I think it might get worse but I think I’m a big enough man to take it he
Posted in General on 05. Sep, 2010
“I think it might get worse but I think I’m a big enough man to take it,” he said. I remember Incey saying that he was one of the most successful players to have left there and I feel in that same boat now. I would like it if people could respect what I have done since I moved on from the club.” One of the greatest ironies about Lampard’s treatment is that Rio Ferdinand, who left West Ham for Leeds one year after his own departure, was given a better reception at Upton Park in November than he has been afforded all season by the home support at Old Trafford. I think they made their mind up early about me being in the team because of my Dad. I’m pretty stubborn, I come from that area and I know people there are stubborn and they didn’t want to change their minds then, and they don’t now. “I just go back there with the peace of mind of what I have achieved personally.
I speak to Paul Ince a lot and we reckon we are the most hated [people there]. Since that move to Chelsea for £11m he has been back to Upton Park three times and has lost on two occasions so this time there may be an important precedent to set, but nothing, Lampard said, to prove “I don’t go back with anything to prove, far from it. I go back there as runner-up in the world player of the year and with a Premiership medal,” he said “Coming from the area, I know what people are like. At 27, Lampard’s priorities stretch much further than a parochial settling of scores at the dangerous end of Green Street, E13, but at lunchtime today, the most successful English footballer of the last two years will be transported back to a time before success and acclaim were his for the asking.
He left West Ham in the summer of 2001, shortly after his father Frank Snr and Harry Redknapp had been deposed as the management of the club, with a record of 24 goals in 132 Premiership games including three in his last four matches that helped stabilise the side in 15th place. No one really knows why West Ham’s support came to dislike so intensely a footballer born into the tradition of their club but one thing is certain: when Frank Lampard returns there today he does so as a man who has found his place in the world. The Premiership title, the certainty of a place in the England team, the Football Writers’ player of the year award and a runners-up’ place in the Fifa world player of the year poll, have seen to that. The abuse began when he was a teenager warming up on the touchline at Upton Park, and the hissed allegations of nepotism, the contempt for a local boy, remain a mystery even to this day.
We probably took the frustration out on Wigan today.”A disappointing end to 2005 cannot disguise a wonderful year for Jewell’s team. He admitted that he had pondered making changes to freshen up his side and will now certainly do so.”But at the start of the year, we would have settled for being where we are now,” Jewell said with some understatement “There is no crisis.”. It was Tugay who upstaged him that day; on Saturday, it was Reid’s turn.A defence marshalled by that inspired signing Ryan Nelsen also did a good job in keeping Jason Roberts and Henri Camara as quiet as they have been all season. The upshot was that this was a game which, at the end of their annus mirabilis, Wigan never really got into.The simplistic explanation was that Blackburn were fresh, following the postponement of their game on Wednesday night, and the Latics were leg-weary. The pronouncements of Sir Alex Ferguson on this subject have alerted the game to the potential for sharp practice over postponements, but the Blackburn manager was adamant that his side had wanted to play against Sunderland.”I’d argue all day against any suggestion that we didn’t want to play,” Hughes said. “It was a home game against the bottom of the league and we were desperate to get the game on. He has also been used as a wide player, but looked a natural in what might be described as the Steven Gerrard role, driving forward from central midfield.
“He has sometimes lacked a little belief in his own ability, but he showed what he is about today,” Hughes said.Reid was not on his own. Savage showed all his usual energy and mercifully little of his usual petulance alongside him. Outside them, there was pace and verve from David Bentley and Morten Gamst Pedersen, who scored a marvellous goal of his own.Just as he did against Fulham in August, Pedersen found the net with a left-footed volley from an unfeasibly narrow angle. Rovers were without the suspended Tugay, which has been the cue in the past for some sub-standard displays; there were no such problems at the JJB.”Robbie Savage and Steven Reid were magnificent in that crucial area of the field and Steven capped it with that goal,” Hughes said. He admits that injuries have made Reid’s Blackburn career a stop-start affair since he arrived from Millwall.