are reduced to clutching at the thinnest of straws, it's true that Liverpool were simply a great deal better than us. And while there is no doubt that we have every right to demand our team puts up a better show than this, it's also undeniable that under David Sullivan's stewardship we have gone backwards at breakneck speed. We simply aren't equipped to compete with these teams, and these kinds of results are inevitable until there is a massive overhaul of this squad by someone who knows that they are doing.

Once more, to those fans who travelled up - I salute your inexhaustible optimism.

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"A picture is worth a thousand words"
- The Temptations, "Paradise"

The Temptations are not wrong. A pretty big game, is Swansea.

***

"They don't, they don't speak for us"
- Radiohead, "No Surprises"

Bet Bobby would have been delighted to have been associated with this

In some regards the off-field antics were more interesting than the game, as both fans attempted to out-dickhead each other. Liverpool fans got in early by booing 74-year-old Hammers debutant Patrice Evra, who is great to have around the place because of his terrific social media antics. He can no longer run, but we care not for such prosaic notions and with young Jose Fonte having left for the Orient, he represented a great opportunity to somehow increase the average age of our squad outside of the transfer window.

Anyway, Evra was roundly booed all day. Home fans maintained this was because he is a former Manchester United player, except that they also kept singing Luis Suarez songs at him, meaning that they were linking the booing to the time Suarez was found guilty of racially abusing Evra and banned for eight games. So just to reiterate - they booed him for being racially abused. Wonderful humour though.

Not to be outdone, some of our fans responded by holding up the banner above. In an era when it has become a badge of honour to tell the world how little you are offended by anything because you aren't a snowflake, I suppose that I run the risk of outing myself as hypersensitive here, but I need to say something - this banner is moronic and reprehensible. It is so stupid I had to double check that it wasn't a parody before writing this. It doesn't speak for me or any sensible West Ham fan, and the main thing it has done is set the cause of the fans' march back before it's even begun. You all thought you were starting in Stratford, but instead you'll be going from Chelmsford. Bravo.

Not that I need to explain this, surely, but comparing people to Hitler is generally a pretty bad idea. Hitler is in the conversation for the worst human being who ever lived. He killed people in their millions, and there will have been people in that crowd who lost loved ones to German bombs in World War II. I am sure that the people who came up with it thought it was a pithy line but it's just crass and almost criminally stupid. Wasting a few million quid on Robert Snodgrass and Matt Jarvis isn't equivalent to waging a war, changing the club badge doesn't equate to eugenics and a failed stadium move isn't the same as systematically exterminating millions of innocent people because they are Jewish.

Don't message me with any justifications for this bullshit, or tell me it's banter or tell me it's not a comparison with Hitler because not only is it a literal direct comparison with Hitler, but it is somehow an unfavourable one.

I am so sick of the fucking morons on our lunatic fringe who follow this club and are so much more vocal than the average punter, meaning that we literally have to say things to other fans like "Yeah, most of our supporters are great if you can just ignore the Hitler banner".

Here is a tip for those going on the march. Your cause is just - the Board have done things for which they deserve to be held to account, and they deserve to have to face that examination in the full light of the public glare. That publicity helps the cause because external pressures can be brought to bear on the owners and a supportive media and wider football community will help affect change. Win the PR battle, and you have a head start on winning the war.

But here's the thing - if you march singing songs about Karren Brady, or carry flags personally abusing the Sullivan family or even do something as unthinkably brainless as carry a banner comparing our Jewish chairman to Adolf Fucking Hitler, then you cede every piece of moral high ground that you might have. We are once more reduced to a rabble of hooligans and thugs who aren't worth listening to, and have nothing reasonable to say. I beg you not to take that route. Stick to the facts. The team is shit and the stadium isn't what was promised. That's plenty enough to be getting on with.

***

"Well she wrote me a letter
Said she couldn't live without me no more"
- The Box Tops, "The Letter"


And then just as I was about to hit "Publish", Karren Brady sent a letter to the various fans groups that she met recently, ahead of the proposed march before the Burnley game. I've commented a couple of times on this before, and explained that while I understand the reasons for the march, I'm concerned that without any tangible goals or demands, it runs the risk of being a protest about nothing.

The genesis of all this was a meeting where representatives of Real West Ham Fans, KUMB, Hammers Chat, WHUISA and other groups that I can't name as I haven't seen minutes, sat down with Karren Brady and discussed a wide range of topics. The letter covers these in detail and I think it's fair to say that the club are at least taking the fan dissatisfaction seriously now, which is to the great credit of all the fan groups involved. Don't underestimate the inroads they have made through a coherent start and impressive organisation.

There is definite movement on certain demands made by fans to make the ground more like home and also a pledge to better improve communication with supporters. All of that is fine by me and a welcome move towards a more collaborative approach rather then the ludicrously adversarial tone that has been adopted in the past. There is actually quite a lot here, even if it is two years too late.

But there is a wider point too. Why did it take the threat of thousands of fans marching to get movement on something so trivial as putting up a banner honouring Billy Bonds? If it takes that type of effort to get you to engage with fans properly then I would humbly suggest that someone somewhere in the organisation needs to go on a crash course in people. You don't get to call us customers when it suits you and then totally ignore the concept of customer service. It is bananas that the club have allowed things to degenerate this far before acting.

And yet, for all the words and waffle in that letter, it is not going to be anywhere near enough to placate fans. I have a certain, limited sympathy with the Board in the sense that the fans aren't totally united and thus the disparate demands make it impossible to please everyone. There are a lot of people who are very upset that the club badge was changed, for example, while I think it's just about the dumbest possible hill to die on. I accept that my view is no more or less valid than anyone else's, and that's why I joined WHUISA and voted for people to represent me. But therein lies the problem.

Apart from Payet?

The People's Front of Judea/Judean People's Front approach means that lots of issues are getting floated by lots of different groups and it results in a letter like this, which is like a freewheeling trip through a list of minor annoyances, and summarily fails to address the two main problems that underpin everything - namely, that the team are crap, everybody knows that turning that around will be a significant undertaking, and the stadium is not up to scratch.

Now, I should also say that the letter constitutes the club's version of the action points. This doesn't mean that there weren't other things raised in the meeting, but simply that the club don't want to engage on those points. Indeed, I know for a fact that Brady was directly asked to discontinue her column in The Sun and refused, even though it was detrimental to the club during the transfer window. File that one away folks - it tells us something.

My buddy @LeBigHouse has suggested that what the fans really need is a cut throat, razor sharp shithouse of a trade unionist to lead this fight, and I'm inclined to agree. Not because the people involved aren't representing their groups well, but because we need to narrow all this down to a laser focus.

Fan questions should focus on the two areas I highlighted above: You promised us a stadium that was fit for football and you haven't delivered - what are you going to do about it? You also promised us that the stadium would allow us to generate more funds and improve the team. Why are you still allowing the owner to have a crack at this as a hobby, rather than employing qualified professionals to do the job?

That's it. That should be the agenda. Everything else is nice and I've suggested some of them myself but they are ancillary to the current situation. Small incremental gains are fine when you've exhausted the big ticket ideas, but the club haven't come remotely close to that. The Board should have watched that game on Saturday and felt a burning shame for every single minute of it. Barring one glorious accident of a season in 2015/16 when the league was upside down, they have done nothing but mire West Ham in mediocrity while spending vast sums to trail behind smaller clubs. A good team would paper over these cracks, but the bad one we've had for eighteen months is widening them.

The sole nod to this in the letter is the line "My Chairmen have also asked me to reaffirm their commitment to the restructuring of our recruitment policy as David Sullivan outlined recently..." That's it. David is going to appoint a Director of Football in the summer, at which point it will be too late to do any actual planning for the transfer window because real clubs are doing all of that now. Wonderful.

I'm not disagreeing with anything much in Brady's letter but it's all obfuscation because that's all she's allowed us. Her comments on the stadium essentially say little more than "We promise to look at this", which is a coded version of saying "I'll ask the landlord, but they're skint and we ain't paying anything so, ho hum..." Reading all of that, the temptation is to say that the reality here is that while we are tenants of the stadium, the thing that we really want - to be closer to the pitch - is not actually in their power to give us.

And this, I think, is the heart of the problem. We want to be on the touchline again, in a ground that feels like home, in the electric swirl of a pulsating football match, watching a team that is good enough to justify the move. And for all the lip service that the club may pay to those cries, it's not really in their gift to be able to do anything much about any of it. The stadium isn't ours, and the people who make the decisions about the team seem immune to any form of blame. So on we march, and up go the banners, and out come the hearses, and all the while it turns out that letting in four goals against teams like Liverpool is now the status quo. What a mess.

Please note that the opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, nor should be attributed to, KUMB.com.

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Is this enough from the board?
KUMB.com
Filed: Tuesday, 27th February 2018
By: Paul Walker

So we have seen the whites of their eyes, certainly not the colour of their money but we do know where they draw the line in the sand over discussions with angry fans.

Intentionally or otherwise, when Karren Brady turned up at last week's five-hour meeting with the fans' alliance without David Sullivan (ill) or David Gold (too old or ill-informed), and with communications executive director Tara Warren and head of match day operations Ben Illingworth, it became clear very quickly what the board were not prepared to negotiate on.

Brady declined to consider questions about club finances, ownership and shares, plus transfer policy, because it was not her remit. So immediately, the core reason many will be marching for - a change of ownership - was not up for discussion. Frankly, it was never likely to be.

But that, and last night's (Monday) 5,000 word response from Brady to the previous week's lengthy debate, is hardly going to appease the rank and file who are marching on March 10 for change at the top. Full stop.

In the end it was always going to be this way. Brady has handled all the peripheral stuff; the badge, the memorial gardens, the legacy and museum, stewarding, retractable seating etc, etc but to drag our ownership into any meaningful discussion about their control of the club and the future, is a totally different matter.

The Real West Ham Fans Action Group, who have 16,000 plus on their books and have done a remarkable job getting the club to even this stage of negotiations, plus the associated groups like ourselves and other fans' organisations on the committee that met Brady, must, in all, speak for over 20,000 of our fan base.

The vast majority of this united front want an end to Sullivan's regime and will march ahead of the Burnley game under a banner of 'no confidence in the board.' So what was in Brady's letter is not going to solve the core problem, the anger of many is now too entrenched. This looks like a long, painful campaign.

Will Sullivan and Gold eventually get fed up with the hassle and sell. Who knows? Will they wait until the taxation levels drop on their profits on the stadium move? More likely. But with the club worth something like £500m now, they are going to want a lot of cash to walk away. Russians, Arab nations, the Yanks, please form an orderly queue because it is only you in the ball game now.

Frankly I expected more from Brady than what has transpired. I expected a large carrot to be dangled in front of fans to try to stop the march. A new badge now, maybe or other promises. But you know what us fans think about promises from this board!

Brady's letter took a long time last night to digest. But it is what we expected, hugely professional, a very political dialogue and complex. This lady has run rings round a Prime Minister, a Home Secretary, a London Mayor/Foreign Secretary, she doesn't do Sullivan's negotiating for nothing.

So what did we get? A list of what the club could do easily, what it couldn't do because we are tenants, what it blames the owners for and what the owners won't do.

There's a decree that no fan wearing other club colours (apart from our opponents that day, I assume) will be admitted to the stadium. There will be themed match day experiences, Westfield's might be a bit more assessable. Everybody gets the London living wage, our employees and those who work for the dreaded owners.

There will be another attempt to get ex-Boleyn stewards on board, and one on the senior supervisory team in each of the four areas of the stadium will be ex-Upton Park. Catering has improved, accessible shuttle buses are more frequent, stewards will be educated in the ways of football fans. The memorial gardens back at the Boleyn will be properly maintained long term (as if this even needs to be an issue).

Now our legacy. Historic club crests will be on show, significant moments in our history will be celebrated, club heroes (Moore, Hurst, Peters, Brooking, Bonds, Noble) will be honoured with permanent tributes. Billy Bonds especially. I await that with baited breath. The East Stand should be renamed, how difficult is that?

Flags of our 16 'core' crests will be on show for the Burnley game. They are going to ask someone if they can rename the main walkway from Stratford as the West Ham Way. Keep with me everyone, it gets better!

There's going to be a Fan Zone, much like the excellent one at West Brom and the one some of us experienced at Anfield. Heineken will install a 40ft-long mobile bar as a social hub, with legends on a stage and lots and lots of signs and flags letting us know this is the home of West Ham United. Just why the board didn't think ahead and sanction this sort of stuff 18 months ago, you can only guess.

And someone is going to ask someone in authority if the old stalls and food vendors outside the Boleyn can be re-integrated. E20 and Newham Council have to OK that, so don't hold your breath.

And the museum. The club have 1,000 items in store, they will put on occasional displays but look for a permanent site for a new museum. Seeing as we own doodle squat at the LS bar the club shop, your guess is as good as anyone's on that!

Now the badge (for me the least important item, sorry, try not to shot the messenger). There's been 16 since our formation, various colours, some with castles, some with just hammers, some with gold. Some that horrible yellow. The reason folk hate the current one is that is the symbol of the move, the Board.

The club explained away the consultations that got us this far. The voting etc. That 56 per cent wanted the current crest. But of how many votes? About 12,000 I was once told, so the new badge was wanted by about 7,000 folk out of 56,000.

Yes, I know, you don't vote you lose any right to complain but I always thought we were being rail-roaded here, and the 'London' tag was all about marketing abroad.

Anyway, the club are only prepared to talk again in 2020 ahead of the plans for our 125th anniversary, they'll want a new badge to flog for that, obviously, and will talk about a new permanent one after that. What else? Oh yes, ticket prices will be frozen again, we have been told (AGAIN) that our fixtures will always have priority at the OS (stop laughing at the back).
　
What next? Oh yes, retractable, removable, rebuildable seating. That's the owners' fault, of course. The club were given videos by the LLDC back in 2013 to pass on to us "in good faith". Hope you all got that, not our fault guv, sorry.

We now know that even with state-of-the-art retractable seating gliding in on golden clouds at the flick of a switch (like in Paris), it would get the fans no nearer to the action than we are now. The stadium configuration, shape, sight lines, roof cover, precludes that.

The club cannot be blamed for the retractable seating contractors going bust and the current cheapo scaffolding option we now have. But I would love to know just when the Board knew about that problem, and how long they continued to sell season tickets claiming they would have real retractable seats rather than ones that are torn down, dumped in a local goods yard and then refitted at laughable cost.

The solution is that the whole place is shut down for a year, we move to a temporary stadium (Orient, Dagenham maybe?) and the place is torn apart and refitted at even more laughable cost. Not going to happen with these ground owners and why would our Board offer to spend so much without getting people behind the goals any nearer to the action?

Of course the club will look at ways of tarting it all up, to get some seats (how?) closer to the pitch after discussions with E20 (and the new London Mayor I assume). Don't expect much change there any time soon then.

So how about any chat with Sullivan about the transfer policy debacle? Well Karren has covered that one… "My chairmen has also asked me to re-affirm their commitment to the re-structuring of our recruitment policy as David Sullivan outlined in his message to our supporters on the club's official site recently". Well that's OK then.

Oh, and she added: "They have also requested I reiterate their full commitment to ensuring a better match day experience. We have listened and want to work with you to rebuild a sense of belonging and unity." As long as you lot don't 'belong' much longer, I can hear you all cry. Ever get the feeling we are being 'played' and kept at arms length?

Finally, I would just like to add my thanks and congratulations to all those who have given up hours, days, months of their lives to get this campaign off the ground. Proper West Ham.

Please note that the opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, nor should be attributed to, KUMB.com.

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Beware the Irons of March
KUMB.com
Filed: Tuesday, 27th February 2018
By: Staff Writer

Following lengthy discussions with West Ham United's Board last week, the West Ham Groups United (WHGU) coalition have announced plans to poll their members in order to determine the level of support for a protest march next weekend.

The march - which is being organised by the Real West Ham Fans Action Group (RWHFAG) and is expected to attract thousands of disillusioned Hammers fans - is set to take place in Stratford on the morning of the next Premier League home fixture, against Burnley on 10 March.

As a result of the RWHFAG's plans - and, no doubt, a fast-growing membership that has swelled to 16,000 since November - the Board invited the group and several prominent West Ham United-based websites and social media groups, including the West Ham United Independent Supporters' Association (WHUISA), Hammers Chat, West Ham TV and Knees up Mother Brown to a meeting at the stadium last week.

During discussions that lasted in excess of five hours, the Board - represented by Vice Chair Karren Brady and Executive Director Tara Warren - took questions on a range of subjects regarding many aspects of the club's perceived shortcomings including the general match day experience, memorabilia and heritage, finances and media exposure.

Later in the week Vice Chair Brady responded with a 5,000-word 'open letter' to WHGU addressing many - although not all - of the issues raised at the meeting.

And at a WHGU meeting on Monday evening, it was agreed that the open letter should be published via the coalition's various channels so that individual members of each group could have their say in order to determine whether the club's proposals were sufficient enough to satisfy supporter's demands and lead to the march being postponed or cancelled.

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POSSIBLE MOYES CHANGES AND THE SLIPPERY EEL
By Tony Hanna 27 Feb 2018 at 08:00
WTID

Sometimes you just have to take defeat on the chin and the weekends game at Liverpool is one of those times. Whether Mark Nobles comments about it being a free hit were taken in the wrong context or not, whether you agree with the formation or team selection, on the day Liverpool were just too good. Manchester City found out just a few weeks ago at Anfield that a Liverpool side with Salah, Firmino and Mane all on song are difficult to stop. They let in the same as us too – four. In fact this was the third consecutive match where Liverpool have put four past us. With games to play at Arsenal and Chelsea together with home matches against both Manchester clubs we must hope for more resolute defending if we have any ambition of gaining points from these games. In Sam's days he would have targeted the forthcoming home matches against Burnley, Southampton, Stoke and Everton. Avoid defeat in these four matches and win two of them and we should be safe. The bookies have us at 10/1 for the drop but it is impossible to have the same confidence as this log jam of relegation candidates shows no signs of clearing any time soon.

What will be interesting is to see if or how David Moyes reacts to the weekends loss. There are a few players that could come under the microscope. Firstly there is the goalkeeping situation. When Hart was dropped for Adrian, Moyes insisted that Hart would get his opportunity and play Premier League games again this season. I thought at the time that perhaps Moyes thought there would be a time when Adrian's position would again come under scrutiny. My preference would be for Adrian to stay between the sticks but after conceding three at Brighton and now four at Liverpool I would imagine if Hart was to get his chance again it may be now. Another who could be making way is Ginge. Winston Reid was warming the bench on the weekend and whilst he hasn't had the best of seasons this is another change that Moyes might consider. It is also conceivable that Cresswell could be the one making way for Reid in a back three and with Evra certainly showing some steel in the tackling department on his debut the back five may well have a very different look about it against Swansea. Whilst showing some nice touches at times it would be surprise me if Mario retains his place. A fully fit Lanzini offers a deal more and I have my doubts that Moyes will play the two together too many more times this season.

I would like to dedicate the remainder of my weekly article to a former player who earlier last month turned 65 years of age.

Every once and a while a player comes along that gets your blood pumping. That happened to me, and I am sure many others, when Johnny Ayris broke through into the West Ham first team in 1970. The little right winger stood just 5'5" tall and weighed nine and a half stone but with his superb dribbling skills he was to prove as slippery as an eel. At first sight he had the swerve of Stanley Matthews and the trickery of George Best and he seemed destined for the top. The next seven seasons were to tell a different story.


Born in Wapping in 1953 Johnny Ayris would spend hours smacking a ball against the sheds outside his parents council flat. He would often kick the ball onto the roof and guess where it would come down before catching it on his right foot. The young kid was addicted to practice and when he made it at West Ham his great love was training. He admitted later that "training was a joy – it was touch, it was pace, it was skill and I was lucky enough to have those attributes. I loved the training perhaps more than the matches and maybe I wasn't cut out to be a footballer, I should have pushed my case a bit more."

He made his debut at just 17 years of age at home to Burnley on the 3rd October 1970 and played a blinder setting up all three Geoff Hurst goals in a 3-1 victory. Ron Greenwood gave him a professional contract just two days later and it was not long before the North Bank were singing "we've got Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny Ayris on the wing" to the tune of Ging Gang Goolie. He continued to mesmerise defences until we played Chelsea at home nearly a year later on the 11th September 1971. Johnny was running rings around the notorious Chelsea hard man Ron "Chopper" Harris and the riled defender picked his moment 'to let him know he was still there.' Johnny was to later say "I'd been giving him the run around and he was getting really wound up and the crowd were on his back." One challenge later and Johnny Ayris had flipped over the back of Harris and he landed with a sickening thud. The young winger was all of a sudden having difficulty breathing and he was immediately subbed for Bobby Howe. Hospital tests showed that the injury had caused an air bubble to form in his lung, a condition he was to later to find out could be life threatening. Because of the injury Ron Greenwood would in the future only pick and choose the right games for him to play in, and even then a string of other injuries would curtail his ambitions. John is pictured right at the end of this very notable line up!

The whole incident had a lasting effect on his confidence but he said he felt no grudge towards Harris. Johnny was also to come off second best to the infamous Tommy Gemmill of Celtic in a match played for Bobby Moore's testimonial. John was to play only 69 games for West Ham over seven seasons, scoring just two goals. Following the Harris incident most of his time at West Ham was spent on the bench or in the background. Nicknamed "Rat" to his team mates because of his ragged looks, the Hammers fans dubbed him "Cyril Lord" after the carpet king, for his propensity for hitting the turf after having the rug pulled out from under him! Johnny Ayris loved every minute of his West Ham career but an incredible talent was wasted in some ways as his love of just playing overshadowed the real issue of playing professional football in a time where his light weight frame was no match for the battle hardened men of that era. Between December 1973 and October 1976 Johnny Ayris became our super-sub, making twenty five appearances of which 15 were from the bench. In many of the early matches he played though, he was one of the most exciting talents you would ever wish to see.

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