Communique From Central Command

Scott Duxbury has steadfastly rejected reports in the morning press that the club was on the brink of administration before the take over by CB Holding, and revealed West Ham are keen to sign at least three players. In an interview conducted twenty-four hours after the arrival of the new owners, the West Ham chief executive dispelled the rumours of impending financial crisis and disclosed that the club were close to capturing new players that would considerably improve the first-team squad.

"We are a self-sufficient well-run football club and clubs or companies that are close to administration can't purchase multi-million pound players," he told Sky Sports News. "We purchased Savio, we have just exercised the option to buy Illunga, we have just extended the contracts of Gianfranco (Zola) and Steve Clarke so it's absolute nonsense. We have never been close to administration and as long as I am here we never will be."

Although Duxbury understandably declined to name any of the proposed targets, for fear of alerting rival clubs, he did state that he hoped at least one of the deals would be completed in the next few weeks. "He (Zola) has identified three positions where he wants to bring players in who he believes will improve the squad and the first-team," he said. "We are close to securing those three players so the team will just improve. Ideally, hopefully one of the players we can conclude in the next couple of weeks. But then the manager has gone on record as saying he wants pre-season to start so he can assess his squad and then further decisions will be made. The three players in question - hopefully in the next few weeks we will be able to announce something - but there is still a little way to go, but talks and discussions have gone well and are ongoing."

Duxbury has also revealed that despite the takeover the club's ethos of bringing youngsters through would remain the same as they look to make a serious bid for trophies in the coming seasons. "The short-term and the long-term goals are the same," he added. "We want to achieve success and it's through progression and progression of the young players. We have a clear vision of how we are going to achieve success. I work very closely with Gianluca (Nani, director of football) and Gianfranco and Gianfranco's ideology is to bring the young players through. You have seen the development on the pitch this season and Gianfranco hasn't even had a pre-season with the team yet. You will see the team improve. So the short and long-term are the same goal, achieve success."

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