Away day members club plans being discussed as Hammers look to weed out troublemakers

West Ham are considering introducing a members club for fans wishing to support the Irons away from home in a bid to crack down on incidents such as the ones which marred the Premier League match against Chelsea on Sunday, after Irons supporters lobbed missiles at Chelsea players John Terry and Frank Lampard in response to the two celebrating Lampard's goal in front of the away end.

Numbers of seats were also ripped out of the Shed End away section and according to a club insider quoted today in the Sun, the Hammers could be set to introduce a scheme which would make it easier to find fans who misbehave at away games.

"West Ham fans are among the best in the country but this kind of thing lets them down," the source said last night.

"An awayday club would log the names and addresses of those who buy tickets and match them to their seats- if only members were allowed to buy tickets, it would make it a lot easier to find the idiots  who misbehave."

The two Irons supporters arrested yesterday with racially aggravated offences at the match on Sunday have since been bailed by police, and the club's fans are now under investigation on four separate counts now, with police still hunting West Ham fans involved in a bar brawl at Sunderland in January and guilty of anti-Semitic chanting at the London derby with Spurs last month, as well as the coin throwing culprits on Sunday.

By Alex Shilling, News Editor

@alexshilling

The members club sounds like a good way to weed out the morons but it has been tried by clubs in the past; there was a similar scheme in place at Stoke about ten years ago in a bid to crack down on the club's 'Naughty Forty' hooligan element, and it proved so unpopular with fans, who had to pay £10 for I.D cards to join the awayday membership scheme that the club dropped it. It would be interesting to see how West Ham would work this idea out.