West Ham

[ekhibee]

Did anybody watch Match of the Day? Some of the scenes were pretty ugly, but it does also show how strongly some fans feel about the running of the club. Running on to the pitch and squaring up with players isn't the answer either though. That guy that ran to the centre circle with the corner flag didn't seem to be challenged at all by any stewards or police, but from the looks of it they had their hands full controlling other parts of the crowd.

[Frazerbob]

The club has lost it’s soul. The fans are about 3 years too late in doing something about it. There’s also a lot of infighting between the fans from what I’ve read.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/west-ham-united-board-protest-march-meetings-hooligans-icf-action-group-a8244951.html?amp

[SquashedFrogg]

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The club has lost it’s soul. The fans are about 3 years too late in doing something about it. There’s also a lot of infighting between the fans from what I’ve read.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/west-ham-united-board-protest-march-meetings-hooligans-icf-action-group-a8244951.html?amp

Interesting read.

[O'Rourke3]

Not a great time to be a Hammers fan. Likely to get lynched by other fans..

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[hibsbollah]

I like West Ham fans a lot more now. They've been sold a pup. I can really see some sort of community club springing up in their place along the same lines as that Real Man Utd that came along after the Glazers arrived, or AFC Wimbledon. The problem is the number of grounds where a new club could potentially play are diminishing.

[Cabbage East]

Completely understand it. The fans have been totally ****ed over with that stadium move.

[overdrive]

I can sympathise with them as they’ve had the soul ripped out of the Club by the pornographer, his mate and the lady from The Apprentice but, reading that Independent article earlier in the thread they clearly have a very unsavoury element to their support as well.

[jacomo]

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I like West Ham fans a lot more now. They've been sold a pup. I can really see some sort of community club springing up in their place along the same lines as that Real Man Utd that came along after the Glazers arrived, or AFC Wimbledon. The problem is the number of grounds where a new club could potentially play are diminishing.

You think?

They’ve been pretty lazy and complacent so far. Not sure the Hammers have the chops to actually do something constructive.

[heretoday]

West Ham have always had a bunch of drunken thugs in their support.Like Millwall. So this sort of thing is no surprise.
If the club had appointed a more astute coach than Moyes the team would be doing better. They have good players in there. Then the fans would be happy.
It's not rocket science.

[Smartie]

Easter Road.

Our spiritual home and a wonderful stadium, ideal for the needs of our club in our current situation.

Whilst we've had a few ups and downs along the way, we should always be hugely grateful for all that the present incumbents of our club have done to keep us at our home and turn that home into what it is today.

And we should never forget that our spiritual home is also a prime chunk of real estate, ripe for redevelopment by anyone minded to do so.


I feel so sorry for the Hammers fans and totally understand their unhappiness. This move was a catastrophe. I've been to the Boleyn Ground, and it was one of my favourite grounds.

The board there heaped pressure on themselves with this move. Only a very strong on-field performance was ever going to mitigate the unhappiness, and that wasn't going to happen with David Moyes, Joe Hart and Patrice Evra.

Sadly, I really don't know where they have to go. The likes of Juventus managed to move from an unpopular stadium back to a more suitable one but with London property as it is, I don't know what West Ham can do.

[jacomo]

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West Ham have always had a bunch of drunken thugs in their support.Like Millwall. So this sort of thing is no surprise.
If the club had appointed a more astute coach than Moyes the team would be doing better. They have good players in there. Then the fans would be happy.
It's not rocket science.

You could say the same about Hibs.

All three clubs have proper working class roots, and its likely to get a bit lively when things aren’t going well.

Problem is that West Ham have now left their traditional community and the fans have left it too late to stand up and be counted.

Moyes (and Allardyce) go against the footballing traditions of West Ham, but are more the symptoms of the problem rather than the cause.

[Is It On....]

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West Ham have always had a bunch of drunken thugs in their support.Like Millwall. So this sort of thing is no surprise.
If the club had appointed a more astute coach than Moyes the team would be doing better. They have good players in there. Then the fans would be happy.
It's not rocket science.

Yesterday was not drunken thugs. This was a pre-arranged protest against the owners. There was then a counter protest backing the owners. It also also not kids doing the fighting. After the game there battles between the rival factions and the police . All very nasty but not (soley) down to drunkenness.

West Ham pride themselves on playing proper football so staying up playing "park the bus, hoofball" made Allardyce unpopular and they believe Moyes is of the same style.

[Cabbage East]

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West Ham have always had a bunch of drunken thugs in their support.Like Millwall. So this sort of thing is no surprise.
If the club had appointed a more astute coach than Moyes the team would be doing better. They have good players in there. Then the fans would be happy.
It's not rocket science.

Slavers.

[Sir David Gray]

They'll get hammered for that.

[hibsbollah]

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West Ham have always had a bunch of drunken thugs in their support.Like Millwall. So this sort of thing is no surprise.
If the club had appointed a more astute coach than Moyes the team would be doing better. They have good players in there. Then the fans would be happy.
It's not rocket science.

It's nothing to do with results on the pitch or drunken thugs.

[Newry Hibs]

Watching luton in the 80s, it was always west ham and chelsea who were the worst fans (and a one off against millwall). Luton fans had a reputation as well. West ham lost their community a while ago around Upton park due to different ethnic groups moving in and 'white working class' moving out. Didn't realise there was such bad feeling around the new stadium. Is it because they are far away from their traditional home or because they are not doing well?

[Smartie]

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Watching luton in the 80s, it was always west ham and chelsea who were the worst fans (and a one off against millwall). Luton fans had a reputation as well. West ham lost their community a while ago around Upton park due to different ethnic groups moving in and 'white working class' moving out. Didn't realise there was such bad feeling around the new stadium. Is it because they are far away from their traditional home or because they are not doing well?

They are not all that far from their traditional home.

I think it's more to do with the vision they were sold on leaving their traditional home. By cashing in on the property and by being able to house extra fans, they were expecting to be able to challenge higher up the table.

West Ham have always had a healthy support and have under-performed for decades. They seem to be spending a lot more money on continued under-performance.

I think that what the board want and what the fans want seem to be different things. The fans would have been happy to stay in their old ground, attempt to play football the right way and not necessarily achieve a great deal.

By promising big then under-delivering, the board have put themselves in a very difficult position.

[NAE NOOKIE]

In order for this to work West Ham had to make the move to the London Stadium work and work quickly. They haven't and the focus not surprisingly has moved from a club hoping for bigger and better things to a club where the fans feel the move from Upton Park has ripped the heart out of it. It may be three miles from the original ground, but I get the impression it might as well be on the Moon as far as the majority of West Ham fans are concerned.

Imagine us at Millerhill in a stadium where the pitch is 15 yards from the stands and with our traditional heartland and pubs three miles away .... the very thought would keep me awake at night

What's almost certainly exacerbating the situation is that of all the London clubs West Ham are one of the few rooted in a working class community, or at least that's how they see themselves, and watching Karen Brady hobnobbing with that throwback to the 'loadsamoney' devil take the hindmost generation Alan Sugar on the telly isn't exactly going to help cement a connection between the folk running the club and its fans.

The fans of that club see themselves as Green Street and the clubs owners as Oxford street ..... When they see what in their eyes is a load of posh boys running the club into the ground and giving the distinct impression that the money matters more than the football its only going to go one way.

I feel for them.

[overdrive]

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Watching luton in the 80s, it was always west ham and chelsea who were the worst fans (and a one off against millwall). Luton fans had a reputation as well. West ham lost their community a while ago around Upton park due to different ethnic groups moving in and 'white working class' moving out. Didn't realise there was such bad feeling around the new stadium. Is it because they are far away from their traditional home or because they are not doing well?

Funny, I watched a video on YouTube a few nights ago about how West Ham fans believe the board had ruined their club and gone away from their traditions. There didn’t seem to be many “white working class” fans out of the fans the video makers spoke to. The vast majority were ethnic minorities. Probably the type of fan that the fans in that article posted earlier want to drive out along with the left wing fans and the “terrorist sympathiser” Sadiq Khan.

[jacomo]

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They are not all that far from their traditional home.

I think it's more to do with the vision they were sold on leaving their traditional home. By cashing in on the property and by being able to house extra fans, they were expecting to be able to challenge higher up the table.

West Ham have always had a healthy support and have under-performed for decades. They seem to be spending a lot more money on continued under-performance.

I think that what the board want and what the fans want seem to be different things. The fans would have been happy to stay in their old ground, attempt to play football the right way and not necessarily achieve a great deal.

By promising big then under-delivering, the board have put themselves in a very difficult position.

Gullivan sold Upton Park for private profit and West Ham are now renting a soulless bowl in Stratford.

The fans got scammed. It’s taken them a while to work it out though.

[CMurdoch]

All very ****my
The rich and the neddy ****.
The right wing alliance

[Brizo]

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Watching luton in the 80s, it was always west ham and chelsea who were the worst fans (and a one off against millwall). Luton fans had a reputation as well. West ham lost their community a while ago around Upton park due to different ethnic groups moving in and 'white working class' moving out. Didn't realise there was such bad feeling around the new stadium. Is it because they are far away from their traditional home or because they are not doing well?

For the white working class who have moved en masse out of Newham and surrounding boroughs in just a couple of generations, match day visits back to the Boleyn from Essex and beyond were very much a pilgrimage back to an East London that had changed demographically beyond all recognition. That's the key emotional factor that the owners and others didn't factor in when selling up and moving to a soulless "sports" stadium in a soulless location.

Upton Park was that communities last tie to "their" East London so moving had greater connotations than purely a change of stadium. The fact that the clubs a shambles on and off the pitch has brought it all to the surface.

Ones Ive met of a certain age always quite okay with Hibs, possibly because of a certain London friendly over thirty years ago

[Iain G]

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For the white working class who have moved en masse out of Newham and surrounding boroughs in just a couple of generations, match day visits back to the Boleyn from Essex and beyond were very much a pilgrimage back to an East London that had changed demographically beyond all recognition. That's the key emotional factor that the owners and others didn't factor in when selling up and moving to a soulless "sports" stadium in a soulless location.

Upton Park was that communities last tie to "their" East London so moving had greater connotations than purely a change of stadium. The fact that the clubs a shambles on and off the pitch has brought it all to the surface.

Ones Ive met of a certain age always quite okay with Hibs, possibly because of a certain London friendly over thirty years ago

London has changed a lot over the past ten / twenty years as new money and redevelopment has come along, traditional links to areas are not sustainable in this current developer driven redevelopment world down here, the places changes and people are being forced change with it.

Having two shifty owners and Karen Brady in charge was hardly going to lead to a positive outcome for the club or the fans.

And we no longer live in the 1950's ;-)

[Brizo]

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London has changed a lot over the past ten / twenty years as new money and redevelopment has come along, traditional links to areas are not sustainable in this current developer driven redevelopment world down here, the places changes and people are being forced change with it.

Having two shifty owners and Karen Brady in charge was hardly going to lead to a positive outcome for the club or the fans.

And we no longer live in the 1950's ;-)

I'm not convinced that the "white flight" from Newham is due to redevelopment or new money , more to do with the centuries old dynamic of new waves of immigrant communities moving into what are still working class areas of London which leads to what was the resident community moving out. What's interesting about London is that due to gentrification in certain areas like parts of Dalston and Hackney its gone full circle and its the white middle class who are moving in and are replacing the immigrant communities.

Upton Park was the WHU fans last link to a largely disappeared cockney "east end" and while that's maybe a very "1950's" concept, id suggest that football support is as much about the past and tradition as it is about the here and now.



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