A catalogue of errors

  • by Iron Mark
  • Filed: Friday, 2nd February 2018

When the Olympic Stadium was being sold to the fans one of the questions, if I remember correctly, was 'would be happy to move if it meant being able to attract better players'?

Since moving from Upton Park to Stratford, those players have included:

Andre Ayew - back at Swansea
Robert Snodgrass - on loan, comments from the board suggest he won't want to come back
Simone Zaza - loan ended early, now scoring goals for Valencia
Jonathan Calleri - loan
Gokhan Tore - loan
Alvaro Arbeloa - well that worked well...
Ashley Fletcher - sold
Sofiane Feghouli - sold so Bilic could sign a player he wanted, ultimately sold for no reason
Havard Nordtveit - sold

During this period we have also sold Dimitri Payet, James Tomkins, Diafra Sakho and Enner Valencia. All players who played key roles for us in previous seasons.

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Despite selling most of last season's signings and a few others, leaving a small squad with the limited incomings, we appear to have either no money or have reached our wage cap.

This is probably not helped when one striker on big wages is always injured, the other is struggling (though not financially with wages like that) and our substitute goalkeeper is one of the highest-paid players we have.

So we have an injury-ravaged squad, short of depth or quality in some important positions and absolutely no transfer policy in sight. Of course we have also loaned out a few of the youngsters who have been involved recently as there's clearly no chance we may need them again soon...

I guess this means the big move wasn't worth the money as we clearly aren't seeing it on the pitch.

Maybe the owners can lend a hand? Most other clubs get some help every now and again. Except, ours will only loan (with interest of course). Does that mean we would be better off without them giving us any money at all?

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Does buying a scarf in the club shop give the club more money than the people running it? Does giving nothing contribute more? At least it's not taking money away. Not the sort of owners you want to run the club financially, then.

At least they try to keep themselves and the club out of the headlines - unless they want to pat themselves on the back for signing the best 'keeper someone has worked with (who's not quite good enough to displace the old number one). Or if they decide to publicly criticise another signing.

Did they forget Snodgrass and Fonte still played for us when they came out with those gems?

I'm still struggling to work out what they are good at. Money isn't their forte nor is keeping themselves out of the headlines. Maybe they run a tight ship? Recent events involving Tony Henry shows it unlikely.



Their children have free reign to do what they like. Imagine the son of another chairman not only becoming a twitter mouthpiece, but actively slagging off a new signing. No one would be that stupid...

Relations with other clubs? Maybe they know the business and can work a good deal with their contacts? Ha. The only clubs they probably haven't annoyed are the ones who haven't heard of them.

Squad relations? We have already seen how quick they are to slag the players off when it suits. With all the rumours of players wanting to leave, it makes you wonder if there is anyone, anywhere who actually likes working under this Board.

So basically they are good for nothing, have sold our home to move into a rented athletics stadium with no financial benefits, consistently weaken the squad, have kept us in the headlines for all the wrong reasons (though nothing seems to stick to them, I wonder why?) and generally piss everybody (West Ham related or not) off in the process.

Even if they all left tomorrow, it still wouldn't be quick enough.

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