David Sullivan has admitted that he will have a say in some of the summer transfers.
Sullivan, speaking in an interview with the Daily Mail revealed that he would be invloved in the transfer process - although admitted that the final say will be left to new boss Avram Grant."We’ll talk and make joint decisions but the ultimate decision will be his," said Sullivan. "He will pick 95 per cent of the transfers. Maybe one in 20, I might beg a favour and say I really fancy somebody and get him to take a player on my head and maybe one in 20 I’ll veto one of his because over the years I’ve seen managers buy players they really shouldn’t have bought."
Referring to the decision to sign Grant, he added: "We believe in going with experience and Avram has 34 years’. He is the man for the job - a superb candidate with a very good record. What he did at Chelsea was under-rated. The team were going backwards when he took over and he almost won the Champions League and the Premier League.
"I like him very much. He’s completely the opposite of what I imagined. I imagined a dour, boring, serious man with no humour. In fact he’s got a very dry sense of humour with an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of football. Wonderful. He tells jokes and stories. He’s led a full life and he’s learned from that.
"We won’t judge him for two or three years, by then we’ll see if he’s as good as we think he is. He will inherit a very unbalanced team and it will take time to sort out with the limited resources we have and the inflated transfer fees and wages.
"He did very well at Portsmouth. He wasn’t there from the start of the season, he inherited a team which was ripped apart underneath him, he had points deducted, but he got them to the FA Cup final. With his points-per-game they would have stayed up."
Sullivan also revealed that he had met with other candidates - believed to include new Wolfsburg manager Steve McLaren and the currently-unemployedMark Hughes - but that only Grant managed to fit the bill both financially and in terms of experience.
"We interviewed three or four others; one said he would come but wanted £7m in wages for him and his staff. Another said he’d come but would want a minimum transfer budget of £40m. And another was thinking of coming until he had an offer from elsewhere that was too good to refuse."
Sullivan also admitted that he and partner David Gold hoped to emulate the success of neighbours Arsenal. "They are our model. Myself, Avram, David Gold and Karren Brady would love to turn West Ham into the Arsenal of east London," he said. "The team, the club, there’s so much right there. It’s so well run."
You can read the full interview here.
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