West Ham and Manchester United are not unfamiliar foes.
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“But it means a lot to them and to us – both things have clicked, so it’s big, big”.
Saturday’s 4-1 defeat to Swansea was West Ham’s first loss in the Premier League for 11 matches and they now find themselves seventh in the table, just one point ahead of Liverpool. They announced on Monday that they have sold 52,000 season tickets for the 60,000 capacity stadium next season and – as they remain in the hunt for Europa League football – expectations are steadily rising around the club.
It was revealed in April that West Ham will pay £2.5m a year in rent to the owners of the Olympic Stadium, the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC).
Still, there’s untapped potential in the gaming market, and despite what more traditional fans might say, West Ham went and did it anyway. But signing for the club that he grew up supporting is likely a moment that won’t be topped for some time. While West Ham are not the first major football club to include eSports, they are the first English Premiership team and will hopefully start a likely trend in one of the biggest sporting leagues in the world.
Van Gaal was keeping his cards close to his chest on team selection, having omitted Daley Blind and Marcus Rashford for the 1-0 win over Norwich, and he then lost another striker – Anthony Martial – in the warm-up at Carrow Road.
“Any incursion on to the pitch will certainly mean cancelling the current squad” s richly-deserved lap of appreciation and denying some of our greatest ever players the chance to take the field for the final time.
“It’s impossible to lose the emotion”, said the Hammers boss. The Reds need to put in a very good performance to beat West Ham on Tuesday night, and the absence of Martial is a big blow.
“You are disappointed when you do everything and it doesn’t work out for you but we didn’t do what we had to do and that makes me more angry. It can happen that I leave players at home as they are too exhausted”.
He said: “That always depends on the data of my fatigue specialist”.
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“There’s a lot of talent, there are lads who have been there a year now like Memphis (Depay) and (Morgan) Schneiderlin and hopefully we’ll be better next year”. I am very anxious about that because I am always organising. “We don’t want a rupture and that is very important”. I have to decide then on the data of my fatigue specialist who I am taking with me.
