Sears on for a Catalogue of Goals?

West Ham have had problems with homesick players before so Freddie Sears opting to stay in the big city with Crystal Palace is perhaps understandable. Who can forget Joey Beauchamp’s refusal to stray too far from his beloved Oxford dog track back in the day, or Florin Răducioiu’s love of Harvey Nick’s? Could Neil Warnock have fancied raining on Sheffield Wednesday’s parade out of spite? He probably didn’t even want Sears, but stomaching the possibility of the hated Owls ending up with a Premier League striker? No way.

Is the BBC website run by a Charlton fan perchance? Acknowledgement of Sears’ dramatic goal-scoring debut against Blackburn Rovers in March 2008 is tempered by the cutting observation that that was the youngster’s last first team goal. Twenty eight league games he may have played, but the largest portion of these have been at substitute and he is the possessor of a half decade deal. He looks the part: lively, quick and industrious – I think many Championship fans will have wanted their club to sign him. Has anyone told him that South Norwood isn’t exactly metropolitan though?

Rob Langham

Rob Langham (pen name: Lanterne Rouge) is co-founder of the defiantly non-partisan football league blog, The Two Unfortunates, a website that occasionally strays into covering issues of wider importance. He's 47 and lives in Oxford while retaining his boyhood support of Reading FC. He tweets as @twounfortunates and has written for a number of websites and publications including The Football Attic, The Inside Left, When Saturday Comes, In Bed with Maradona, Futbolgrad and The Blizzard as well as being nominated for the Football Supporters' Federation Blogger of the Year Award in 2013.