Sam Allardyce was blowing bubbles of joy as he celebrated his first victory as West Ham boss, but there was a sense of relief at the final whistle after the Hammers survived a late onslaught from the home side. "Doncaster threw everything at us towards the finish but I was well pleased with the resilience of our defence," admitted Allardyce.

We're winning away,
We're winning away,
How shit must you be?
We're winning away!
It may be to damn them with faint praise, but West Ham finally look as though they have arrived in this division. The early-season rust is clearing; new faces are becoming accustomed to their surroundings; disappointment is gradually morphing into determination.

Of all the places in England, Canary Wharf is perhaps the last one you might expect Sam Allardyce, "Big Sam" himself, to have made his home, three months shy of his 57th birthday. He loves it there especially, he says, his apartment, where a straight-talking Black Country lad who made his name in Lancashire lives next door to investment bankers.

A good speech is a wonderful thing. It has the capacity to inspire, to lift your spirits, to make your soul soar above the mundane minutae that obfuscates everyday existence. Unfortunately, noted Churchill, there are only two things more difficult than making an effective one: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.

Big Sam strolled to the dug-out for West Ham's pre-season friendly at Dagenham & Redbridge last week like Dean Martin walking on to a stage in Las Vegas – only with a better suit. He acknowledged the cheers with a breezy wave, joked with his coaching staff and was happy to pose for pictures with supporters and sign autographs after a 1-0 win.

There is something almost Riefenstahlian about the official site's daily descriptions of the squad's pre-season fitness regime; the luxuriating in the mundane minutiae of each training drill and the fetishistic depictions of lythe young bodies in the throws of physical exertion. So it is we learn that it was a mixture of work and play for West Ham United's players as the squad continued their pre-season training camp in Switzerland.

Sam Allardyce suffered defeat in his first game in charge of West Ham United, narrowly losing 2-1 to Swiss side Young Boys. The respectable result was the culmination of a hectic day three of the pre-season tour in central Switzerland, which saw the squad conduct two training sessions ahead of their opening Uhren Cup fixture.

The first time I passed through Switzerland I had the impression it was swept down with a broom from one end to the other every morning by housewives who dumped all the dirt in Italy...

Sam Allardyce is cracking the whip with his players by introducing triple sessions for the squad during these early stages of pre-season.

Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?

We've had Fletcher and Mackay and now West Ham are looking to add Baraclough to their growing list of Slade Prison namesakes. The club are reportedly close to appointing former Scunthorpe boss Ian Baraclough to their coaching staff, according to several sources. Sam Allardyce is keen to bolster his backroom team after seeing Kevin Keen leave for Liverpool earlier this week and has lined up a move for the highly-rated coach as he begins his plans for next season.

You see the truth is like lightning, it always follows the line of least resistance. So, for what we do, the trick is simple. All we have to do is find the line and then follow it back up. And, whatever it is, it's all going to be sorted out neat and tidy, 99% of the time. But with this, with what we see here.

Ministers are said to be closely monitoring allegations of inappropriate payments made by West Ham to a director of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, after the bitter public row over the future of the Olympic Stadium escalated yesterday. The Government is alarmed by revelations, first exposed on Friday, that an OPLC director was paid £20,000 while moonlighting as a consultant for West Ham, and has sought reassurances about the OPLC's processes and the decision to award the Olympic Stadium to West Ham.

West Ham United plan to sue the Sunday Times and Tottenham over allegations of corruption during their successful bid to take over the Olympic stadium. The club were awarded the right to move to the new stadium after the 2012 games, beating Tottenham in the process. A report in today's The Sunday Times claimed that secret payments had been made to an executive on the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC), the body which unanimously made the decision, during the selection process.

For years there's been peace - everyone to his own patch. We've
all had it sweet. I've done every single one of you favours in the past - I've
put money in all your pockets. I've treated you well, even when you was out of
order, right? Well now there's been an eruption.

It was full daylight at 7.40 this very morning in 1908 when an enormous pale blue fireball trailed by a 500-mile tail of bright light, shimmering, multicoloured bands hurtled across the Siberian sky and consumed itself in the greatest cosmic explosion in the history of civilisation. This cataclysmic detonation occurred four miles above the Earth's surface over a huge, inaccessible and almost uninhabited pine forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in central Siberia.