Duxbury Coming Clean? It Stinks! Upson Is Next To Go!

So now Duxbury is telling us how it really is, undergoing some wonderful conversion on the road to Damascus. Apparently the thrice delayed accounts are a "disaster", just as you were warned on this blog. At the time, of course, the club, and CEO Duxbury in particular, were claiming that there was nothing to be worried about and angry fans came on here insisting that there were perfectly valid reasons for the delayed accounts, which had nothing to do with masking the truth. Well I will let you in on a little secret, if somebody is a liar who uses propaganda, you can NEVER trust what he says. Goebbels, Blair, Duxbury - once you base your life on deceit and versions of the truth, you lose sight on what is actually meant by the word, truth.

Duxbury is currently on a charm offensive, trying to convince us fans that he is the good guy. That is cobblers. Duxbury is at the heart of this mess, he is the bridge from the troubled waters of the Brown era to the perfect storm of the Turds and Egg interregnum. He appears to me to be a slime bag who negotiates his own position first and then worries about the club later. And, from where I am standing, he has orchestrated a concerted campaign of misinformation.

Let me remind you that back in January he insisted that the club was in rude financial health, claiming there was no need to sell players and that there were funds available for transfers. Bellyache left but that was Bellyache's choice, it was NOT because the club needed the money. Now he tells us, "The accounts were a disaster; we've had absolute Hell. We've had the owner going bankrupt, XL ... it's been an absolute disaster. We've had massive pressure from the banks. The collapse of our various partners and owner coincided obviously with the banking world just being absolutely destroyed." Tell me, how do you marry what was said in January with what is being said now?

Duxbury now claims: "When Eggert came in we embarked on a massive player acquisition programme. It's not just the transfer fees, it was the salaries that were given. And all of this, we didn't know, was bank funded - it wasn't owner funded. Then the banking world collapses and they said 'we want our money back'. Fantastic." Is he really expecting us to believe that the Board of West Ham was so naive that it did not know how expenditure was being funded? In which case, the Board were incompetent and they should go, every single one of them - including Duxbury.

Of course he knew how the transfers and salaries were being funded. The guy may be a Machiavellian shiester but he isn't an idiot. Now we are being told how wonderful it is to sign players on loan rather than buy them outright. It is great for "cashflow" we are told. Well, here's a thought, selling players is even better for cashflow so expect a couple of sales sometime soon. Of course Duxbury will then present it differently - it will be because the figure offered, based upon the age of the player, made it impossible to refuse and it will be in line with the "West Ham project" and a clear predetermined transfer policy. It is interesting and significant that of all the transfer deals that Duxbury could have quoted, he picked the Upson deal. Why? Surely Ljungberg or Dyer would have been better examples of mismanagement? So why Upson? Is it the spadework ahead of the deal, laying the foundations for the charm offensive that will follow when Upson is moved on?

Duxbury appears to me to be the very worst sort of 'manager' - he is embroiled in the Tevez affair and is a key figure in all the bad decision making at the club, yet he wriggles away to avoid any personal blame, pointing the finger at others instead. We are in this mess at least in part because of Duxbury but he is painting himself as the white knight and loads of mugs are buying it. We have our cast of villains at Upton Park - the Inces, Defoes, Bellyaches, Lampards, Browns, Eggerts, Roeders and Macaris, but I suspect the true Claret and Blue Antichrist is still tucked up very cosily at the club. If you believe what Duxbury says, more fool you.