West Ham Fans Born to be Claret and Blue

As the fruition of one of the club's worst kept secrets, Hammers (ex)-captain Nigel Reo-Coker has finally handed in a transfer request. Well not quite actually, his advisor Tony Finnigan and his agent have been desperately trying to move their client on for ages and received short shrift from the club when attempting to re-negotiate the England U21 captain's contract. Reo-Coker who joined West Ham from Wimbledon/MK Dons, had his nose put severely out of joint following the arrivals of Javier Mascherano and Carlos Tevez from Corinthians on big wages, this in addition to his anger at not being made available for sale when Arsenal came sniffing around after his one and only really good season wearing the Claret & Blue, has made the players position untenable. Throw in the race card and the arrival of captain in the making Lucas Neill and it becomes pretty obvious that it was all going to end in toys out the pram and tears. There is another element involved, in case it had escaped readers notice, Eggert Magnusson is a family man who places great emphasis on family values, perhaps naively he was staggered and appalled at the 'moral decline' or 'cancer' that he discovered after completing the buy out from 'Brown the Crim'. Reo-Coker's previous propensity for 'roasting' (not the carvery type) will have done little to impress, but it was the tangled love life of various staff and squad members that really opened his eyes, the culmination of which was a dressing room bust up involving two people who were both seeing the same woman at the same time! Having had his eyes opened by what he saw, Eggert then further discovered the gambling culture that was inherent in the squad before deciding to take wide ranging and tough action, from that moment on it was only going to be a matter of time before NRC was going to be out of the door, however being a sound businessman Mr Magnusson kept his own council in order not to have a negative effect on the players value.. The club are looking to get around £8 Million for Reo-Coker with Aston Villa leading the hunt, not as much as the £12 Million he was worth a while ago, but still a good return on the £500,000 that he originally cost, but he will become a full International sooner rather than later. One baby bentley owner and a couple of gamblers on the way out, plenty more reprobates to follow- Ed