West Ham vice-chair Karren Brady showed she is tone deaf when speaking out just 24 hours after the club announced a record £104m loss.
Vice-chair Karren Brady is back in the firing line after West Ham posted record losses in their 2024/25 accounts.
Already wildly unpopular with West Ham supporters, there have been renewed calls for the Baroness to resign, especially after Brady broke a major promise she made in 2010.
Now tone deaf Brady has spoken out less than 24 hours after West Ham’s record losses – and fans won’t believe what she has said.
Brady accuses EFL of ‘greed’ after her £18m total West Ham wages are revealed
Hammers supporters have always been critical of the fact Brady has a regular column in tabloid paper The Sun.
In light of the financial turmoil West Ham are in on her watch, many would suggest it wise Brady did not publish any columns for the time being.
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David Sullivan takes in a West Ham match from the directors' box
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However, not only has the Hammers vice-chair gone ahead and done that, Brady has had the temerity to accuse the English Football League of ‘greed’.
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In a lengthy rant over how much money Premier League clubs have to hand down to the EFL and what she perceives as double standards, Brady rubs salt in the wound by conveniently failing to even mention West Ham or the club’s dismal accounts.
West Ham majority owner David Sullivan and vice-chair Karren Brady in the director's box during the defeat to Crystal Palace
Photo by Richard Pelham/Getty Images
While Brady has dialled back on airing West Ham’s dirty linen in her column in recent years after a backlash from some Hammers fans, she usually addresses any major issues at the club.
West Ham’s record losses have been swept under the carpet in her new column, though.
And less than a day after it was revealed Brady’s West Ham salary increased to a whopping £1.472m – and £18m in total since she arrived at the club 16 years ago – she accuses the EFL of ‘greed’.
Brady has criticised the EFL for not giving money to the National League saying West Ham and other Premier League clubs would be accused of ‘bare-faced, pigs-in-the-trough greed’ if they did the same to the EFL.
Tone deaf Brady fails to read the room after West Ham’s record £104m loss
“Can you imagine the sense of outrage from EFL clubs if the Premier League pulled the plug and decided to no longer finance them, to the tune of around £300million per season,” Brady says in her latest Sun column.
“It would lead to accusations of bare-faced, pigs-in-the-trough greed and yet the EFL does literally nothing to help the National League. In football, we are all supposed to belong to one big, football family where organisations help each other.
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“But while the EFL gleefully takes Premier League cash, it mysteriously stops short of doing the same thing for their cousins in the National League.”
While Brady may make salient points on that particular debate, she has once again shown an astonishing inability to read the room.
West Ham United vice-chair Karren Brady with husband Paul Peschisolido watching the Premier League defeat to Brentford
Photo by Crystal Pix/MB Media/Getty Images
The elephant that is West Ham’s disastrous finances is sat in that very room with her right now along with thousands upon thousands of disgruntled Hammer fans she once referred to as ‘customers’.
It also seems lost on Brady that in publicly lambasting the EFL, she is taking on the very authority that could be governing West Ham very soon, if they are relegated come what May.
Brady’s £18m West Ham earnings broken down in full by board confidant Sean Whetstone:
West Ham Vice chairman Karren Brady’s pay increased by 2.44% last season from £1.437m to £1.472m – up by some £35,000.
The Baroness’ total pay at West Ham is now £16.7m and over £18m by the end of this season.
The West Ham 2011 financial accounts show the club paid the Hammers Vice Chairman received £256,000 for the first time.
That increased to £427,000 in 2012 and then hiked to a massive £1.634m in 2013, of which £1m was a bonus paid over five years for winning the bid to move to the London Stadium. In 2014 her basic rose by just £2,000 to £636,000, rising by a further £10,000 to £646,000 in 2015.
In 2016 there was another big rise to £907,000 before a slight decrease in 2017 to £868,000.
Then in 2018 another bumper year saw a base salary of £898,000 plus a consultant fee of £438,000 paid to a company controlled by Brady for introducing Tripp Smith as an investor, making her annual total £1.336m.
In 2019 Brady’s pay rose from £898,000 to £1.136m, a rise of 27% for that season.
In 2020 her pay was reduced to £1,027m during the pandemic before increasing again to £1.331m in 2021.
Since then Brady’s pay has fluctuated around the £1.3-1.45m mark and up to the end of last season, Brady’s total pay has reached over £16m (£16,698,000).
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