The two sides of David Gold and David Sullivan

I think that in many ways West Ham fans should be extremely grateful for the work that our joint chairmen David Gold and David Sullivan have done at the club.

Their takeover in January 2010 quite possibly saved the club from going into administration after the financial mess the former Icelandic owners had left us in. They managed to stabilise the clubs finances and gradually reduce the huge debt we had accumulated, (with the help of their own personal money it must be added). This was achieved without really having to sell off our prized assets in the playing staff, even when we were relegated.

In addition they have by and large supported our managers with decent funds for new signings despite the tight financial constraints. The Davids, with the help of their trusted lieutenant Karren Brady, also successfully bid for the right to play in Olympic Stadium, which on the face of it seems a fantastic opportunity for the future growth of the club.

None of this should make them immune to criticism when it is justified however, and some recent incidents and stories have reminded me of some of the silly things they have done and continue to do, which often alienates them from long suffering supporters, and partially undermines their credibility.

When they first arrived at West Ham, they inherited Gianfranco Zola as manager, and it soon became apparent that he was not their choice. On several occasions throughout the rest of that season, David Sullivan openly criticised the team in public, most notably after the defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers at home in March 2010, where he described how we made Wolves look like Manchester United amongst other things.

I never thought Zola was a particularly good manager, but this undermining of the players and manager hardly helped matters. It just seemed like such a brainless thing to do and added to the sense of negativity at the place. We survived relegation with the skin of our teeth that season, with a pitiful 35 points.

The next season, after being able to sack Zola, Gold and Sullivan were finally able to appoint their own man, Avram Grant as manager. With the form generally dismal and confidence down, similar undermining comments kept coming from the mouth of David Sullivan that did nothing to help the cause.

They did try and replace Grant halfway through the season, which would have no doubt been the correct decision, but did it in such a botched and underhand way, it was doomed to failure. Rather than sack the out of depth boss, the Davids allegedly went behind his back and tried to negotiate a deal with the former Aston Villa manager Martin O’Neill. O’Neill seemed to back away from this, probably because of the way the owners were behaving, and were therefore stuck with Grant for the rest of that season in which we were relegated. There were other options we could have gone for at that time, most notably our current manager Sam Allardyce, who quite possibly would have kept us up.

Thankfully, since the appointment of Allardyce in June 2011, most of these silly comments in the press have stopped, most probably at the insistence of Big Sam. However, the owners have continued to make silly and needless decisions, which have annoyed supporters. For example I remember during the summer before the start of last season (2012/13), when season tickets had come up for renewal, how supporters who had held a ticket for 5 or more years would be entitled to a 20% discount under a promise made by our previous owners some 4 years earlier.

Instead of honouring this agreement and acknowledging the loyalty of those supporters who had continually bought season tickets during some difficult years for the Hammers, the club hierarchy tried to back out of it, and originally said that this deal would not now be on offer. After probably realising that this would create legal challenges, they back tracked a bit, allowing the discount but offering an alternative 5% discount for the next 4 years, whilst at the same time trying to guilt trip supporters into waiving their entitlement with statements, citing the clubs financial problems as an excuse. The implication was that if you truly loved West Ham, you wouldn’t let the club lose any money by accepting the discount. The way they acted here seemed so ridiculously stingy it is untrue. How much of a difference to the clubs finances would a 20% discount have made to just those who had been season ticket holders for 5 years? I very much doubt it would cover Kevin Nolan’s weekly wage. It just seemed like a real shoddy way to treat such loyal fans, many of which are unlikely to be particularly wealthy people.

I was also pretty irritated by our owners during the last summer transfer window, when they failed to land a good back-up striker to the injured Andy Carroll. I certainly wasn’t against the signing of Carroll, but it was clear that we needed a good quality replacement for him. As we all know this has come back to haunt us big time. Gold and Sullivan claimed they could not get that striker, as the new financial fair play rules meant that we couldn’t afford any more money to spend on wages. I don’t know what the mind-set of the board and management was with this, but this was a monumental cock-up, and to blame the new rules (that they themselves pushed for) was ridiculous.

Firstly, the regulations do not come into force until 2015, and it certainly dosen’t appear to have affected rival clubs. Secondly, we had all summer to ship out players that are no longer going to be regulars in order to reduce the wage bill, and instead of selling the likes of Matt Taylor and Modibo Maiga early in the summer we did nothing until the final day, when we tried to sell Ricardo Vaz Te to Norwich City. Thirdly, wages appeared to suddenly be available to get Carlton Cole and Mladen Petric onto our playing staff, which surely couldn’t have been done if what Gold and Sullivan said was true. It just feels as though us fans were getting mislead and taken for fools.

Another senseless act by the chairmen (and most probably Karren Brady) came earlier this season, when our well-liked Stadium announcer, Jeremy Nicholas was forced to resign from his post after being told his annual salary was being reduced from £10,000 to £4,000, a 60% cut. As Jeremy explained in a statement it just wouldn’t make any financial sense for him to continue to work at this wage, no matter how much he loved the club.

Now I understand that the club have to cut costs and reduce our debt burden for the move to the Olympic Stadium, but this penny pinching was absolutely ludicrous. For the sake of £6,000, our owners were willing to let someone who had entertained the Boleyn faithful at match days for 16 years, and who had arguably acquired legendary status at the club, go.

When you consider that Andy Carroll is rumoured to be earning £80,000 (A WEEK!), it just seems incredible this decision was made considering how little difference this would surely make to the clubs finances. Perhaps there was more to it but I haven’t heard anyone at the club come out and explain why. It was once again a totally needless way of annoying the fans, and poor treatment of an important part of the club.

Finally, the final straw that really compelled me to write this piece was the scheme to offer £5 tickets to members of the local community at the recent Manchester City game. I’m sure this was done with all good intentions, but to me it just seemed a huge slap in the face of all loyal West Ham supporters, who had followed the team through thick and thin, whilst paying exorbitant prices for the privilege of watching them.

When our season ticket prices are up there with some of the highest in the Premier League, and for non season ticket holders the price of a single category A game is a minimum of £50, I don’t know how practically giving away tickets to people, many of whom don’t even support West Ham (indeed there was reports of some cheering Man City goals), can possibly be justified. There are many Hammers fans who would have jumped at the chance of cheap tickets for such a big game, and it came across as the club showing little value for our real supporters. Again, this simply served to alienate West Ham supporters from the club hierarchy.

Overall I would like to plead with the owners to think more before they act in the future. They have done so many good things for the club and it is just a real shame that they manage to reduce their credibility in the eyes of the supporters with silly statements and actions that seem to serve no useful purpose. It’s through such incidents that make me question things they now say. For example I became a supporter of the Olympic Stadium venture largely through assurances made by David Gold and David Sullivan, such as the cheap ticket prices and retractable seating. I do sometimes wonder if we can now really trust them in the future?