[The time of our lives](news_archive.php)
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Two years ago this week... June 7. Prague. I defy anyone in the West Ham world who can’t remember to the second, where they were, who they were with, who they hugged, when Jarrod Bowen’s shot hit the back of the net.
A frozen moment in time. For many the day of our lives, the game of our lives. West Ham United, European champions. We were watching history, our first major trophy in 43 years. Our first European crown since 1965. Some of us had waited all our lives for the moment, those of a certain vintage had all but given up on seeing again something the witnessed at Wembley against TSV Munich 1860 when Bobby Moore led us to that European Cup Winners Cup crown. I recall even now marching away from Wembley that night loudly informing my father that we would “win the league next seasonâ€. The look on his face said it all, a few old timers in earshot, some who probably also remembered relegation in 1932, had that same look of pity and sympathy. I’m still waiting. Fast forward to Prague 2023, victory over Fiorentina, David Moyes a dad dancing lunatic on the touchline, Lucas Paqueta - a world class player when he puts his mind to it - producing that beautiful defence splitting pass for Bowen to run onto. The bedlam that followed, wherever you were I bet you were on your knees, crying, screaming, engulfed in joy, oblivious to anyone around you. The sheer ecstasy of seeing West Ham win something, anything. There were tears too from Aaron Cresswell, who like stalwart Lukasz Fabianski didn’t even get on the pitch that night. It will no doubt be a quiz question one day, who were West Ham’s substitutes on the bench that night. The mania in the stadium, the hysteria in every home, every pub, every street. Declan Rice lifting the trophy, before he was sold to Arsenal, thanks to David Sullivan’s soulless, crass comment straight after the game. Rice was duly sold for £105m just 47 days later. It was inevitable, the boy wanted to progress and it wasn’t going to come from us. I know he gets dog's abuse now, but he never let us down and has gone on to greater things if not trophies. This week, Rice was the only Englishman named in the Champions League team of the season, surrounded by seven of the quite magnificent Paris side. He must be very proud of that. That West Ham side is history now. Of that 23 in the match day squad, eight have already gone, four have just been given free transfers and Aguerd, Antonio, Emerson, Cornet and Zouma will also likely be out of the door soon. Soucek and Paqueta too, maybe. It’s a sad end to a resilient, spirited squad built by Moyes. Part of our history. It should have been the start of something really special. But the two years since have gone spectacularly wrong. The groundwork has been wasted, our club lacks leadership at the highest level. The buck, for me, stops there. Decision-making has been catastrophic. And I know it goes back to my frequent hobby horse, but Sullivan makes those decisions in the end, he employs staff, players, managers, technical directors. I wonder what he’s thinking now, sunning himself on a yacht off the Italian Rivera, with the former care home owner, now his partner. Does he accept he is to blame, in the end, for wasting a golden opportunity to establish West Ham as regular European qualifiers? Moyes’ three year spell in Europe was the longest in the club’s history. In those two years he has employed three managers, the most unsettling period in our history, plus a Technical Director who somehow managed to waste away the Rice money. In the wake of Prague, Tim Steidten arrived less than a month later. Moyes lasted until the end of the following season and Julen Lopetegui arrived in the summer. None of that worked. We will have to see whether Graham Potter has any more luck. He cannot have imagined the financial mess he walked into, he would have expected a Technical Director but he’s got Sullivan back running the show. During the two years from Prague, we have signed 16 senior players, including some very expensive loans and a couple of promising Scottish kids, at a cost overall of roughly £259m. Outgoings have been 19 players and £163m into the coffers. Now some of these figures may be a bit off, but you get the point, we are around £100m down. We are going to have to sell Mo Kudus and or Paqueta - his future even more confused by the impossible, incompetent betting tribunal he’s been going through for over two years (and a verdict now may be pushed back another couple of months). The FA are an utter disgrace over this. In fact we’ll sell anyone who is not nailed down, it seems. So this is where we are. From Prague to poverty. Our overloads should be ashamed. Our finances are a mess. A good pal who understands all this far better than me has tried to simplify the issues, and why we are in that mess. At the end of last season we owed £125m to other clubs and then spent £109m on new players, plus the £35m for Todibo. Total then £269m, and we sold virtually nothing, there was about £33m in the bank and we took out the customary £40m posh payday loan. This season we have played six fewer home games, have lost the revenue from Europe and down another £18m in prize money. Any operating profit has been wiped out. This creeping financial crisis comes from under-achievement on the pitch, high spending of wages and transfer fees and a desperate cash flow issue. That’s how we are run, and it’s beginning to engulf an ownership trying to sell shares and find a mug who will pay £1 billion for a club that doesn’t even own its ground. And the unsuspecting Potter, who surely will have been warned by now by his managerial friends in the LMA about how Sullivan operates, has to sort this out. In two years we have slipped to being the seventh-rated London club. Fulham, Crystal Palace and Brentford have overtaken us. The likes of Brighton, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest too, while Aston Villa and Newcastle have disappeared into the distance. Maybe Moyes and Everton too soon. Two London sides have won European trophies, three will be in the Champions League next season while Palace, as Cup winners, will be in the Europa League. West Ham are nowhere. The right decisions from on high and it could have been us. I don’t think Potter is a bad manager, he’s astute and has a clear plan. He has impressed many at the club and in the media with his game plan on and off the pitch. But I keep going back two years to where we were. And look at us now.
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