West Ham head of recruitment apologises for racist comments
Tony Henry - who was sacked by West Ham in February - has apologised for the comments he made about African players and says they were not intended to be taken as racist.
Henry was the head of recuitment at the 'Hammers' before he made the disparaging comments about players of African origin.
In an e-mail to an agent he reportedly said that the club were actively turning away African players due to concerns over their attitude.
"I was wrong for what I said. I'm not trying to get out of this. I've been charged by the FA. This is not me saying 'what I said was right'. It was wrong, and I totally apologise," he said to 'Sky Sports'.
"It was never, ever meant to be racist in any way. The reason we said we didn't want any more Africans was because we already had three. The day before we'd had four, but one of them left.
"I just felt that, as a head of recruitment, I look ahead down the line and I thought that, in 12 months' time, it's the African Nations Cup. If we had four African players, come the African Nations Cup, we are going to lose them in January and February, and we could struggle with that.
"Any team struggles when they lose four players. I just felt that it would have been too many for us. But also, as well, we brought a new manager in and we weren't in a good position. We needed to get some points, get some wins, and the Premier League is a tough league.
"New players coming in have to hit the ground running, and what we said was we would have preferred, if possible, Premier League-based players, who could come in and get straight into it.
"But that never always works out and, in the end, we didn't take any players. We took Jordan Hugill in the end, (and) we took Joao Mario, who is a top player. But again that made it, for me, even more important that we could bring in a couple of Premier League players to help out."