West Ham As A "Feeder Club"
A case may be made that West Ham has been a feeder team in recent years, that is, a club that provides quality players to other clubs for profit. Though not a club, the England national team includes various academy apprentices or graduates, including Rio Ferdinand, Michael Carrick, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole and Jermain Defoe.
This reputation probably began with the sale of Rio Ferdinand to Leeds in 2000. Since then, West Ham have sold six Academy "graduates" for transfer fees totalling over £50 million (including £18 million for Ferdinand, who was later sold on to Manchester United for £30 million). This amount is much greater than the club's own spending on players (most of which was financed by the above income), and many of the players are currently finding success with financially stronger clubs such as Chelsea and Manchester United who are two of four (Arsenal, Man City) Premiership clubs capable of flexing financial muscle, competing on a different level to most other teams.
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Famous quotes containing the words west, ham and/or club:
“East Side, West Side,
All around the town.”
—Charles B. Lawlor (1852–1925)
“We had some ham and eggs and took our time saying goodbye to the bright lights.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
“The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.”
—Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)