As the football season has drawn to close, so the silly season, specifically the Twitter transfer rumour season has well and truly kicked off! In this new weekly column I will take a look at some of the more plausible and delightfully implausible transfer stories surrounding West Ham United. My aim is not question anyone’s credibility and as such I won’t use any Twitter names (with the notable exception of our own Board and family members!), I will simply reference those stories which have caught my eye in the previous seven days. As the transfer window nears it end after the summer, I will compile the ‘fantasy’ Twitter squad that we would have assembled had all the rumours been true.
As West Ham United fans we all know the daily pleasure/chore that is our Twitter timeline during the transfer window. The highs, the lows, the soaring expectation and the crushing reality, it makes for a summer of frustration, with occasional moments of joy. Many of our fans will delete their accounts, only to pop again in a matter of days, some will be derided for their lack of insider knowledge and the term ‘ITK’ will be bandied around more frequently than ‘floating voter’ in the run-up to a general election!
The first of those rumours, which has been bubbling around since January is the return of Jermaine Defoe. A rumour which thankfully, as of this afternoon, can indeed fade and die as the player has agreed a three-year, £130,000 a week contract with Bournemouth. Personally I think we have dodged a bullet more efficiently than Keanu Reeves in The Matrix (if you haven’t seen it that doesn’t really work). Sure he is a proven goalscorer in the Premier League but at 34 that level of investment is just too high and I suspect the move to Bournemouth is only as a result of us not being prepared to entertain such vastly inflated demands.
With Sam Allardyce telling Crystal Palace that he is quitting after just six months in charge and Slaven Bilic due to meet the West Ham United board today, the devil in me tells me there is a rumour just waiting to be born, the fan in me prays not!
With the temperature across the country looking to soar this week, summer has truly arrived and with it the hope that the rumour mill is solar powered!