West Ham Fans Rocked By Bombshell Out Of The Claret & Blue!

West Ham fans around the country were rocked back on their heels today by a bolt from the Claret & Blue, with the club announcing the shocking and utterly unexpected retirement of Dean Ashton.

A spokesman for West Ham Fans Dot Org woke up from a deep sleep induced by recent contributions to say: "Nobody saw this coming. We believed Zola when he kept saying that he was looking forward to working with Ashton. Why on earth would he say that if he didn't believe it was true? In Zola we trust!"

Meanwhile, Knees Up Mother Brown issued a statement saying: "This has taken us completely by surprise. When we quoted Scott Duxbury saying that Ashton was going nowhere and would return for the start of this season, we took him at his word. Just like we believed Mr Duxbury when he said we would not have to sell any of our first team players and that the manager would have funds to strengthen the team in key areas."

The statement continued: "We do not think that we were in any way involved in a spin exercise, where we were the willing vehicle for the club to mislead its fans, at best falling foul of cheap flattery because of Mr Duxbury offering us a semi exclusive interview along with Iain Dale's West Ham Til I Die. We also refute suggestions that certain questions were ruled off limit and suggestions that we gave Mr Duxbury an easy time in return for the interview. It simply did not occur to us that there might be big problems at the club. Like everybody else, we thought things were fine and that Mr Duxbury could be trusted to tell us and our readers the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

A spokesman for Iain Dale said: "Dean Ashton has had to retire because of the underfunding of the National Health Service by Gordon Brown and the Labour Party. The only hope for West Ham, given the present injury situation, is for the government to resign and call an election immediately. Mr Dale has absolute faith in Mr Duxbury who, as a very wealthy man, must be an honest and upright member of society, as well as a supporter of the Conservative Party. If you want West Ham to avoid relegation, vote Conservative!"

Meanwhile a petition is being organised to close down The Game's Gone Crazy. A leading contributer to Dale's site said: "The Spud who writes that blog is to blame for Dean Ashton's retirement. Dean was on the road to recovery and was pencilled in to start the season until that traitor started claiming that we would never see Dean in a West Ham shirt again. That was it. Dean read the blog and his ankle flared up on the spot. Had that C U Next Tuesday not pedalled his lies, Ashton would be playing against Birmingham at the weekend and would already have netted ten goals so far this season. I bet the smug git is happy about this news because he actively plotted Dean's retirement. I bet he even paid Wright-Phillips to make that tackle."

West Ham fans are braced for more shocking news in the coming weeks. It seems that Father Christmas may not be real, that the top strikers around the World may not be joining West Ham and that if we finish in the bottom three this season, we will be relegated rather than qualify for the Europa League!