"He's desperate to get us in the Premier-ship and the lads can see that," Zamora says "Mathematically it's possible So obviously we have to be gunning for it. I was just saying to myself, 'I want to be playing', especially after I'd had a taste of it."Zamora believes he will taste the Premiership again, and soon, with West Ham They are a young team now, and he is their totemic leader His arrival, and Defoe's departure, was a watershed And they are, most definitely, Alan Pardew's team. "Delighted and gutted at the same time," laughs Zamora again. "If that's possible!""It was just frustrating at Tottenham," he admits, paying tribute to the fans.
"I knew I wouldn't be able to go there and start every week, but it doesn't half get to you, not playing all the time. If that goal doesn't come in the first game or two then people [the media] are on your back."At Tottenham, where Zamora moved last summer for £1.5m after scoring 83 goals in 134 games for Brighton & Hove Albion, it didn't come Eighteen sporadic appearances, one goal And that came against West Ham. "Look at [Jon] Stead at Blackburn," Zamora, 23, says of the teenager plucked from Third Division Huddersfield Town. "He's managed to get a couple of goals early on and people are saying, 'Oh, he can do it'. "He's gone there [Tottenham] and started off well, so hopefully he'll be in Portugal."A good start It is essential, especially for a striker. It's where I want to be and Jermain obviously wants to be going to the European finals," he says.
"There were bits in the papers but I didn't pay too much attention. The next thing I get a phone call from my agent saying, 'This has come up' There was a day left [before the transfer window closed]. 'What do you think?' ''It was Sunday evening, and it would be 2.30am before he got to bed Not that he had any doubts "I'm pleased to be here, very pleased. The move returned him to the club he left aged just 14, with Jermain Defoe going back round the A406."It was quite funny, as I'd seen him a couple of days before," Zamora remarks Both players were unaware. Outside, the elements are battering away, but it's as nothing compared to the whirlwind of his transfer from Tottenham Hotspur in February. I always knew I would," he says with an unerring certainty, stretching as he sits in a hut at the back of the training ground in Chadwell Heath, east London.
"They put the board up and I just stood there, not moving, hoping they would take it down again. But it doesn't happen like that." It was no act of petulance, no sign of dissent. Just a desire to relish every minute of finally playing for the club, West Ham United, he loves. "I always wanted to come back. "The other day, against Crewe, when I came off, I was thinking, 'Oh no'," he says with a laugh about the late substitution. Bobby Zamora tells a little story against himself. We have to make sure we are disciplined in our approach and also make sure our strike force has plenty of ammunition." And, having missed Southampton's League and cup wins over Portsmouth this season, Phillips will be eager to fire the bullets..