Maybe David Sullivan feels he should have stayed on his hired holiday yacht on the gentle Mediterranean sea, rather than be hit by the tsunami of abuse from fans furious with West Ham’s very public transfer nightmare.
It’s that time of year again. Sullivan is used to it by now. I’ve followed his career from Birmingham, because I had to, and now at my club, because I had no choice. And you get the feeling that the sustained abuse is water off a duck's back.I wonder if the more (in)famous social media grifter did one of those poll of his, asking if the owner should stay or go, I’m sure the result would be a foregone conclusion.
This time, though it seems worse. Not every fan is a financial genius, why should they be. They should expect their club to be run in a transparent why. Why should they have to pour through accounts and balance sheets to see how their club is being run, or not as the case may be?
But they see the blindingly obvious. The headlines. Their club’s attendances are amongst the top ten in the world. They see they are the 17th richest club in Europe, and the wonder why we are continually in a financial mess.
We don’t own our own ground so we don’t have the maintenance costs that other clubs have, clubs like Spurs, Everton, Arsenal, who have managed to finance the building of outstanding new stadiums.
This was the ownership that promised a world class stadium, world class team and Champions League football when the move to Stratford was forced through. That was almost ten years ago, now.
And we are £200m in debt over incoming transfers and are predicted another £85m in debt next season. But a maybe bemused coach in Graham Potter and his trusty head of recruitment mate Kyle Macaulay are being told there can be no new players until sales in a transfer window that your average fan sees everyone else buying to improve, apart from us.
We will stop paying the wages of nine players - ten if Michail Antonio leaves - at the end of this month, and that’s £500,000 a week plus off the wage bill. And we still have no money for new players.
They see billionaires in the posh seats pleading poverty, they wonder why nobody wants to buy Vanessa Gold’s shares, they don’t quite understand why the rest of the Premier League seem not to have the problems, every summer, that we have.
At the top end of the market, in two windows, Manchester City have bought a new squad and still are inside their PSR ceiling. Aston Villa seem most at risk, and will have to sell. We are the seventh best in this situation.
Fans see an argument between the media and the club over what our PSR top limit is; can we spend £95m without bothering the authorities unduly, or is it £20m or so less than that?
And it all comes back to cash flow, something that doesn’t seem to bother the rest of the division, but is always trotted out by our owners. You see, our fans should not have to trawl through client social media accounts to find out what is going on.
Fans are begged to renew their season tickets early to help with the summer cash flow issues, and then their owner hires a yacht for, it is claimed, £500,000 to float around the Adriatic sea. Posing with his latest squeeze on the Italian Riviera coast at upmarket Positano. Everybody deserves a holiday, but while the transfer window is in full swing, that’s extracting the urine a touch.
In the midst of this circus, I don’t blame Graham Potter one bit. I wonder if he fully understood the financial mess he was stepping into, having been told he would be backed in the summer window?
Did he seriously not get the picture? Did anyone in his camp do due diligence? But Potter is supposed to be friends with Karren Brady and her husband Paul Peschisolido from their days as team mates at Birmingham. Surely he knew the issues about to confront the club?
Maybe he did, maybe he wanted the job after a long spell out of the game. Maybe he wanted to prove himself again after the Chelsea debacle. Maybe it was worth the gamble. I hope that’s the case.
He is continuing to impress journalist pals of mine, he is driven. He has a plan to transform our club. I want him to succeed, and I’m sure he and Macaulay have a list of targets, painstakingly assessed. But he must be seeing targets picked off by other clubs in a daily basis.
We should, of course, get this fractured window into perspective. Half the Premier League clubs had done no business at all when the window was interrupted by the nonsense of a FIFA-run World Club tournament, so impotent that hardly any of the matches will be seen on mainstream TV or Sky in the UK.
A tournament that ensures the world’s best talent is now working 12 months of the year, just like top level cricketers do. No break, no time to rest and recover from injuries. The final is on 13 July and West Ham are off to the USA a fortnight later.
OK, we are not involved, neither are any of our players, but the point is that the football industry is being flogged to death. Just wait for the long term injuries that will come around when the international season cranks into gear in September and October.
One point here, I bet Jarrod Bowen is delighted he dodged the bullet of England’s terrible last couple of games. He was far better off getting married and taking his new bride on honeymoon.
But back to us and the blame game. It’s almost beyond humour when one of the board’s most noted grifters produces a long tirade blaming successive managers and overspending of transfer fees.
The long list of consequences was exactly the list of issues that have been laid at the board’s door. No investment from directors since 2021, no European football, the loss of prize money, ticket sales, retail and sponsorship plus multiple managers over spending on transfers.
It's hard to know where to start with all that tripe. The board and Sullivan make the decisions, they sanction all that, Sullivan signs the cheques and agrees to employment and fees, to trot all that out-the very views of many of Sullivan’s critics and then blame managers and club employees is laughable.
The buck stops with the decision makers, not the managers. If we can’t afford things then it is the board’s fault.
So we are left having to sell to allow Potter to do his job, because the out of season cash flow is once again a nightmare. I can only assume that when someone is sold, when the wage bill drops next month, when West Ham acquire another of those hugely expensive pay day loans, the situation will improve.
The window opens again on 16 June 16 and closes on Monday, 1 September. Best of luck, Graham and Kyle. You are going to need it.
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