Clubs using agents

[Filo]

We as a club got slated by a lot in the football world for jumping into bed with Willie, but why are n`t the same people jumping on West Hams back over agent Mark Curtis`s cosy relationship with big Sam? Mark Curtis happens to be Sam Allardyce, Kevin Nolan and Andy Caroll`s agent as well as a lot of other West Ham`s players, there`s no difference in what West Ham are doing and what we did last season, why are n`t the media picking up on this?

[andysly]

It's my belief and was last year that loads of clubs operate like this. We just decided to make a great big song and dance of it. Plus Diouf et al playing for little old Donny was a bit of a story in itself.

[Mr1Croft]

I think there were many reasons for why people were quick to shoot down what was going on here last season.


Firstly there was the transition of Doncaster Rovers going from the team who worked hard to climb the leagues, being the small team who play nice tippy tappy football to ditching the longest serving manager in the Championship and taking on someone with no managerial experience outside of the Conference and bringing in names such as Chimbonda and Diouf.


The other reason was the same reason everyone jumped up and down with Bellamy on his way to Cardiff, they believed it gave us an unfair advantage and exploited the loan system by taking a lot of players on loan and paying only a fraction of there wages, when as pointed out if we had taken 1 (lets say Beye) player on loan rather than everyone we did we probably could have afforded to pay all of his wages. Whether or not this is exploiting the loan system is a different story.


The final 'main' reason I believe is the brand awareness factor of Willie McKay. There isn't a football agent more prolific for all the wrong reasons, yes he was never found guilty but for the amount of times he has come under scrutiny by so many authorities means that he is either very unlucky and finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time on more than one occasion or some believe he is that good at what he does he is good at cleaning his footsteps. It doesn't matter what I or anyone thinks of Willie McKay, whatever our opinion controversy follows him wherever he goes be it football or horse racing. There was a big song and dance made by the Wrexham fans when they found out Willie was working close with Sanders at Wrexham, there was even a conspiracy theory believed by a group of their fans that McKay wanted to buy Wrexham because they play at the Racecourse Ground, and at the time the club owned the stadium (although it wasn't a racecourse, they just believed the name alone was enough to interest McKay).


But truth be told it was McKay that went running to the papers, the club kept quiet on his involvement until articles appeared about him being interviewed talking about what was going on here, but had he kept his mouth shut would we have ever known or would we still be discussing rumours about him being involved at the club (the Free Press did an article about the board denying he was buying a big share in the club) there was so much controversy and most of us were kept in the dark until it was too late. But the past is in the past now and nothing we can do about it but move on together and restore our trust in the club again.

[Alan_Rovers]

We got slaughtered from Bristol City's chairman when he did it because they were in a similar position at the bottom of the table and looking for a new manager.

He always maintained that the experiment wouldn't work though and it would ruin our team spirit and he was proved right.

Who really cares what West Ham are doing now though. We got exactly what we deserved last season and even with SO'D, we'd have still probably got relegated.