Source: Telegraph
West Ham won't sell players to Tottenham insists Scott Duxbury
Bellamy eventually joined his former national team and Blackburn manager Mark Hughes for a fee in the region of £14 million after reports emerged that the player had demanded West Ham accept Tottenham's offer, a claim strenuously denied by Bellamy.[LNB]'I made it quite clear to Craig there wasn't any possibility of him joining Tottenham,' said Duxbury. 'There is a change of philosophy at this club. I keep referring to the football project and it's a business plan we stick to.[LNB]'Part of that is we need to be aware of our fans' expectations, we need to be aware of who our local rivals are and there is massive rivalry between ourselves and Tottenham.[LNB]'It's nothing about Tottenham but why on earth should we sell any player that would strengthen their team? It just makes no sense to me.[LNB]'I won't sell any of our players to our local rivals.'[LNB]West Ham moved swiftly to replace Bellamy with £9 million record signing Savio Nsereko, with manager Gianfranco Zola insisting that deal put the lie to notions of the Upton Park club being in financial turmoil with further departures from the club imminent.[LNB]Nsereko, a German Under-21 international who was born in Uganda, joined from Italian Serie B club Brescia and should feature in tonight's Premier League match against Hull City provided international clearance is received in time.[LNB]'There were a lot of worries about the club, about us selling players, but as you've seen, we sold the players who were not playing regularly here and some of them left because they wanted to go,' said Zola.[LNB]'There were a lot of rumours that we were not going to be able to buy anybody but that we had to sell.[LNB]'I am pleased because this is a good club, run by good people who were keen to reinvest some of the money we had received in the transfer window and take this club forward.[LNB]'We don't want to sell anybody unless someone comes to us and tells us they want to leave.'[LNB]Scott Parker, Robert Green and Matthew Upson, players who have featured heavily in transfer speculation over the last month, will all be offered new contracts at Upton Park.[LNB]'There was a lot of interest in our players but I contacted every single player and told them we didn't want to sell them and got the commitment back they didn't want to go,' said Zola.[LNB]'When the transfer window shuts I will be sitting down and talking to them about extending their contracts.'[LNB]
