Fortune's Always Hiding

The claret, the blue, and the endless irony. Sarcastic dispatches from the London Stadium, written by a fan muttering into the void with a scarf wrapped firmly round the neck.

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Moving Day (Sort of)

It is with a heavy heart, a spectacularly dramatic sigh, and a slightly bewildered expression that I must announce a bit of a digital relocation. After fourteen glorious years of wandering the labyrinthine corridors of Tumblr, I have decided to set up a new primary residence over on Blogger. The new outpost is titled Fortune's Always Hiding (same name new link).

Classic internet move, really—changing horses in mid-stream, or rather, changing blogging platforms whilst entirely lacking any advanced digital engineering skills.

The Plan of Attack

The Main Event: All brand-new essays, fresh ramblings, and current adventures will now live exclusively on Blogger.

The Archive: Fear not, this Tumblr dashboard is not going completely dark. It will henceforth serve as a curated gallery of "Greatest Hits."

The Schedule: I will be regularly digging through the vaults to repost my favourite older entries here, mostly for my own nostalgia, but also to remind everyone of the time I was beautifully confused by basic geography.

The internet, much like a poorly signposted train station, is a confusing place, but I do hope you’ll trammed your way over to the new site to keep me company. It would be an absolute tragedy to lose you now.

See you over on Blogger, then.

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The Annual Invasion of the Keypad Commandos

The Annual Invasion of the Keypad Commandos

  Code Words and Broken Dreams Here we go again. The leaves are green, the sun is allegedly shining, and the most dangerous place in Western

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The Rumour Mill: Shifting Gears and Strictly Ballroom

The transfer window officially opens on Monday, at which point one assumes this relentless machine will actually have to find some more gears. For now, we remain trapped in the murky doldrums of speculation.

The undisputed heavyweight champ of the gossip column this week was supposed to be Manchester United preparing an opening bid for our 21-year-old midfield maestro, Mateus Fernandes. The powers that be had reportedly slapped a rather spectacular £80 million price tag on him, clearly operating under the glorious delusion that we aren’t heading down to the Championship. It was a bold, defiant strategy. Classic West Ham move.

But wait! The ink wasn’t even dry on that particular fantasy before Paris Saint-Germain decided to aggressively crash the party. The latest frantic whispers suggest they are preparing a truly mind-boggling double swoop, tossing a €130 million cheque onto the table to pry away both Fernandes and Crysencio Summerville in one fell swoop. Apparently, the French champions look at our tragic relegation and see a glorious, cut-price boutique just waiting to be plundered. Watching a Championship side hold out for a €130 million Parisian payday is precisely the kind of beautiful, high-stakes confusion I live for.

Meanwhile, the frantic whispers surrounding Jarrod Bowen have suddenly dried up entirely. It is a strange sort of silence, especially considering how much it has rained this month. Perhaps the damp has jammed the gears of the media train. This fills me with a dangerous, fragile hope that our skipper might actually stay. Or, quite frankly, maybe he is just entirely preoccupied at home practicing the hokey cokey. His wife, Dani Dyer, has just been sensationally confirmed to return to Strictly Come Dancing this September after last year’s tragic foot fracture. One assumes Jarrod is currently acting as a highly enthusiastic, claret-and-blue glitterball in the kitchen.

And finally, in a tragedy of profound indifference, there is still absolutely nobody interested in Max Kilman. Poor lad. He remains stuck in the corner like a forgotten umbrella, waiting for a suitor who refuses to arrive. Glorious times ahead on Monday.

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It appears the glorious, sun-drenched carousel of the close season has finally spun us back toward reality. The club have officially mapped out our first two steps into the 2026/27 pre-season wilderness, and it is a beautifully traditional Essex-and-Hertfordshire affair.

First up, the lads are heading down to the coast to face Southend United at Roots Hall on Saturday 18th July. A spectacular 3pm kick-off, inevitably soundtracked by screeching gulls and the faint smell of vinegar. Kieron Dyer is in the dugout for the Shrimpers now, which feels like a deeply nostalgic simulation of the early 2000s. Four days later, on Wednesday 22nd July, we travel to Stevenage for a midweek evening clash at Broadhall Way.

Regrettably, my own summer calendar has completely sabotaged any grand plans of attendance, reducing my role to that of a distant, armchair observer.

The seaside jaunt is officially off the table, as I shall instead be locked inside a darkened cinema for an 80s Mystery Movie Marathon in Romford. A spectacular day of retro cinema and questionable fashion choices, which frankly trumps a breezy afternoon on the coast. It would be an absolute tragedy to miss it.

As for the Stevenage trip? That has been thoroughly scuppered by the day job. In a classic move, the Underground have inconsiderately requested that I actually show up and work for my wages that evening, completely ignoring my status as a roving football correspondent.

So, no pre-season running about for me this time. I shall be navigating cinematic mysteries and evening commuter shifts instead, beautifully confused by how quickly summer schedules evaporate.

COYI. ⚒️🗓️

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The sheer, cinematic horror of it all. Just when you think the David Sullivan era has finally folded its gaudy, tabloid tent and slunk off into the night, the BBC drops another spectacularly grim update. It turns out the man was operating under a secret safeguarding ban since 2023. A classic West Ham move, really; keeping the curtains tightly drawn while the house is actively burning down.

For three whole years, a quiet little coalition of the FA, the club, and the local authority had barred our largest shareholder from having any contact whatsoever with the women’s or youth teams. No matches, no training grounds, nothing. Yet there he was, week in, week out, parked prominently in the London Stadium director's box like a permanent fixture of the fixtures. The institutional silence required to pull that off is honestly breathtaking.

It is a deeply uncomfortable car crash to watch, a tragedy wrapped in decades of Sport newspapers and pornography money. He has, of course, stepped down now to "focus on fighting" the claims, but the revelation that eight separate women had already gone to the police over the years makes the collective amnesia of football’s governing bodies feel even more damning.

Personally, I am utterly relieved to see the back of him. The club deserves a clean slate, free from the heavy, suffocating smog of these unending scandals. But watching the layers of this particular onion get peeled back in the national press? It is utterly gripping, terribly sordid, and entirely impossible to look away from. 📰💬

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It is a deeply uncomfortable truth about football that we often wait for a moral catastrophe to deliver the boardroom clear-out we wanted for purely sporting reasons.

For years, the collective prayer across the East End was simply for a bit of competence. We wanted someone who understood a modern transfer window, or perhaps someone who didn't treat a historic football institution as a personal plaything. I wanted David Sullivan out because he was a poor custodian of our club. I wanted him to leave after a sudden, miraculous flash of self-awareness: a realization that he was out of his depth.

Instead, we got this.

The fallout from the Panorama documentary has been deafening, and the newly established independent football regulator is already knocking at the door. Around me, many are jubilant. They are delighted to see him publicly disgraced, and some want blood.

But there is no triumph here.

If these historical allegations of sexual misconduct are proven true, the dominant emotion should not be celebration. It should be grief. Every headline represents a victim. A young girl whose life was irrevocably scarred by a man who, seemingly, believed that wealth, influence, and a media empire placed him beyond the standards of basic human decency.

Justice must take its course, and if he is guilty, he must face the consequences. But we should not mistake a tragedy for a sporting victory. Whatever happens next, whether in the courts or in the papers, the focus belongs entirely to the victims. 💬

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Welcome back to the Rumour Mill cyberspace repository, where we must once again sift through the digital debris of our collective, post-relegation tragedy. It is June, the sun is allegedly shining, and West Ham United is being stripped down like a stolen bicycle in an alleyway.

Let us search our way through the weekend's most beautifully chaotic whispers, shall we?

The Midfield Magnet

Apparently, a spectacular ten different clubs have suddenly decided they cannot live without Mateus Fernandes. Ten. It is a level of frantic, digital desperation usually reserved for the last remaining ticket to a concert. Every sporting director in Europe is hitting refresh on his agent's inbox, while we sit here contemplating life in the Championship. Classic summer window move.

The Five-Club Queues

Moving down the hierarchy of digital desire, we have two distinct queues forming for our migratory wing and fullback departments:

Crysencio Summerville: Five clubs are reportedly actively pursuing a deal, viewing him as a glorious solution to their creative droughts. He is being circled like a fresh baguette by five very well-fed pigeons.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka: A completely separate quintet of suitors is queuing up for the spider-legged defender. He has a relegation clause, a passport ready for the World Cup with DR Congo, and five distinct managers convinced he is the missing piece to their defensive puzzles.

The Left-Back Ledger

Not to be outdone, El Hadji Malick Diouf is attracting a fabulous amount of attention himself, with four clubs reportedly showing interest. After recording five Premier League assists during our rather catastrophic campaign, he has become the shiny object everyone wants to touch.

The Greek Tragedy & The Lonely Hammer

​Finally, a dramatic contrast in workplace dynamics:

​Konstantinos Mavropanos has decided he absolutely wants to move on, packing his bags metaphorically, despite Nuno Espírito Santo practically begging him to stay. A classic tale of unrequited tactical love.

​And then, the ultimate tragedy. The absolute silence.

​While the rest of the squad is being fought over like the final coat at a sample sale, absolutely nobody... literally not a single soul in cyberspace... is interested in Max Kilman. He sits alone in the corner of the rumour mill, undisturbed, unlinked, and entirely stationary.

​We await the next wave of internet madness with a beautifully confused mixture of dread and irony, naturally. 🤫

Will Jarrod Bowen still be a Hammer when the transfer window closes?

Yes, he's forever blowing bubbles

No, fortune's always hiding

Voting ended onJun 9

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And there it is. The man himself has put pen to paper, or more likely, instructed a very expensive public relations team to do it for him.

David Sullivan has released an official statement addressing his departure from the club, and it goes exactly how you would expect an institutional exit strategy to read. It is formal, highly curated, and utterly devoid of the usual boardroom bravado we have grown so accustomed to over the years.

For those who want to read between the very carefully constructed lines, the full text is available over on the official site. 👇. 📰

A statement from David Sullivan - West Ham United FC

So, where does this leave us? We are standing on the precipice of a completely new era, looking out into the fog with a mixture of profound relief and mild existential dread. The old regime is fading into history, and while the legal machinery grinds on behind closed doors, the club we love faces a massive, uncertain rebirth. It is terrifying, it is monumental, and it is entirely necessary. Turn the lights out on the past, lads. Tomorrow, the future begins. Horrified, fascinated, and utterly obsessed, naturally.

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It is the news we have all been waiting for, dreading, and frantically forwarding to our dads in equal measure. David Sullivan has officially stepped down as co-chairman of West Ham United with immediate effect.

The official line from the BBC cites "historical allegations." As for the details of those allegations, I shall leave that entirely to proper, grown-up journalists who possess media law degrees and expensive corporate indemnity insurance. It is, no doubt, a spectacular personal tragedy for him. For the rest of us, however, it lands as a moment of profound, dizzying relief.

Let us be completely honest: this is the news the claret-and-blue faithful have been whispering about in the dark corners of the London Stadium for years. It has been the elephant in the boardroom, wearing a rather questionable trapper hat. A fanbase trapped in a state of perpetual, beautifully confused limbo has spent the last twenty-four months wishing, hoping, and praying for a clean break. At long last, that day has arrived.

Classic West Ham, of course, to drop a tectonic institutional shift on a quiet Saturday afternoon. While the legalities work their way through the proper channels, the immediate reality for Fortunes Always Hiding is clear. The reign of the dildo brothers is, structurally speaking, over.

We are sailing into entirely uncharted waters now. No map. No precedent. Just a football club suddenly confronting a future it has spent years imagining but never quite believing would arrive. Horrified, fascinated, and utterly obsessed, naturally. 📰

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"We have one mission together..." | An Interview with Nuno Espírito Santo

Our leader talks the talk, but can he walk the walk? Only time will tell ⚒️ 👀

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As a rule, June is a tragedy of a month for those of us who tie our emotional stability to the fortunes of eleven men kicking a piece of leather around a field. The summer stretch is normally a barren wasteland of transfer rumours, existential dread, and trying to pretend we care about cricket.

But a spectacular beacon of hope has arrived from the digital ether, and it has arrived courtesy of an artificial intelligence called Grok (fabulous name, rhymes beautifully with crock).

The tech gurus at GiveMeSport tasked this digital oracle with predicting the entire 2026/27 Championship table. Now, quite how this supreme mechanical mind managed to reach a definitive conclusion without the minor details of, say, our actual squad list or a single official fixture, remains a mystery. Classic modern technology move. But details are boring.

What matters is the data. The oracle has spoken, and it has declared us absolute royalty.

According to our new silicon savior, the Hammers are going to completely dominate the division, amassing a glorious 92 points and cruising back to the Premier League as champions, finishing a comfortable seven points clear of Wolves. The AI even added, rather dramatically, that our "strong squad depth" will see us coast it.

Naturally, as a long-suffering fan accustomed to catastrophic disappointment, I am swallowing this digital hallucination entirely whole. I intend to spend the rest of the summer basking in absolute, unearned confidence. Football is simple, really. Optimistically. 📰

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View this post on Instagram

While Hammers HQ currently boasts the same level of activity as a defensive midfielder in a testimonial (statuesque, primarily), I have managed to unearth a fifteen-second morsel of content that our PR department has seen fit to release into the wild. It appears to be a fleeting snippet from a longer interview with Nuno, no doubt carefully curated to ensure no state secrets regarding our magnificent, non-existent transfer budget are accidentally revealed to the masses.

It is a glorious display of tactical PR —fifteen seconds of high-definition ambiguity that leaves us searching for deeper meaning in the gaffer's blink rate (a classic West Ham move to treat a brief clip as a cosmic Rosetta Stone for the upcoming season). Is he hinting at a new era of "The West Ham Way," or simply wondering if the walk from Stratford station has got any shorter?. Either way, it’s all we’ve got to cling to before the inevitable, spectacular collapse of the gossip columns.

Enjoy, people. Massive 👀

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Still alive, miraculously, despite the persistent existential dread that comes with supporting this glorious, chaotic institution. I haven’t abandoned you; I’ve merely been braced for impact as the transfer window prepares to open like a recurring fever dream.

We are currently linked to half of Europe’s registered professionals, a magnificent feat of imagination considering our transfer budget is currently being held together by optimistic thoughts and a few loose coins found behind the stadium bar. The Mateus Fernandes situation is reaching levels of avant-garde performance art, with every club on the continent seemingly convinced they can secure our midfield lynchpin for a crisp five-pound note and the loan of a sixteen-year-old academy prospect they found in Guatemala.

Total tragedy

Jarrod Bowen is currently performing the "Internet Hokey Cokey"... staying, going, fiercely loyal, or supposedly too refined for the Championship... while we all wait for the inevitable, spectacular collapse of our collective sanity. And then there is Max Kilman. Stone cold silence. Not a single suitor has blinked, which is a classic West Ham move (leaving us holding onto the one man we all assumed would be halfway to the airport by now). Fortune’s hiding, as per usual, but the nonsense is very much in plain sight.

Massive. 🤫

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The West Ham Rumour Mill: Changes Behind the Curtain

There's not a lot bubbling away in the rumour mill just yet, mainly because the transfer window hasn't officially opened. That said, a couple of stories are doing the rounds regarding changes behind the scenes at West Ham United.

This one looks like it could have some substance to it, with both BBC journalist Sami Mokbel and ExWHUEmployee reporting the same information. According to Ex, the backroom reshuffle is officially underway, with recruitment figure Maximilian Hahn resigning from his position. It certainly feels like a proper staff overhaul is on the horizon, which is... interesting timing given the current mood around Rush Green.

Elsewhere, there's still plenty of chatter surrounding Paco Jémez. At this point, he's playing the social media Hokey Cokey. He's in, he's out, he's teasing it all about. One minute he's posting cryptic posts on the site formally known as Twitter suggesting he might be sticking around, the next he's practically halfway through the departure lounge. Standard West Ham soap opera stuff.

There was also some muttering about Jarrod Bowen joining Chelsea. Presumably started by a Chelsea supporter suffering from a severe lack of fresh air, as they apparently believe West Ham would accept somewhere around £40 million. Absolute comedy gold. 🤣 A European champion, England international and our outright talisman heading across London for the price of a couple of modern full-backs? Nice try. 📰🤫

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The Dreaded Banter Deficit

I am utterly exhausted. Bone-weary, frankly. The sheer, relentless chore of bantering Arsenal fans has become a full-time job I never applied for, and the hours are dreadful.

Here is the tragic reality of my current blogging existence: it is remarkably difficult to scrape together meaningful content when the entire West Ham digital ecosystem is occupied. Most Hammers fans are currently spending their precious waking hours trying to wind up a club that... lest we forget... just won the Premier League. Meanwhile, we were casually relegated. Classic West Ham move, really. Attempting to mock the Premier League champions from the cold, damp floor of the Championship feels a bit like a pigeon lecturing a golden eagle on aviation aesthetics. Delusional, but you have to admire the spirit.

Can the people of my X and Threads timelines please return to its rightful, glorious purpose? I crave the comfort of the mundane. I am practically begging for those completely unrealistic transfer links to dazzling European strikers; the ones who look spectacular in YouTube compilations, cost a fictional £40m, and will inevitably end up at Bournemouth.

Let us leave the Gunners to their trophies and return to our true calling: dreaming magnificently, failing predictably. 💬

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The ITK Illusion and the Paco Paradox

Just yesterday, I sat at this very keyboard and penned a rather moving, tear-stained tribute to the sad departure of our beloved Spanish tactical maestro, Paco Jémez. I captured the grief. I captured the existential dread. For a brief moment, I felt like the ultimate arbiter of East London footballing truth.

Then I woke up this morning, opened my phone, and received a digital reality check that hit harder than an unexpected Thursday night trip to Alkmaar.

Jumping the Gun (Spectacularly)

So, let us clarify a few things before the internet completely devours what remains of my dignity.

Firstly, I may have jumped the gun.

In fact, I didn't just jump the gun. I sprinted past it, crossed the finish line, lifted the trophy, and delivered a victory speech while the starter pistol was still being polished.

With that in mind, it's probably time to clarify some things and establish a few ground rules for this blog before I start looking like a complete plonker:

I am not an ITK

I have no mysterious source. No bloke in a high-vis jacket whispering secrets through the Rush Green gates. No cousin's mate's dog walker feeding me transfer updates from the shadows.

I do not want to be an ITK

The pressure of pretending to know things sounds absolutely exhausting. My blood pressure and remaining sanity simply couldn't cope.

The Mission

This is, and always will be, a fan site. A place built to bring a slice of self-deprecating humour to the absolute, unfiltered chaos that comes with supporting this football club.

The New Editorial Manifesto

In the interests of maintaining some semblance of journalistic integrity, and more importantly avoiding future public embarrassment, our approach to transfer and backroom staff reporting is getting a dramatic overhaul.

From this moment forward, Fortunes Always Hiding will rely on credible news sources and official club statements wherever possible.

Should a particularly juicy rumour prove impossible to ignore, it will be clearly labelled RUMOUR, accompanied by its original source, and presented with the appropriate level of scepticism that years of supporting West Ham have carefully cultivated within us.

Apologies for any confusion caused.

Normal service, consisting of beautiful confusion, misplaced confidence, and ironic optimism, will now resume.

Apologetically. 🗣️

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Farewell to the King of Chaos: Why Paco Jémez’s Exit Leaves Us Properly Stranded

It appears the inevitable has arrived, dropped into our timelines with all the subtle elegance of a breeze block through a conservatory window. Judging by Paco's post on X, it appears Jémez has bid us a fond, bittersweet adiós.

To call this a tragedy would somehow still feel like underselling it. If Nuno had packed his bags at any point during our recent existential crisis, Paco would have been my absolute, undisputed choice to take the wheel.

Honestly, our sudden and bewildering ability to actually find the back of the net in the latter half of the season had very little to do with Nuno’s tactical brooding or the shiny new January arrivals. It felt entirely down to Paco injecting a glorious dose of beautiful, unfiltered attacking madness into a squad that had seemingly forgotten which direction to run. He dragged us out of the tactical doldrums through sheer force of will alone.

Classic West Ham, really. We stumble across a brief glimmer of soul-stirring football, only to watch it pack its bags before the summer sun has even reached East London.

So here we are again: another bunch of Irons left staring into the void, wondering what on earth comes next. Whether this leaves us completely rudderless or merely predictably mediocre, only the looming reality of next season will tell.

COYI. 📰