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Here at KUMB.com, the Editor is a hard taskmaster, dishing out assignments like confetti asking various contributors to knock up a few words on whatever the current hot topics of the week are in the West Ham United universe.

Last week Paul Walker wrote an excellent piece on the well-attended protest at Marshgate Lane organised by Hammers United and Crossed Hammers. Well done to all who organized and attended, evidence that protest can be done peacefully in a meaningful way.




But why were we there and why are we revolting? The answers can be found in the questions the Fan Advisory Board (FAB) asked the club's executives as they delivered the recent Vote of No Confidence. The FAB asked seven key questions to which they seek answers; you can read about them here.

We thought though that each of the key questions were such that they would merit some in-depth comment.

Previously The Pink Palermo examined strategy & PSR, bristolhammerfc tackled the issue of heritage and culture, Steve Barlow investigated commercial & stadium strategy while Gordon Thrower scrutinised fan relations & trust and Chris Wilkerson squad matters. Which brings us neatly onto our sixth and punultimate essay, namely...

6. Leadership and Governance

The Chairman and Vice-Chair retain disproportionate power with no evidence of modern governance standards.

Any organisation of this size and importance would have a full time CEO.

No apparent succession plan in place; senior football decisions concentrated in too few hands.

FAB and supporter consultation often treated as a tick-box exercise rather than genuine engagement.

Question: When will the club move to a professional governance model (CEO + Director of Football with autonomy)?




How often have you heard it? West Ham is run like a backstreet market stall, the footballing equivalent of Only Fools and Horses, but with far fewer laughs.

A club that moves from one dodgy deal to another, brassic one day and talking of "being millionaires this time next year" a moment later.

That’s the image we are lumbered with, porno king David Sullivan and his long-term henchwoman, Karren Brady, the two with absolute power seemingly over everything that happens at the London Stadium.

There’s Vanessa Gold, the joint chair, still trying to knock out her 25.1 per cent holding , and there’s Daniel Kretinsky, with his 27 per cent and no closer to running the club, if he ever really wanted to.

Oh and there’s young Jack Sullivan, 25 and described on Linkedin as an entrepreneur, flexing his muscles and clearly one day expecting to replace his dad. With all due respect, most folk can’t see much serious professional football experience amongst that lot, not compared to the top of the range people that run every other Premier League club.

That’s our issue. That’s the leadership and governance at West Ham. That’s what the FAB listed as serious reasons for concern when they met club officials after the vote of no confidence last month.

No other major club is run by a chairman/owner in this way. Multi-million pound businesses, amongst the biggest in Europe, and by definition the rest of the world outside the USA. Why do we not have a full time CEO, why do we not have a qualified, trusted director of football.

Why is all this being run from Epping Towers, from where the partner of the owner sees fit to get entangled in a row with fans over football matters? If that’s not a laughing stock, what is?

I keep being told that Sullivan is a top businessman, and to be a billionaire I assume he must be. That’s fine if you are dealing in real estate, but football is a wholly different ball game. The FAB have questioned the decision making, transfer windows and backroom appointments with some justification.

David Moyes left as manager in the summer of 2024, so that’s four managers now little over 16 months now that Nuno Espirito Santo has taken over from Graham Potter, who in turn replaced Julen Lopetegui. And there’s three full coaching staffs to be replaced as well and a new one incoming, at laughable expense.




And don’t forget hiring and firing technical director Tim Steidten after a very wasteful transfer window, while head of recruitment Kyle Macaulay was also axed only last week in the wake of Potter’s exit.

The coach Brady wanted and gave a two-and-a-half year contract to and sacked last month on that Saturday morning blood bath at Rush Green—Sullivan only wanted him to have six month, anyway.

Is it any wonder the FAB question decision making and the fact that two people have such extensive power? We keep hearing that everybody has to vote on everything, but a confidant told me recently that "while there’s a boat, it’s only Sullivan who will be driving it".

We are seemingly run by a dictatorship, one that listens to loony podcasts and incoherent vulgar, abusive, almost racist, fans pressure groups—ahead of the departure of Moyes, who not surprisingly rejected a contract offer that deliberately it seems, relieved him of any involvement with transfers.

For all his faults, and there were many, Moyes was the only manager who had worked out Sullivan, had kept the wolf from the door and given us a trophy and three years European money. Sullivan could hardly belief his luck, and he didn’t have the bottle to give Moyes the free hand he wanted, probably the free hand that Nuno Espirito Santo and his agent Jorge Mendes will now get.

And the lack of fans engagement is a forever issue. Does Sullivan ever actually meet and talk to the fans leaders, or just the grifters and hangers on who prostitute themselves with every word?

Or is it just left to executive director Tara Warren with Brady in the background? Fans engagement almost seems to be lip service, box ticking and whatever format has been adopted; have we really made any meaningful progress on that front since the Burnley fiasco of March 2018?

Even now Brady did all she could in the House of Lords to derail the government’s Football Governance Act, first proposed by the previous government, with West Ham one of the last clubs to install a FAB.

West Ham have tried with the Director of Football role. Sullivan, taking a step back after constant criticism of his de facto DoF role, employed Manuel Pellegrini, who put his best mate Mario Husillos in the role, and then the pair employed their own sons to scouting roles. Never going to work, was it?

Next time around it is believed Kretinsky wanted Steidten in that role, and millions were wasted on a string of transfers deals, the cause of much of the current financial mess we find ourselves in.




It goes on. This summer Sullivan grabbed back control of transfers after much dissatisfaction over the role of Macaulay, who had wanted to operate without Sullivan’s agent mates Will Salthouse and Barry Silkman. Best of luck with that, was the general reaction. The backstabbing was pretty unpleasant.

It’s no surprise that the FAB have questioned the lack of highly professional football administrators in key roles at West Ham. As said, we are the only top flight club run without a full time CEO and an director of football.

Maybe we should look at the way others operate. I believe Liverpool is the best run club in the country and I know there is an anti-scouse attitude amongst our fans who won’t like my view. But while I was still working for a living, I spent close on 20 years in Liverpool, where I had regular contact with the Liverpool club, it’s managers and hierarchy.

Hundreds of matches, three European finals and year on Champions League trips. I’m no fan, but you had to be impressed with their structure and the lazer focus on the present and future.

Don’t laugh, but I don’t see much difference between us and Liverpool. It’s a small city, in many aspects, a dock city like ourselves, and city all but destroyed in the blitz, just like our east end. That breeds a resilience, just like my father, his brothers and cousins. It’s what I was brought up in, and Liverpool was no different. I don’t expect Sullivan and Brady to understand that.

Like us, Liverpool’s fan base are proud, tough, hard working folk. Back in the 1960s we were promoted to the top flight a year ahead of Bill Shankly’s side, we were similar in many ways.
But they have systematically grown away from us into a world power, by harnessing their fan base, not keeping them at arm’s length.

They are a force together. Their earlier management was Peter Robinson, who ran the club for many years for the Moores family ownership, who did not interfere in the football side.

Rick Parry, now in charge of the Football League, continued in that vein. He guided them through the rocky transition from the Moores, through the chaotic brief ownership of Tom Hicks and George Gillett into the current control of the Americans, the Fenway Sports Management, FSM, who also own and run Boston Red Sox.

They learnt very quickly not to mess with the Liverpool fans when Spirit of Shankly organised a mass walk-out by the Kop in protest over season ticket price increases. The Americans were shaken, scared even, by this show of fan power and they have worked with the fans ever since.

More to the point, Liverpool have had a long term football plan run by sporting director Richard Hughes, who was formerly with Bournemouth. In liaison with CEO of football Michael Edwards they have continued the careful, professional performance behind the scenes.




This summer’s massive transfer deals underline how well they’ve planned. Hughes talked of the "sale of home-grown players for pure profit that had been several years of meticulous planning in the making". They were able to sell home-grown players to keep them inside the requirements of PSR.

The £446m spent didn’t come close to breaking the rules. Liverpool don’t have chairman Tom Werner or owner John Henry from Boston interfering in the day to day running of the club as a finely tuned football operation. They do the money, the football experts do their job.

Over at Manchester City it’s similar. Sheikh Mansour has had Txiki Begiristain running the football side for Pep Guardiola for ten years until he left this summer. The replacement has been Hugo Viana, who was with Sporting Lisbon, and shadowed Txiki for months to maintain continuity.

It’s that level of forward planning that would never occur to us. Sullivan always seems to step back into the role whenever he loses patience with whoever has been doing the job. He thinks he knows better, he once it is alleged told a Birmingham City manager than he knew more about the transfer market than the professional football man.

Potter may well have expected Dan Ashworth to be appointed as Director of Football, his former colleague from Brighton, but that never happened. Sullivan would rather rely, as a likely fraught Macaulay discovered, on his agent mates.

As for the appointment of managers, and going back to the Liverpool model, Sullivan has had 11, including Moyes twice, in the 14 years he has run the club, initially with the late David Gold. Liverpool, including the Shankly era, have had six managers who have been in command for six years or more. Shankly, Benitez, Paisley, Dalglish, Houllier and Klopp.

They laid foundations, they fitted the Liverpool style and image. Layers of progress. That’s the required continuity of leadership, there for all to see.

West Ham bounce from one week to the next, one month to the next, one window to the next. It’s always short- termism and always with the desire to just stay in the Premier League, because when you run a club on cash flow, there is no long-term, forward planning.

And then the overall governance suffers. We have a board frozen in its own self interest. Vanessa Gold, joint chairman, will always vote with her dad’s pal, she alone keeps him in power.

Kretinsky will sit and wait, with no intention it seems, of putting any more money in to prolong Sullivan’s regime. You can’t see anyone coming in for Gold’s shares if they are not going to take control, and without the stadium as part of the deal, there’s even less chance of new money.

It’s a leadership going nowhere and governance to match.


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