Ashton and Future -- The Heart and Mind

[nycanary 1]

All,

Lots of extreme reactions regarding the Ashton sale.  I just

watched him with a Hammers shirt and watched an entertaining and fluent

West Ham team defeat Fulham.  I felt queasy, to put it

lightly.  But I think that EVERYONE is basically correct and its

just a difference of which body organ you are thinking with -- your

heart or your mind.  For me:

Heart

I hate seeing Deano go.  I''m gutted.  Thinking of him scoring

for the Hammers infuriates me.  He''s going to be fantastic with

them and that feels awful.  He should have been scoring those

goals for us.  We gave him his chance.  He shouldn''t have

left.  The Board should never have allowed it and they misled

us.  How could Worthy do it?  Who''s going to score for us

now?  "Dean Ashton -- Future England Full International.  His

best years came after he left Norwich."  YUCK.

Mind

Top piece of business for Norwich.  7 million for a player in the

Championship.  Even Walcott went for 5 million initially and that

was Rooney-esque fanaticism between Arsenal and Chelsea.  Marcus

Bent for 2 million.  Pandiani for 1 million.  Clinton

Morrison 1.1 million.  Milan Baros 6.5 million (scored umpteen

times for his country).  Kanoute for 4.4 million.  Ellington

for 3 million.  Henri Camara for 3 million.  The list goes

on.  WE GOT SEVEN MILLION!! We doubled our money in 1 year. 

We did not lie to our supporters -- any idiot with two brain cells to

rub together can see that you HAVE to publicly talk the way our Board

and manager did to GET this type of price.  If they followed some

of the member''s of this Board''s PR advice, we''d have been lucky to get

3 million.  We were glad to keep Ashton in the summer but even

then, if you were asked what would Ash do in the Jan window if Norwich

were not directly in the promotion frame, I bet most of us would admit

that he would want to go and we''d need to get the best price we could

for him.  Can you blame him for leaving?  He gets no service

and he''s not in the Prem.  End of story.  Given the

circumstances, I CONGRATULATE our Management for getting what we could

for him. 

So, I''m torn about this.  I hated seeing the #9 West Ham shirt

with Ashton emblazoned on it.  But I must also concede that if the

Board makes the right moves in this window, then I think we may have a

BETTER chance at promotion this season than if we hadn''t sold

him.  No one player makes a team and we need many quality players

to get promoted and this money is what we need at this time.  This

is a good move for us.  I congratulate the Board on this piece of

business and wait and see what happens during the rest of the window.