HammerBlog

Helguson set for West Ham move?

2005-06-20T10:29:00.000+01:00

Several reports have come in that Watfords Heider Helguson has signed for West Ham.

The striker, who is said to have cost £1.25M apparently agreed terms yesterday after returning back to England from Iceland.

More on this as it comes in.

Teddy Sheringham signs extension

2005-06-11T13:03:00.000+01:00

Teddy Sheringham, the West Ham 39 year old striker has signed a 1 year extension with the hammers.

The fans favourite striker, who netted 21 goals last season said to the official site “It’s fantastic to have signed for another season at West Ham United, it was a dream of mine when I arrived to help the Club get back into the Premier League and achieving that in my first season was just amazing."
After speculation from several sources that he was heading for Australia aswell as several other clubs, it'll come as a relief to many fans that he can provide goals in the Premiership.

Dailly signs new deal

2005-06-11T10:50:00.000+01:00

Christian Dailly has signed a new contract with the hammers.

The 31 year old defender, who has been plagued by injury for most of the season, and has also had to cope with the loss of his father said the the West Ham official site "It's great to have re-signed with West Ham United, It's been a difficult season for me on and off the pitch, but all I want to do is play football for this Club and I'm delighted that I'll be able to continue to do that in the Premier League next season."

The extension is probably only for a year, but it'll be difficult for Dailly to break straight back into the team, considering the recent form toward the end of the season with the pairing of Anton Ferdinand and Elliot Ward.

Dailly has just completed two back to back games with Scotland, even scoring a goal against Moldova. This means that Dailly will be able to start the pre-season completely injury free.

Barthez joins Hammers goalkeeper race

2005-06-09T17:16:00.000+01:00

Fabien Barthez has now joined the race to become West Hams number 1 alongside contenders Kelvin Davis and Roy Carroll.

The Frenchman looks set to join the hammers after a ban incurred when he spat at a referee during a friendly in February. The ban, enforced by the French FA, which expires at the end of the year wouldn't apply in England which has prompted the shock move.

Although Ipswich keeper Davis could have joined West Ham for a reported £1M, it now looks likely that Pardew will opt toward the two Bosman options as not to tie up unnecessary transfer fees.

Sheringham to stay

2005-06-07T16:11:00.000+01:00

Teddy Sheringham looks set to stay at the hammers after his agent said to day on Sky Sports news "Its 95% certain Teddy will be a West Ham player next season".

After recent speculation that Teddy will be moving to Australia, it looks set that the striker who scored 21 goals last season wants to continue helping West Ham try to retain their Premiership status.

Kelvin Davis set to join West Ham

2005-06-06T16:56:00.000+01:00

Kelvin Davis is apparently now in talks with West Ham.

After talks fell through with Sunderland last week, it appears the Pardew now wants highly rated Ipswich keeper Davis to fill the hole that may need to be filled if Jimmy Walker doesn't make a full recovery.

The transfer fee is rumoured to be in the area of £1M.

Rebrov training with Kiev

2005-06-05T14:40:00.000+01:00

So it looks like its goodbye Sergei Rebrov!

He's already our of contract and is now back at home training with his original team. Its a shame really because Sergei was the signing I got excited most about last summer, but he just failed to live up to expectations. I suppose theres plenty good reasons why Pards didn't play him up front, but the 2 games he did against Watford at home and Sunderland away, we both won. The former with Rebrov scoring the winning goal after we were 2-0 down.

Good luck Sergei, and all the best with the rest of your career.

Its silly season again!!

2005-06-04T18:26:00.000+01:00

Well now we are up, we can expect nothing less than the obligatory silly season, that time of year when we are linked to anyone and everyone that seems to be floating about.

The most likely looking prospect at the moment is Nicky Shorey from Reading, not a bad buy and is reported to be a great fan of Pards after his time in Reading. Also tagging along it seems is the more promising Steve Sidwell, the ex-Arsenal midfielder who impressed everyone and even made the FourFourTwo top player outside the premiership, I think he looks quite a good prospect and would much prefer him to Mullins.

Other rumours that seem to be doing the rounds are Kelvin Davis (Ipswich), Heider Helguson (Watford), Roy Carrol (Man United), Ian Harte (Levante), Ray Parlour (Middlesborough), Justin Hoyte (Arsenal), Jon Stead (Blackburn), Albert Celades (Real Madrid(!!)), Grzegorz Rasiak (Derby), Shefki Kuqi (Ipswich) and more recently Carlton Cole (Aston Villa) and Lee Bowyer (Newcastle).

Thats a hell of a lot of players already, some promising ones there, also so dross to boot.

Even then I'm sure I've missed a couple off. One things for sure, its more exciting than what would have been going on had we stayed down, I'll bring more news as and when it happens!

A Weekend in Cardiff

2005-06-03T13:00:00.000+01:00

Wow, thought I'd start my first ever blog to mark our promotion back up the the Premiership!

What a weekend it was, I don't know what was different, but right from the outset there was a feeling that we were going to do it.

We started off the weekend by staying round my mates on Saturday where a couple of us had a BBQ along with plenty of cold beer in the sunshine, the garden was adorned with West Ham flags including a rather cheap skate one with my mates from last year's play off finals with the '2004' crossed out and replaced with '2005' in marker pen.

We also managed to get the hire car which we spent half hour covering in ribbons and flags for the journey on Sunday, at first it looked embaressingly 'scarferish', but we thought why the f*ck not, we were going to make it this year!

Arriving at Cardiff at 1pm we sat in the hotel bar whilst we waited for our rooms to get ready, in fact I stayed in the hotel bar until 7pm when I thought it was best to head off to keep a clear head for the big day tommorow, the others stayed down there till 11pm, and it showed the next day when they were struggling to drink!

It was finally here, the day I had been waiting for since we thrashed Ipswich 2-0 at Portman Road (another f*cking great day!), up nice and early at 7am (well I did get to bed early and its not easy to sleep under those conditions!) jumped in the shower and walked around the corner to the city center to get a feel for the place and to grab some fags and the papers. Even at that time in the morning there were a few hundred West Ham walking about the street, and not a PNE shirt in sight, after finding a shop open at that time in the morning on a bank holiday I managed to get my bits and head back to the hotel for Breakfast and to get the others.

By now everyone was up (8:30am) but we had to head back into the city center so that Dean could get a ticket off someone, the only thing is he didn't even know what he looked like! So whilst we wandered around, we very fortunately stumbled into Tom as as he drove around the corner, managed to get the ticket, drove back, parked the car and got back to the center just as the Walkabout bar was opening at 10am!

The buzz just walking into that place even that early was already good, it was more or less empty which meant we could get the beers nice and quick, managed to get a spot by the stage so we could dump our lagers and watched the place swell with claret and blue shirts and flags that were draped over the mezzanine balcony. By the time everyone had got there, there must have been about 40 in our group and the atmosphere was electric, the screens all showed some of the greatest West Ham moments, as bubbles blared out the speaker to everyone singing along. Everybody was each others best mate, and as the time got on and the beers really flowed the crowd got louder and louder until the place was jumping. It was about this time, that I was thinking that I didn't feel this way last year just before we played Palace, and I was in the same venue, I was really confident this time, and with that we left towards the ground.

If theres one image that will stay with me forever, its the same image from this year and last year at the PO finals - The view down St. Marys street as everyone decended apon the stadium, a great big moving sea of claret and blue. The same view shrouded the entire south stand of the Millenium stadium aswell as I got to my seat.

'Bubbles' rung up around the ground before kick off, and the atmosphere stayed the same thoughout. We had the better of the game, it certainly wasn't pretty, but where we hadn't turned up the year before it looked like the same had happened to Preston. We had the better of the chances throughout the game including one excruciating triple miss from Harewood and Zamora that ended up in the keepers arms, then not long after was that magic moment, a long ball down from Walker that was headed to Zamora, who passed it to the feet of Matty as Bobby ran to the center, a quick cross from Matty and Zamora stopping dead in his tracks wrong footed the 2 PNE defenders as Zamora calmly tapped the ball into the corner of the goal.

To say the croud went mental is an understatement, we went absoloutly f*cking barmy, I ended up laying down 2 rows in front with kev on top of me but I didn't care, this was what it felt like to be 1-0 up in the play off final, and I'll tell you what it was one of the best feelings in my life.

Toward the end was a very nervous moment when Jimmy Walker (who there only happens to be one of) fell awkardly just outside his area, the injury looked bad and Bywater came on for the free kick that looked almost certain to end up in the wrong onion bag, the free kick avoided the wall and went straight into the arms of the waiting Bywater, the collective sigh of relief was almost deafening. Following this 7 (yes SEVEN) minutes of injury time was awarded, I'm pretty sure there have never been a longer 7 minutes in my life, it felt like bloody hours. But as soon as that final whistle went there was pandamonium, we went barmy, the players went barmy, Pards jumped on people and the stadium shook under the strain. A really great moment happened shortly after when the players gathered and joined in with a huge rendition of bubbles with the West Ham fans who all remained in the ground, a magical moment indeed.

As soon as that was all over and done with, off back to the Walkabout bar we went where we partied with the rest of the fans, which also included a 50 person conga going all the way round the pub to the "Do, do, do, Nigel Reo-Coker" song. Absoloutley shagged out we headed back to the hotel for a few more beers and to get changed for a night out on the tiles. It turned out to be a bit of a damp squibb truth be told, but we still had a few more beers and a laugh even though there was hardly anyone out (it was a monday night after all!) then off we retired to bed to make the long journey back home the next day.

Overall a f*cking fanstastic weekend, and this time not spoiled by the 90 minutes of football. Heres to the next season in the English Premier League!