Hammers' Clarke fields questions on 'fire-sale'

West Ham eased into the fourth-round of the FA Cup following a 3-0 win over Barnsley at the weekend but even that performance was not enough to stem the fire-sale rumours.
Manager Gianfranco Zola was conspicuous by his absence from the post-match press conference – choosing instead to shoot to Sardinia with a festive message for his family rather than stick around to field calls from Premier League vultures circling his players.
Zola’s absence left assistant manager Steve Clarke to trot out the ‘we are just concentrating on the football’ line.
And he is quite right to do so.
West Ham were convincing in the way they dispatched the Championship opposition who enjoyed a run to the Semi-Finals last year - so the players at least are clearly concentrating on the football.
Matthew Upson’s absence was put down to ‘the flu’ rather than any imminent transfer and one ‘new’ face made a welcome appearance – Kieron Dyer finally getting on the pitch after more than a year out.
Clarke was impressed with the England international’s performance but recognised he has a long way to go to full fitness.
He said: “It was good to get Kieron back. He’s obviously had a terrible time with injuries.
“We all feel for him and he’s been working ever so hard just to get on the pitch again.
“Today was good for him. I thought he showed some good touches.
“He also showed that he is nowhere near full match fitness as he looked tired at times.
“But now we can work on building up his fitness and he is like a new signing.”
Speaking of signing’s Clarke was in bullish mood as to whether or not the club’s star names would be around for the fourth round ties at the end of the month.
He said: “The January transfer window is something that is there and you just have to put up with it.
“There is going to be a lot of speculation about players coming and players going.
“We come in every day and we try to do our work as best we can. We have one more FA Cup tie in January, hopefully we get a nice home draw and we will put out a strong team and try and progress in that competition.”
He added: “I think you see by the performance that all the players are committed. You can talk about speculation in the transfer window all day, but that is all it is.
“You guys love it, I understand it, but we are just concentrating on the next game and that is Newcastle away.”
West Ham will head there on the back of three straight wins – whether or not Craig Bellamy, Scott Parker and the other ‘transfer targets’ will be with them remains to be seen.