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Sacked West Ham boss Bilic snaps back at Sullivan over transfer claims

Sacked West Ham boss Slaven Bilic has taken aim at co-chairman David Sullivan.

Bilic is upset Sullivan appeared to take credit for all West Ham's good signings (Dimitri Payet, Manuel Lanzini) and blame Bilic for the less successful deals (Jose Fonte, Robert Snodgrass).

"West Ham is my club. I am not afraid of confrontation but I don't want it with people I got on with for two years. But again I have to say something," he told the Daily Mail.

"To say all the good players were him, and the bad signings were me is kind of low. And it's simply not true.

"I don't want to praise myself but if you ask about Lanzini, I knew about him since he was at River Plate a few years ago, I wanted to take him to Besiktas. At that time, he was too much money and went to Al Jazira (in Abu Dhabi).

"Let's be honest, who knew about Lanzini before he came to England? Nobody knew and that includes the chairman. But I never treated the signings like that, like they are my players or your players. No, they were all our players, collective responsibility.

"There were three of us: the chairman, myself and Tony Henry (director of player recruitment). Agents would call any of us and we shared the information. I knew about Payet for a long time. The chairman told me he'd had a call about a player from Marseille. I said which one, and he said Payet. I said, 'Yes, don't think twice'.

"I am not going to take credit for everything but I don't want to take all the blame either. Fonte and Snodgrass came in January. We were losing Payet and Ogbonna was having an operation, and of course the budget was limited. So we got those two new players. To criticise them is unfair. They came to a club in a difficult situation and helped us finish 11th so they played their part."

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