The rumours about Marlon going to Man City are surely wide of the mark. If Sven Goran Ericksson becomes the new Man City manager I suspect he will go for players he once chose for England. Marlon is not a ‘Sven’ type of player. Remember, he was on fire the season before last and didn’t get so much as a call-up from Sven.

I know tabloid journalists have space to fill in these barren months, but let the rumours at least have some semblance of truth!

I’ve expressed great scepticism about West Ham signing Craig Bellamy in several recent posts. Alan Shearer has now revealed exactly what kind of a troublemaker he can be. This is what Mr Shearer had to say today, warning Sam Allardyce not take him back to St James’s Park…..

Has no-one learned their lesson about signing him? If only Rafa Benitez had rung me I would have told him exactly what he was like. I was having a few days away in France with my former Newcastle team-mates Gary Speed and Steve Harper and the wives and I picked up the newspaper. I was having a fantastic day. But when I read Bellamy for Newcastle I thought I would definitely have to have another drink. I had several. I hope there’s nothing in it.

Yet another big feature on Mark Noble, this time in the Sunday Times HERE.

I’ve never heard of the Daily Mirror’s Brian Reade, and in many ways I am quite thankful. Today he’s written a ridiculous column which seeks to blame West Ham for football’s ills. Read it HERE if you must. Here’s an extract…

West Ham chairman Eggert Magnusson says he’s doing nothing wrong apart from trying to take on the top teams. But he is. Forget morals if you will and look at economics. When Viduka was offered £75,000 a week by West Ham he used it as a bargaining tool with Newcastle, who were forced to pick up an extra £2.4m tab on his contract. Not that all players snub the Icelandic sugar-daddy, who is rapidly earning the nickname of Father Christmas. Look at Lucas Neill. He could have been playing in a European Cup Final with Liverpool last month, but chose a relegation fight for £60,000 a week. Think of the knock-on effect when agents thump these new numbers into their calculators. Andy Johnson and Craig Bellamy have reputedly been offered £90,000 a week by the East End Santa.

They might not take it but they may use it to win even heftier salaries. Salaries their agents will use as starting points when other clients’ deals are up for renewal. West Ham’s obscene rewriting of salary bands won’t affect the Big Four. They will still draw men who want medals as well as cash. But it will dramatically hit the teams below them who need a form of sanity in the wage market to operate. When the extra TV billions poured into the Premiership there was talk about significant cuts in ticket prices. A few clubs have, the majority haven’t. Instead they’ve decided the best way to stay viable is to hand the new wealth to agents and players. Magnusson’s Law says that the only guaranteed way of keeping your head in the Premiership’s deep trough is to bribe players with outrageous offers. And the likes of Newcastle have been forced to comply. But at what price?

The trouble is he is completely wrong. Magnusson has a £55,000 a week wage cap. The papers all seem to act, as Tony Blair might put it, in a herd. If one of them mentions Lucas Neill is on £70,000 a week, the rest follow like sheep. These feral beasts of the sports pages must be held to account. Brian Reade, hang your head in shame.

From the gossip website Holy Moly…

Charlton striker Darren Bent struggled to hit the net last season, but his aim was rather better in the toilet cubicle of the Hammersmith Apollo, where he pinged a beauty of a lazy lob (on) right into the chattering anus of Charley from this year’s ‘Big Brother’.

Charley is fast turning into the Paul Ince of the BB house; cocky, self-opinionated and quite prepared to play the race card when it suits her. She has about the same amount of friends as… well, her only real ‘celeb’ friend (if you don’t count her cousin Kieran Richardson – and you really shouldn’t!), being that bright shining star Louise Beckham, who is famous for… nepotism. Well I never.

Charming…

A reader emails to ask if I have spotted THIS article about Robert Lee’s two sons who are on West Ham’s books in the Daily Mail. I hadn’t, but I have now! Let’s hope they both get more games for the Hammers than their Dad did!

This is what Mark Noble told Sky Sports News this morning…

The sky’s the limit for West Ham. We’ve got a great chairman, a good manager and some fantastic players. I hope we keep the likes of Tev (Carlos Tevez), obviously Yossi (Benayoun) has signed a new deal and it’s looking forward for the club. I can’t wait for next season, and I’ll be going into the gaffer and telling him I want to play and finish off from last season, and I’m sure he’ll be happy with me doing that. It was amazing times when I was there – it seemed like we were playing like Real Madrid. We were passing it, we had Tevez scoring, Bobby (Zamora) was scoring and obviously we were on fire – it seemed like we can beat anyone, and it just showed because we beat Man U away and Arsenal away. We rode our luck a bit at times, but you need that when you’re in the bottom three. We just deserved to stay up at the end of it.

Dontcha just love him?