West Ham’s woes are big news. Not just on Hammers sites, general football fan sites, sports news papers or you tube channels. Graham Potter’s failure and West Ham’s weakness are now pulled apart and analysed in some of the UK’s biggest newspapers in print and on line. Headlines this weekend state what fans will have known all along, but is now being broadcast to the wider world.
Pulling no punches and absolutely eviscerating Chairman David Sullivan, the observer.co.uk provides something of a forensic take-down of West Ham’s majority shareholder, describing the position he has assumed thus:
“The pint-sized ex-porn lord is chair, largest shareholder (39%), de facto director of football and chief negotiator once more, despite the overwhelming suspicion that he thinks analytics is a new-fangled kink.”
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Pretty clear what author George Simms thinks then. But it gets worse as the Sunday article headed ” Graham Potter is struggling but West Ham’s failings run much deeper” perfectly describes the position the Hammers’ woeful mismanagement has produced: “Somewhere in the middle of this, David Sullivan largely seems to avoid the consequences of his actions, but this is his mess far more than anyone else’s.”
Graham Potter - the latest in a series of dodgy Sullivan hires
Graham Potter – seen by The Observer the latest in a series of doubtful Sullivan hires
“He was responsible for hiring ex-technical director Tim Steidten, for hiring former manager Julen Lopetegui, for hiring Potter. Nothing at the club happens without his explicit sign-off. Their extraordinary failures in squad-building can be attributed to both his agonising negotiation tactics and failure to understand adequately the value of both delegation and modernising recruitment: Sullivan’s ability to spurn goodwill appears almost unparalleled in elite football”
And in a withering summary of the Sullivan tenure,Simms continues: “This is the result of running a club badly, investing badly, buying and selling badly. The issue is not ambition, it’s execution. Any competent owner or recruitment structure would have been able to build from a European trophy, from three top-10 finishes in four seasons, especially with the eighth-highest annual revenue (£269.7m) in the Premier League and 17th-highest in the world “
The wider audience now, perhaps, appreciates the howls of discontent coming from the fan base, the walk out that began at London Stadium on 35 minutes and the planned protests and petitions.
However there seems a fatigue this time, after so many years of neglect and strife, an imperceptible acceptance, perhaps, that after so many years of being at odds with their owners, the supporters are powerless in the face of such a vice-like grip on the control of the club they love.
Without a miracle fantasy benefactor materialising like a football genie, prepared to pay Sullivan hundreds of millions to be on his way, there seems no end in sight any day soon.