West Ham are very much a club in crisis, and today’s revelation from the board that “We’re on the floor, we need something” is a truly troubling comment.
It’s as if the Hammers’ current predicament is somehow a surprise — as though they’ve just stumbled across an issue. The truth of the matter is West Ham are now paying the price for years of botched attempts to modernise in a half-hearted fashion, which has left us overtaken by even lower-league rivals.
Every time the club seems to have an idea about recruitment — whether it’s Mario Husillos, Tony Henry, Rob Newman, Tim Steidten or anyone else — the plan gets ripped up and we’re forced to start again. Meanwhile, clubs like Bournemouth and Brighton, who were light years behind us when we moved to Stratford and a “world-class stadium,” have surged past with their business acumen and recruitment.
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For too long, those at the top have sat idly by while rivals boosted infrastructure, playing staff, and hired the best coaches and football executives. West Ham are, I believe, the only team in the Premier League without a director of football. Instead, we have a manager in Graham Potter who has only ever been a head coach, and an analyst, Kyle Macaulay, heading up recruitment. It’s madness.
Chairman David Sullivan is back to doing deals himself — and frankly, he isn’t getting them done. By his own admission, he’s “finding it hard to sign better players” — which means someone else should be doing the job.
David Sullivan is in charge of transfer negotiation
West Ham board crisis
Karren Brady, meanwhile, appeared on TalkSport today complaining about PSR restrictions. But wasn’t the move to the London Stadium supposed to insulate us from that and make us wealthy? The so-called “deal of the century” doesn’t look so clever now that Everton are banking £10m per season in naming rights, while West Ham’s peppercorn rent is delivering little in the way of additional revenue. By Brady’s own admission, “we had to sell Mohammed Kudus” to balance the books.
So it’s incredibly frustrating to hear the board claim “we’re on the floor” as if they played no part in getting us here. What exactly did they expect would happen when our rivals hired top coaches, generated more money, employed expert recruiters, and signed better players? Of course we were going to get overtaken.