THE ‘vote’ of no confidence from the West Ham Fan Advisory Board has certainly succeeded in raising the profile of the dispute between disgruntled Hammers fans and the leadership: National newspapers are now covering the forthcoming protest events and until Lucas Paquetá succeeded in taking back the headlines with his instagram post, the Hammers conflict coverage was foremost amongst many headlines.
The meeting between Vice Chair Karren Brady and the Fan Advisory Board last night seemed classic David Sullivan: Sending Brady out to take the flak is becoming the norm and it will be hugely interesting to see the answers that the club provide to the questions raised. Sadly, the contents of that meeting are not yet public and we’ll have to wait until at least next week for more information.
Delivering their own message concerning the meeting, West Ham United independent Supporter committee(WHUISC )tweeted after the meeting that:“Our questions were not shown to the club in advance. We agreed to give them time to answer. Those questions are our questions and we can make them public when we want to. That’s been made clear“- and to a tweeted question concerning the publication of the discussion, WHUISC replied “Hopefully next week when minutes are agreed”
One supporter then asked the WHUISC twitter account if Brady was going to resign.
The ISC replied: “We await clarification”.
West Ham fans have issued a vote of no confidence in the baord
Brady will not be going anytime soon
I’m not holding my breath. The management will have their own way of dealing with the supporter vs board crisis and I’d not expect anyone from the club side to be waving the white flag or offering to resign any time soon. We do seem to have been here before and most likely there’ll be some tokenism – much like the pointless banning of two-club scarves – designed to pay lip service to criticism whilst doing little to address the underlying issue.
The problem as far as the ‘away fans in the home area’ was created when those Tottenham tickets were put on general sale. It isn’t new. We wrote about it nine months ago. Nothing has changed. Until that is addressed with changes to the ticket sales process for high risk matches along with spending whatever it costs to properly fund vigorous stewarding to enable the club to forcibly eject away supporters in the wrong areas, taking a few scarves off a few tourists tourists will achieve little: And it’s probably not legal.
But it diverts from the real issues. Paying lip service to the problem changes nothing but it is par for the course at West Ham under Sullivan and Brady. However, let’s be open minded and wait to see the written record and how the club respond next week. Maybe there’s a whiff of change in the air.