by Hedley Lamarr »
30 Apr 2013 12:52
Before i get slated for trolling, gloating or anything else, i am a hammers fan who comes in peace who has actually lived in Reading for quite a few years and went to Elm Park many times around the Mark McGee, Shaka Hislop, Kevin Dillion, Michael Gilkes era and have always treated the Royals as my second team. And i'm more than happy to go to the Madejski and support them and i really didn't want Reading to be relegated.
I totally agree about the cost of the WHU v Reading ticket prices and i'll admit to being outpriced myself. But I think if the match were earlier in the season then there would have been no talk of a boycott, it really does come across as renaming "no point in going" to "boycott". I'd totally agree with "no point in going" if west ham were in your position.
I have to say I don't really understand this idea that somehow West Ham are rivals? Certainly there are no Hammers that think that Reading are ours as our depest rivalries are the obvious - Millwall and maybe less so, Tottenham and Chelsea. So it's all one way traffic from you to us whilst we don't take the piss out of Reading any more than we do any other club and think no more of playing Reading than we do, say, Norwich or Stoke. There isn't a rivalry.
As for hoof ball, well, we're happy for everyone to keep thinking that of Allardyce and his teams. It's very misguided. He plays to the strengths of the squad he has. West Ham, despite many accusations on here that we think we are, are not a big club (we've been yo-yoing forever and know our status), in fact we've been £100 mil in debt since the icelandic bank crash. Just don't get taken inby the media perception of us, it's not what we feel or think we are.
We cannot afford greatly skillful players but we'd just get relegated trying to outplay anyone on the deck. Until we can afford decent players (maybe via being at the olympic stadium a few years) then we'll look at changing things.
As for the Olympic Stadium, if we didn't take it, it would have been left to rot. If you want to blame anyone for the taxpayer shelling out so much for it then blame the challenges from Barry Hearn and Spurs that stopped us buying it. There was no viable other option. I am sure that had the stadium been in Reading and you were still at Elm Park, you guys would have loved to move there.