Archive for the ‘Talks’ Category

An interesting story in a Tanzanian Paper regarding a new African star invited by West Ham United for trials in April. read the article below :-

Young Africans ace Mrisho Ngassa has received an invitation to join English premiership club West Ham United for trials.

Ngassa, who has been constantly hunted by European teams, will fly to England early next month for the two-week trials.

A letter signed by West Ham United secretary P.R. Barnes says Ngassa is supposed to join the team from April 13.

It said the club was ready to incur all expenses for the players stay in England till the end of the trial.

“We are ready to pay for his transport, meals and accommodation during his stay in the country. We wish him good luck,”

said Barnes in the letter.
He said they have contacted Bakhressa, the agent recognised by FIFA, to organise the players trip to London.

Ngassa would be under the technical bench led by Coach Gianfranco Zola. The bench would assess his stamina, speed and attitude.

Young Africans secretary general Lucas Kisasa confirmed the good news, saying they have accepted the request through Bakhressa.

Kisasa urged Ngassa to train hard before departing for London in order to meet qualities required.

The move would benefit his club, as it is responsible for his transfer, should he pass the trials.

“We are happy with the invitation. It is a good opportunity for the player to show his prowess; it is also a golden opportunity for him, Young Africans and his country at large,”

said Kisasa.

This is the second time Ngassa gets a request for trials from European teams. Lov-Ham of Norway was the first team to seek his services.

However, the teenager’s earlier move hit a snag after the Norwegian club messed up with transfer procedures for not involving his club in the process.

We do not know much about this youngster but if anybody does, then leave us some info in the comments below.

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I am probably in a minority of people that are quite happy the way Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson is running our club, he seems to have the ability to maintain the club as a profitable business with a good team of people working in management, considering he has been through hell and back with his other businesses.

A very interesting story came up this morning regarding Hansa and West Ham United in the telegraph, read the story here:

Potential investors queue up as West Ham fight to stave off insolvency

Let me hear your view and who you may think this Asain Investor could be?

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West Ham clash against Fulham in their Premier League game today hoping to cash in on their recent good form and collect all three points.

The Hammers have had some good outings and have picked up seven out of the nine available points in their last three games. Last week, they drew 2-2 against Newcastle United despite taking the lead. However manager Gianfranco Zola will take these results especially as it looks that he might have to part with his star player Craig Bellamy in the transfer window, Zola said that the club is bigger than any player and that West Ham would prove stronger over the next few seasons and hopefully start competing amongst the top 5.

Fulham had an off last week after their game against Blackburn was called off due to a frozen pitch. Manager Roy Hodgson will be delighted with his team’s form so far and will hope they can finish up as high as possible on the league table.

Jimmy Bullard will miss the London derby as he is still struggling with a hip injury, but his proposed move to Bolton appears to be off for the moment.

Live Premier League

West Ham v Fulham

Upton Park, kick off 1330 hrs

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Kaka - AC Milan to Manchester City - Discussions to continue on Monday. Kaka is expected to play for Milan against Fiorentina at the San Siro tonight

Shay Given - Newcastle United to Manchester City - £8m bid submitted

Wilson Palacios - Wigan Athletic to Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal - Spurs and City have made bids

Craig Bellamy - West Ham United to Tottenham Hotspur, Man City - Player is reported to have demanded talks with both clubs about a move.

Nigel de Jong - Hamburg to Manchester City - £13m bid on the table, move could depend on Palacios joining City or not

Javier Saviola - Real Madrid to Portsmouth - Talks ongoing

Robbie Fowler - Unattached to North Queensland Fury - Talks ongoing

According to Wigan manager Steve Bruce, Tottenham and Wigan have all but agreed a fee for Wilson Palacios, and a £14m deal should be done soon. (Daily Mail)

Analysis: Don’t count out Manchester United making a late move for him, but they may well just sit on their hands here.

——————————————————————————————

TRANSFER RUMOURS

Marco Materazzi - Inter Milan to Manchester City

Juan Pablo Sorin - Cruzeiro to Newcastle United - Loan

Kieran Agard - Everton to Partick Thistle - Loan

Edmilson - Villareal to Portsmouth - Loan

Daniele De Rossi - Roma to Manchester City

John Terry - Chelsea to Manchester City

Jonjo Shelvey - Charlton Athletic to Middlesbrough - £2m

This post was submitted by Media Master using submit a Post!.

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Hammers technical director Gianluca Nani hopes to finalise a double-deal for Brescia pair Salomon Bartosz and Savio Nsereko this month, with the highly-rated teenage pair likely to be loaned back to the Italian club until the summer.

And here’s some footage of Nsereko in action for the German youth side:

“Gianluca Nani knows very well the qualities of Savio,”

Nsereko’s agent Patrick Bastianelli said this week.

“We talked about Savio no more than a week ago. In those talks Gianluca confirmed his will, and that of Zola’s, to bring the player to West Ham.

Meanwhile Steve Clarke has confessed that players Quashie, Bowyer and Boa Morte could be sold off before the end of the transfer window, in order to cut West Ham’s outfield players down to 20 with 3 goalkeepers, he said:

“Ideally you want 20 outfield players and three goalkeepers and at the moment we are operating with 26 and three keepers, which is a little bit too much,”

“You can’t have an 11 v 11 match in training - it doesn’t work in terms of organising - so it is better to have smaller numbers. You can work better with your team that way.”

Selling Bowyer, Boa Morte and Quashie would bring funds needed to buy the 2 Brescia young duo.

This post was submitted by GoalFanzine.com.

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Im back after a few days break expecting half the West Ham team to be sold off in what the media have called the West Ham fire sale, but it seems we have only have Widdowson out on loan to Grimsby, not quite what the red tops promised us.

Its early days yet and a few players will obviously be found new homes, but it will only be our fringe players. The rumour about Parker being offered £100k a week by Man City is interesting and a new offer for him around £12m could actually see him go, if its true.

The daily Mail have this amazing ability to see through walls and hear what is going on in every Premier League boardroom about who’s being sold, we all love the Daily Mail.

I cant see Zola letting any of his best players go unless the player wanted to go and an amazing silly amount of money was offered to the Hammers for him.

English Premier League Transfers

All English Premier League transfers are listed on this page.

If you find a transfer not listed here let us know and we’ll add it.

Last Updated: 6 January 2009

Arsenal

In:

Out:

Jay Simpson (loan, West Brom)

Aston Villa

In:

Out:

Blackburn Rovers

In:

Out:

Eddie Nolan (undisclosed, Preston),

Sergio Peter (undisclosed, Sparta Prague)

Bolton Wanderers

In:

Out:

Heidar Helguson (undisclosed, QPR)

Chelsea

In:

Michael Mancienne (loan return, Wolves)

Out:

Jack Cork (loan, Watford),

Wayne Bridge (undisclosed, Manchester City),

Ben Sahar (loan, De Graafschap)

Everton

In:

Out:

Lee Molyneux (free, Southampton)

Fulham

In:

Out:

T.J. Moncur (free, Wycombe)

Hull City

In:

Out:

Liverpool

In:

Out:

Manchester City

In:

Wayne Bridge (undisclosed, Chelsea)

Out:

Sam Williamson (loan, Wrexham)

Manchester United

In:

Zoran Tosic (undisclosed, Partizan Belgrade),

Adem Ljajic (undisclosed, Partizan Belgrade)

Out:

David Gray (loan, Plymouth),

Adem Ljajic (loan, Partizan Belgrade)

Middlesbrough

In:

Out:

Newcastle United

In:

Out:

Portsmouth

In:

Nadir Belhadj (£4.4m, Lens)

Out:

Lassana Diarra (£20m, Real Madrid),

Jermain Defoe (£15.75m, Tottenham)

Stoke City

In:

Out:

Sunderland

In:

Out:

Tottenham

In:

Jermain Defoe (£15.75m, Portsmouth)

Out:

Paul Staltieri (free, Borussia Monchengladbach)

West Brom

In:

Jay Simpson (loan, Arsenal)

Out:

Joss Labadie (loan, Shrewsbury)

West Ham - Fire Sale latest

In:

Out:

Joe Widdowson (loan, Grimsby)

Wigan

In:

Out:

This post was submitted by Joe J.

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Ghana captain Stephen Appiah has mentioned in the past that if he was to move to a club in England then it would most definitely have to be a club in London.

Appiah now a free agent after Fenerbahce had earlier disputed the ruling and even warned clubs that, they will have to pay dearly if they want to sign him. But the world governing body insisted on its ruling in a press statement last week declaring the Ghana captain a free agent.

There are 3 clubs that are showing an interest in Appiah, West Ham United, Newcastle, and Boro and these clubs are reported to be sending a scout out to watch how the former Fenerbahce ace plays against Tunisia on Wednesday, a game that can be watched live on Wednesday evening from links on soccer-pages.com.

Appiah is not only a strong central midfielder and defender but can also score goals and was once wanted by Harry Redknapp for Portsmouth but the asking price was £7m a fee that Harry did not want to pay.

All 3 clubs that will view him on Wednesday will more than likely make an offer to the player after the match with West Ham more than likely and hopefully being the successful club for 2 reasons, West Ham are a London club that play the style of attacking football that Appiah loves, and also Appiah has many friends in London which includes his close friend from Chelsea and Ghanian team mate, Michael Essien.

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When West Ham United’s players report for training Thursday, they will have a new mentor. Their previous coach, Alan Curbishley, quit last week, claiming the club’s Icelandic owners and Italian sporting director kept him out of the loop when buying and selling players.

Curbishley is a local man reared on the traditions of West Ham in London’s dockland. The Hammers’ kindergarten shaped fine young professionals - Curbishley himself, and before him Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst, and subsequently Trevor Brooking and Frank Lampard. The club’s ethos was the closest London gets to Brazil. The ball is played on the turf, and moved with a sense of artistry, not merely clubbed into the air the way an English football used to be.

If West Ham’s new coach is the man we all expect to be announced Thursday, some of that romance has a chance of being revived. Gianfranco Zola is back in town. He is in contention for the coaching role at West Ham, although the club had been sifting through 30 applicants and narrowing down the search to such candidates as Slaven Bilic, currently the Croatian national coach, Roberto Donadoni, recently fired by Italy, and Michael Laudrup, the Dane who is heading for Moscow as the new Spartak coach.

Why would Zola, once a fabulous player but with no practical experience in club team management, head that list?

Because West Ham’s decision makers have talked to him, twice. And because once you are in Zola’s company, you feel a zest for life, for his beloved sport, for the challenge of taking size and stature out of the equation.

Of all the players who came to England over the past decade, Zola, at 1.66 meters, a shade over 5-foot-5, would be the smallest. Of all the foreigners who influenced the English, who inspired a fresh passion for the craft, I would place Zola at the top. He gave work ethic a good name. I struggle to recall one match in which he played for Chelsea and did not leave a mark on the performance, a smile on the face of the game.

Born in Sardinia in July 1966, the month Bobby Moore led England to World Cup triumph, Zola is a product of his own personality and his unremitting desire to make physical force irrelevant. He learned tricks as an apprentice to Diego Maradona down in Naples; he was ushered out of Italy by the intransigence of Carlo Ancelotti when, as coach to Parma, that Italian had a rigid team structure that considered Zola too small, too unpredictable, too free-spirited. Ancelotti has since learned to relax the reins sufficiently for many triumphs at AC Milan.

Zola was chosen, at 30, by Chelsea’s manager then, Ruud Gullit. The giant Gullit and the manikin Zola opened the door for floods of overseas players by the way they showed the English that there are so many ways to the end product.

Yes, they won matches, and trophies. None sticks in my memory more than the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1998, when Chelsea beat VfB Stuttgart in Stockholm. Zola probably should not have played. He had a two-centimeter tear in an abdominal muscle, but begged to sit on the bench in case he was needed. He was, and barely 22 seconds after being summoned to leave his seat, he darted as quick as a lizard between the Stuttgart defenders.

Zola tricked men with his subtle imagination, then scored with real venom. “It wasn’t planned,” he told us afterward.

“In the moment, I used my positive strength and I got a reward for passion, also for the work that not only I but the masseur Mimmo Pezza did together in Rimini,”

where he trained to make the final.

“I thank this man for a beautiful moment which will be in my heart for as long as I can remember,”

he said.

No one can be sure Zola’s rare qualities will translate from playing to management. But it promises to be an engaging experiment.

By The Herald Tribune

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This post was submitted by The Herald Tribune.

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Zola

By Thursday West Ham will announce the signings of its new Manager Gianfranco Zola and the sensational signing of the Stephen Appiah (The Tornado)

Gianfranco Zola has been hinted by Kia Joorabchian to be the choice that the West Ham board have made ,  Kia Joorabchian who is acting as an official advisor to the Upton Park board in the hunt for a new manager, He said to the Media:

“Zola has got a lot of experience in the Premier League as a player and he has built a big reputation in Italy with the U21s,” It is also well known that Zola is Nani and Duxbury’s favourite to succeed Curbishley

Appiah

Stephen Appiah the Black Stars captain flew to London after the Ghana game and told KickOffGhana.com that,

“by the close of the week, I will see where I am going to play my club football.”

and the only club known to have had any talks and medical with Appiah is West Ham, Arsenal manager Wenger has and will not show interest in Appiah according to Gooner Talk because of 3rd party ownership of the player.

Appiah has made it quite clear that his dream is to play in the Premier League and in London.

West Ham are sitting in 5th place and only 1 point behind the leaders Chelsea, the next 5 games will be the big test for West Ham and its new manager and by the end of October we might even see West Ham above Chelsea, how ironic would that be for Zola.

Chelsea fans are excited about West Ham signing Zola but only because they believe if he succeeds in getting West Ham to Europe by at least a 5th place finish, then they will be wanting Zola for manager in the near future, and who can blame them, we have the same passion for Bilic.
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Apologies to anybody trying to access this post or any other post from this site earlier. We have upgraded to a larger and faster server due to the increase in readers, my thanks go out to all who read the posts on this blog.

Joe J

——————– Original Post ——————–

Mike Lee O.B.E. (Director of WHUFC) is presumably the man holding the interviews.

Mike Lee’s Background:

When West Ham was 1st thought of as a club to purchase by Bjorg, he put the proposition to Eggert, who sent a 2 teams out to investigate West Ham’s financial status and to finalise a deal, 1 of the teams was Vero Communications LTD which is owned by Mike Lee OBE.

Mike Lee OBE of Vero Communications Ltd is now a director at West Ham and is also an Advisor in the world of communications and sport (UEFA -Premier League - and Olympics 2012) with his experience and contacts Mike will be a key figure that will help to develop the club to its next stage.

Candidates

Gianfranco Zola:

Zola is one of the Chelsea’s and the Premier Leagues greatest football stars, unbelievable skills and a fantastic tactician.

Zola decided to leave the players game, just a week before he turned 39. He is currently an Italian football pundit, though he also comments on European competitions. He has also been named joint coach of the Italian Under-21 side with ex Chelsea player Pierluigi Casiraghi.

Experienced Managerial Skills 6/10

C’Mon Yu Irons! view on Zola as manager for West Ham United:-

We are surprised that Zola made it to a top 4 choice, although he is a legend in football will he have the right experience to take West Ham forward as Manager.

Slaven Bilic

Bilic is a big hero to West Ham as Zola is to Chelsea but with a lot more experience as a Manager.

Head coach of Croatia, Bilic put an end to Englands chances of reaching the Euro 2008 finals, his flamboyant style of managing his team has taken the world by surprise and has taken Croatia to new heights in the Fifa ranking league.

Experienced Managerial Skills 7/10

C’Mon Yu Irons! view on Bilic as Manager for West Ham United:-

The chance of West Ham signing Bilic up as manager of West Ham is slim, Bilic and his family are heroes of Croatia and for him to leave the job as Croatian coach will definitely cause him to be hated by his own country in his pursuit of his dream job with West Ham, maybe after the World Cup in 2010 we might see Bilic as Manager of West Ham, but for now we must look elsewhere.

Roberto Donadoni

As a Club manager Donadoni has never really accomplished any success, In 2005, he returned to head Livorno in mid-season. After leading them to a surprising ninth-place finish and having the club in sixth place midway through the 2005–06 season, Donadoni resigned over criticism from his club chairman.

As the Italian National coach Donadoni succeeding Marcello Lippi who resigned after having won the 2006 FIFA World Cup. In the 2008 European Championship campaign, with Donadoni as coach, Italy reached the quarter finals of the tournament, losing against Spain. On June 26, 2008 Donadoni was subsequently dismissed despite having signed a contract extension prior to the beginning of Euro 2008, using a clause in the contract which allowed termination if Italy does not reach the semi-final. He was replaced by Marcello Lippi who returned as national team manager.

Experienced Managerial Skills 7/10

C’Mon Yu Irons! view on Donadoni as Manager for West Ham United:-

Fantastic player but as a manager of a club he has very little in the way of European experience and will he be able to hold his temper when the board get on his back, will Bjorg have to be careful what he says to him, and will Donadoni stay with West Ham if he achieves success with the club or will he be tempted to manage a bigger club next season.
Too hot headed or just a passionate guy, well whatever he is we at West Ham like this kind of Di Canio guy.

Michael Laudrup

After ending his playing career, Laudrup took up coaching, and became assistant manager of the Danish national team. He got his first manager job at former club Brøndby IF in 2002, whom he guided to the 2005 Danish Superliga championship. He chose not to extend his contract with Brøndby IF in May 2006. In 2007 Brøndby IF decided to name a new lounge at the stadium “The Michael Laudrup Lounge”, with Laudrup’s approval. He subsequently took over as coach of Getafe, Madrid’s third club, and continued his coaching career with notable success there. He brought the club comparative success in the Copa del Rey and UEFA Cup, and the team’s attacking style brought plaudits.

Experienced Managerial Skills 7/10

C’Mon Yu Irons! view on Laudrup as Manager for West Ham United:-

Not one of favourites, Laudrup is a great tactician and great with working with players, clubs have always acheieved some success under his influence but i cant see the West Ham fans being over enthusiastic with his style.

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C’Mon Yu Irons! choice from these 4 is obviously Bilic but would take Donadoni if Bilic is unavailable.

This post was submitted by Martin Samuel.

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