* Marlon Harewood has signed a new five-year contract with West Ham. The 26-year-old striker, who was the Hammers' top scorer last season, said, "I'm delighted to have signed a new contract. The atmosphere and spirit within the squad is fantastic at the moment. I'm proud to be part of this team. I've thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Club so far and winning promotion last season was without doubt one of the best moments of my career. Hopefully, we can look forward to more success like that in the future. We got off to a great start with the result against Blackburn on Saturday and it's given us a lot of confidence going into the trip to Newcastle. It's a great starting point for us to build on this season."

* Teddy Sheringham has praised new teammate Yossi Benayoun in an interview with the Club's official website. "Making your debut in the Premier League is not easy because the pace of the game can come as a bit of shock," he said. "Yossi was probably a bit surprised in the first 10 minutes, because that was an intense match with a really high tempo. But even then he showed some excellent touches in tight situations and in the second-half he really started to get on the ball and show what he can do. He showed really good awareness to set-up two goals and he did very well. The same goes for all the players. It was a complete team performance with everyone playing to a high level. For some of the players it was their first game at this level, but they all acquitted themselves well and that is encouraging for the rest of the season. Now we face a tough trip to Newcastle this weekend, but we'll go there confident after what was a strong opening performance."

* Veteran Malky Mackay is reportedly set for a transfer to Watford, having seen his chances of a first team start dwindle to almost nil now that the club has approximately six other players who are ahead of him in the queue for the two centre-back positions.

* Nigel Reo-Coker and Anton Ferdinand have been called up to the England U21 squad to face Denmark this week. Just reminds you how young these players really are, and how much better they could be when they hit their peak.

* Fellow Hammers Carl Fletcher, Danny Gabbidon, James Collins and Gavin Williams have all been called up to the Wales squad for this week's match against Slovenia. Unforunately Collins has had to pull out due to a minor calf injury.

* Youngsters Moses Ashikodi, Darren Blewitt and Trent McClenahan are all set to go on loan, to Gillingham, Hereford United and MK Dons respectively.

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