West Ham in the Papers

ESPN, in a woefully poor article, go for the racist approach, likening the walk to West Ham to "a stroll down Baghdad high street." West Ham fans are of course "East End thugs".

The People say Andy Johnson could be on his way to West Ham. Hw went to see David Moyes last week to seek assurances over his future and West Ham are monitoring the situation. West Ham had a bid rejected in the summer.

The Guardian felt Arsenal had an 'extra bit of class'. Curbishley was unhappy though because he felt 'We had one taken away from us and one which we should have had.'

The Mail felt Noble's tackle on Hleb was horrendous. Overall they weren't very impressed with West Ham,

"Ashton was caught offside so often that his team had little opportunity to build a platform. Add a lack of decent movement off the ball and poor passing, and it became a frustrating afternoon."

The Times have an interesting interview with Teddy Sheringham who clearly has a gripe with Curbishley,

"He enjoyed Alan Pardew’s reign at West Ham and the buzz of reaching the FA Cup final on their return to the Premiership, but then complacency set it. “We thought we were going to have exactly the same season, but there wasn’t the same commitment. There was a lot of whingeing going on about not playing in the right position and little things like that and we got ourselves into a very sticky predicament.”

He did not see eye-to-eye with Pardew’s replacement, Alan Curbishley. “I don’t know what it was,” Sheringham says. “Maybe he had preconceived ideas about me. I asked him several times, ‘Why aren’t I playing? We’re losing games. Why am I not involved?’ And his response was, ‘Well, I’m trying different things and you’ll get your chance’.

“Pardew wanted to take me to Charlton just before the [winter transfer] deadline but he [Curbishley] wouldn’t let me go. He said, ‘If you go there and score the goals that keep them up and we go down, that won’t look good on me’. I said, ‘Well, if you are worried I will score goals, why don’t you play me?’ He said, ‘I want you to stay, you’re still part of my plans’. But there’s absolutely no way I was part of his plans.”