The West Ham rip-off: to boycott or not to boycott


Tickets can now be bought for the last two away games – but be prepared to pass by the mortgage broker on your way to paying for the West Ham United match on Sunday May 22.

The appalling rip-off merchants who have charge of West Ham have decided that Sunderland supporters should be mugged for £46 apiece for the dubious honour of a seat at Upton Park/Boleyn/pre-Olympic Plaza.

By contrast, the ticket part of the trip to Bolton on May 7 would knock you back only £20 or £28.

Instead of merely fulminating to no great effect about Sullivan and Gold, or Sullivan’s Gold, some SAFC supporters are already talking of voting their feet, that is by putting their feet nowhere near West Ham on what should otherwise be – for us – a carefree final day of an eventful but unmenacing season.

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West Ham’s pay cut saga: the way forward for us too?

mickey


David Sullivan’s warning that everyone at West Ham, the club he now co-owns, faced a 25 per cent pay cut did no harm to the players’ mood, the Hammers dismissing Birmingham City with a minimum of fuss to put more pressure on us at the bottom of the Premier. As our own aversion to winning gathers strength, we wonder whether there might be a lesson in this for Niall Quinn and Ellis Short …


Two stories
about Sunderland and full backs tell us a lot about the nature of football.

Mickey Gray was a decent if unspectacular SAFC player, admired both for being a local lad made good and for the exciting partnership he forged down the left flank with Allan “Magic” Johnston. He is remembered less admiringly for his woeful penalty miss in the Charlton play-off final in 1998, and for a restaurant altercation with Wayne Rooney.

As everyone who supports Sunderland probably knows, he also won a star prize for insensitivity when, on the day several members of the SAFC staff were laid off because of the team’s failures on the field, he arrived for training in his gleaming new Ferrari.

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West Ham, relegation battles and a new owner’s tears

upton


Colin Randall appreciates David Sullivan’s obvious and genuine commitment to West Ham – backed up by tears on TalkSport – but hopes any revival in the club’s fortunes is modest …

Without holding the slightest thing against West Ham or most of its supporters, I make no secret of my wish that the club David Sullivan has inherited remains locked in a relegation scrap for the rest of the season.

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