West Ham’s shy and retiring owners nurture Olympian ambitions. An improvement on a poor campaign last term would be a start
The club
Unofficial motto
Holosericorum amiculis ad fumificandam credimus
(In velvet smoking jackets we trust). The Academy almost failed its Ofsted report last season, but the arrival of genuine Eastenders and purveyors of gentlemen’s reading material has raised hopes of a brighter future and the much-lobbied for move to the Olympic stadium after 2012.
The age of austerity
An estimated £90m in debt and with every member of their squad bar one for sale, it’s been a summer of bargain-hunting at Upton Park. Cast-offs such as Frédéric Piquionne, a striker whose record of scoring, on average, under six league goals a season – and never more than 11 – as he enters his 12th year as a professional, will earn £40,000 a week for three years.
What they want
Improvement. Last season a tiny manager brought tiny returns. By that logic, there’ll be no stopping them now.
What they get
Last season started well, in as much as they won their first game. By the time they won another it was November and they were in the bottom three. Avoided relegation by a place and sacked Gianfranco Zola two days later.
The players
Coalition or opposition?
Yet another crop of youngsters – Zavon Hines, Freddie Sears, James Tomkins, Junior Stanislas and Frank Nouble – suggests a Brit-heavy first-team, though they’ll have yet another manager’s global shopping spree to battle past first.
Yoof of today
“New-Frank-Lampard-or-is-it-Michael-Carrick-dunno-take-your-pick” Jack Collison is the brightest of the team’s young stars (see above), though he won’t be much use for a little while – he’s out until 2011 after knee surgery.
Mr West Ham
Yet another youth team graduate and as cockney as the Bow Bells or the matrimonial use of the phrase “trouble and strife”, Mark Noble is at 23 the club’s longest-serving player and midfield mainstay.
Who should have his benefits cut?
He has always had his physical frailties, so Kieron Dyer can hardly be blamed for his misfortune with injuries since his £6m arrival three years ago – but the former chairman Eggert Magnusson, who rubber-stamped the deal, probably can. The midfielder reacted angrily to criticism from David Gold earlier this year, saying: “I have put in everything I can to get fit for this club but it is not enough for some people.” Certainly not when they’ve got to pay you £83,000 a week, no. His contract runs out next summer, extension unlikely.
Everybody loves…
Scott Parker is the one player labelled “really not for sale” by David Sullivan, so important was he last season. “The confidence he spreads on the pitch is infections,” said Robert Green, who might be in need of some infectious enthusiasm given his summer. “Scotty is forever diving in front of the ball, taking one in the face or taking one in the privates.”
The manager
Life and times
Avram Grant has become the avuncular teddy-bear-about-town for chairmen since his very-nearly-amazing spell at Chelsea. The co-owner Gold explained in June the three qualities that drew him and Sullivan to the Israeli: “We needed experience and stability … and he has a great sense of humour.” After Portsmouth, it’ll be a novelty to be telling silly jokes rather than being employed by one.
Master tactician or lucky general?
The man who brought Nicolas Anelka to Chelsea and then never played him, Grant’s popularity with the wider public could be put down in part to the slight air of making-it-up-as-he-goes-along that hangs over him. A fan of 4-5-1 – Piquionne often played as the lone frontman at Portsmouth last season, but is likely to start the season understudying Carlton Cole.
Regrets… he’s had a few
This will be the place for the inevitable mention of Thai massage parlours. “He needs a massage not from one woman but two,” said his wife, Tsofit – something of a character herself, but that’s another story. Grant doesn’t pretent to be above basic human frailties. “I’m not the special one, I am the normal one,” he once said.
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