28/07/2010

Communication and Smart Money?

Co-chairman David S writes on the OS "I made a promise that I would not sell Scott and I will not, for any amount of money, break that promise to the West Ham supporters”.
And that is less than 24 hour after his co-chairman colleague David G says to the BBC "I don’t think that anybody ever can give a 100 % guarantee about anybody.”… “There is a never never in football, I learnt that many years ago in football”.
Obviously Sullivan never went to that lesson.
Still, that is more of a funny observation than anything else. The moral of both stories is that Parker will stay.

I must say that the symbolic value the Davids have given Scott is huge and so is, according to rumors, the pay they are offering him to sign an extension to his current deal. I should know better than to bite at that kind of rumors but if they are even close the Davids will be guilty of signing players on exactly the kind of money that they have ridiculed ever since they started to comment on West Hams finances.

Previous talk of huge salaries to Ruud v N, and what have you, I've dismissed as publicity stunt bluffs that never ever ran the risk of being called. But this?

Is Parker really a player we could never do without? Is it really wise to use a very very significant part of the money available for wages on Parker? For 5 years? ...or are there some risky clauses in his current contract they want to get out of and are willing to pay some money to do so, while securing a great footballer and winning the fans over? Again, they have previously strongly cracked down on expensive long term deals made by the previous owners, pointing out the big economic risk to the Club that these £50.000+ deals have presented. And those contracts were signed during the champagne-era while this certainly is not!
I can’t see Gollivan making that big of an exception from their own way of running a football club just to secure Parker for an additional 2 years. They are shrewder than that, right?

1 comment:

katy said...

Hello,

Katy here from Biteback Publishing. On 19 Aug we’re publishing An Irrational Hatred of Luton. Originally published in 1995, An Irrational Hatred of Luton fast became a cult classic amongst Hammers and football fans in general. Spanning twenty years of matches home and away, it contains some of the most sublime writing on football and the irrational nature of fandom ever committed to paper.

To give you more of an idea of what the book is about, here’s a small extract from our press release which will be circulated to all the national media outlets:

“Laugh out loud funny, and almost devastatingly poignant, An Irrational Hatred of Luton is an odyssey through the world of a committed football supporter. A real-life Fever Pitch, and with a Hornby-esque deftness of tone, Banks’ book shows how intricately in the life of a true fan, football interconnects with the everyday. Banks’ friendships, relationships, work, emotions of joy and despair all take place against a backdrop of claret and blue.”
It's expected to garner a lot of interest and I was hoping to have a chat and see if it's possible to arrange a review, competition, or some way in which we can promote to title to the readers of Bubble View?
All the best,
Katy

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Katy Scholes
Sales and Marketing Assistant

Biteback Publishing,
375 Kennington Lane,
London.
SE11 5QY
katy.scholes@bitebackpublishing.com
T: 0207 0911 260