Club Statement Regarding Bobby Moore Fund

We might have lost the battle but not the war! The petition is now sitting at nearly 10,000 signatures and members of WHO (westhamonline) are now looking at working with the fund to produce our own shirt. The club have really missed out on a good thing here, for the sake of chasing the corporate dollar they've ignored the voices of the fans and instaed will produce a new shirt which will sell at the fraction of the proposed one.

Statement from West Ham posted on club website tonight:

West Ham United can confirm that the first-team players will wear squad numbers on the front of their shirts for Saturday's home game against Newcastle United.The decision follows consultation with the Premier League with regard to the various options open to the club following the termination of the relationship with XL Holidays last week. This decision still allows future dispensation from the Premier League to change player and replica kits to a new commercial sponsor once an agreement is in place.Although aware and respectful of the supporter-backed campaign to replace XL Holidays with the Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research UK, the commercial reality is the club has a financial duty to secure the best possible sponsorship package to help with the continued development of the first-team squad.Extensive talks have taken place with several parties and the club is actively looking to secure a long-term deal, although this will not be signed before tomorrow's game. In the meantime, the club continues to support the Bobby Moore Fund, having agreed a three-year partnership back in July, and has further increased its exposure on key club platforms.Stephanie Moore MBE, Founder of the Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research UK, said: "Our new partner, West Ham United has done so much to ensure that Bobby's name, and the charity founded in his memory, is at the forefront of people's minds. This is helping us fund invaluable scientific research into the disease which claimed Bobby's life, while also raising vital awareness."I am looking forward to this partnership continuing to grow over the next three years and am grateful to all of the supporters for their ongoing fundraising efforts. They really are incredible. I am also touched by the thousands of fans that have asked for the Fund's logo to be used on the players' shirts, but fully understand the club's position and the complexities involved."For more information about the Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research UK (Registered Charity No. 1089464), please visit www.bobbymoorefund.org

Campaign for Bobby Moore Fund on West Ham shirt

As you will have seen from the previous post, I mentioned how West Ham United did not have a shirt sponsor at the moment due to the demise of XL. One idea as previously mentioned was for the club to maybe follow the likes of Barcelona & more recently Aston Villa & adopt a charity. With this being the 50th anniversary of Bobby Moore's debut for the club and the recent retiring of the famous number 6 shirt it would be the perfect time for West Ham to add the Bobby Moore Fund to the shirt, at least for the rest of this season allowing the club plenty of time to negotiate a lucrative deal for next year. The idea was to maybe give a small percentage from each shirt to the fund. I started a discussion thread on Saturday after the match on facebook, by Sunday somebody posted this idea which apparently Mike Parry on Talk Sport Radio had also voiced, I posted my blog on Sunday night, emailed the club and The Bobby Moore Fund. On Monday I received an email from the fund who had been in touch with the club that day, that night I posted my first thread on west ham online & that is when the ball really got rolling. http://www.westhamonline.net/article.php?2954233 In just over 48 hours there are now 250 replys and the item is currently sitting on the home page, Aaron Hinton posted the mock shirt as seen above, groups have been started on facebook ( West Ham to sponsor the Bobby Moore Fund) and now we have a petition http://www.petitiononline.com/RFCMOORE/petition.html currently sitting at just under 2,500 signatures! Today the Evening Standard have now picked up on the story as have the Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1057131/ even non West Ham fans seem to be getting behind this campaign, in light of some of the negative press the club has received lately this could be a masterstroke if they were to do it, as well as no doubt being their best selling shirt ever! I really hope for once the powers that be listen to the fans for a change, please sign the petition..

Let's make this happen!

Football Shirt Sponsorship

Sat. 13th saw West Ham play West Bromwich Albion with neither team showing a sponsor on their team shirts a throwback to a bygone era and something I guess we’ll not see again for awhile and could well feature in a sports quiz question in the future. West Ham’s lack of sponsor was due to the recent demise of XL holidays who during the week went into administration, the shirts have been removed from sale and the team took to the pitch with hastily patched up replacements (literally).

By contrast, last season T-Mobile were West Broms' shirt sponsors and they remain one of the clubs sponsors. Various companies have been mooted in the local press/media as sponsors for this season, LDV/Ladbrokes and Carlsberg (another of the clubs' sponsors).As I understand the amount of income from shirt sponsorship offered by the names mentioned would be in the region of £600K - £800k.It would appear that WBA are holding out for a more lucrative deal which is understandable now that they are playing top-flight football again. However if you ask the Albion fans, most appear to be happy to be sponsor-free. Replica shirts are selling like hot-cakes in the club shop who are selling them blank with the promise of being able to return them at a later date to get the sponsors name added should they so wish. It will be interesting to see how many bother especially if the club does opt for an alcohol or betting company. When you consider how many of these shirts are worn by kids, some parents would rather they wore un-branded replica tops however when a friend of mine who’s club was sponsored by a well known lager company enquired whether he could purchase an un-branded child’s shirt he was told no.

The very first club to use a shirt sponsor in the English game was Liverpool in 1979 who were sponsored by Hitachi and the rest have all since followed. Barcelona have famously resisted a shit sponsor for over a hundred years and even now instead of cashing in are advertising Unicef the children’s charity and also donate a further million pounds to Unicef projects. As a West Ham fan I would love to see the club go down this road ( if we can’t leave them blank). The XL deal was worth about 2.5m a year and although there does seem to be some serious cost cutting being carried out over the summer, 2.5m would only cover about one first team player’s wages if we’re to believe all the stories and any loss might be reduced by an increase in sales if left blank ( i.e. West Brom.)

Discussing this with other fans over the weekend, a lot of fans would like to see a blank shirt, one that does not carry any embarrassment advertising a company you either don’t like or have never even heard of. One idea to come up was the Bobby Moore Charity Fund with a small % from each shirt going to the charity, a shirt that all fans would be proud to wear. The club have recently retired the no.6 shirt to mark the 50th anniversary since his debut so this would be the year to do it and given the current circumstances the ideal opportunity, so let’s see how serious they are......

Who'd be a football manager?

A couple of years ago my brother in law had a mock newspaper front page made up for me as a birthday gift, claiming that I was about to be installed as the new West Ham manager. Now that the situation has indeed become vacant I'm now waiting on the phone call! This week has seen two high profile premiership managers resign from management, Alan Curbishley from West Ham and Kevin Keegan from Newcastle and there seems to be more than one common denominator here. Both clubs have recently had a change of ownership which brings with it a change of strategies and ideas and most controversially both clubs now employing a European idea of a director of football. Both managers have cited that transfer decisions were made without their knowledge and that the creation of a director of football role has left them feeling undermined and powerless. Both managers are also now being portrayed as liars by their respective ex-employers although Curbishley's exit seems to have been cleaner and he seems to have left with his dignity intact.

Could this be the death of old school football management? Where the role of a D.O.F. could work, is as a link between the boardroom and the dressing room leaving the manager free to manage. However there has to be a link & common ground between the D.O.F. and manager when it comes to transfers. There is no point buying & selling players that the manager has not agreed to. Managers tend to be judged on their transfers as much as results and although Curbishley scored low in this department, you don't want a situation like Martin Jol at Spurs who lost his job after a string of transfers that he did not authorise. Curbishley was under pressure to sell before he could buy, partly because of the spending spree authorised by the previous chairman Eggbert Magnusson, but how much money will have been saved now that Curbishley will now need to be paid off? and was this just a ploy all along by the board to keep money back for the next transfer window and the next manager? Which makes you believe that Curbishley was a dead man walking, a victim of a behind the scenes re-shuffle rather than a lack of attractive football, which was also a problem with the fans.

So what of the future? Both clubs have seen ownership transfer to out of area investors, rich men who are in this to make money, Mike Ashley in particular looks to now be trying to sell the club on at a profit (which ironically could see the return of King Kev. for a fourth time) and neither club has invested the millions needed to compete with the bigger clubs. The D.O.F. role still needs to be defined, at the three clubs that have employed this, West Ham, Newcastle & Tottenham it has been a disaster and whoever the new managers are will need to identify the boundaries and who exactly is in charge.

Should I get that call, I will make Ray Winstone my number two, should be good for those motavitional team talks!



Now who's the Daddy? ......