West Ham chairman David Gold has hit back at a supporter on Twitter who told the 83 year old “Spend some money on the training facilities, the injuries are ridiculous and are holding us back!”
Gold replied “We have over the last few years spent millions on improving the training facilities to the highest standards at both Chadwell Heath and Rush Green. dg”
The reply did not go down well with many supporters but below we look what the owners have invested over the last ten years.
West Ham purchased the freehold interest in the 29 acre Rush Green Ford Sports Ground from the Ford Motor Company in 2009 for £1.4m with plans to transform it into the a state of the art training complex before the club changed owners.
By 2015 they had invested £2.5m with plans for another £10m budgeted for Rush Green.
That extra £10m was spent on modernising Rush Green by 2018 after planning permission was approved in 2015 with alterations and extensions to existing buildings on the site. They added a new treatment area, gym, hydrotherapy pool and plant room with extra dressing rooms, manager offices and meeting rooms. The training ground now includes six high quality Desso pitches, including a pitch within the stadium area, that are the same standard and size of the pitch used by the first team.
Another £4m was spent on new facilities at Chadwell heath for the Academy opened earlier this year bringing the total investment to £16.5m in the owners tenure.
Surely the most relevant numbers are in comparison to the investment made by our peers. £10m may seem like a lot of money (which it is!) but it isn’t compared to the investment and money spent by out Premier League peers. We mend and make do where as others spend tens and some hundreds of millions to build state of the art facilities and improve the infrastructure of the club. I have been to Chadwell Heath last season and it is so poor. Full of portacabins and run down facilities. As ever with our owners, only the bare minimum is done.
I would like to see a table of spending for say the last 25 years for every clubs in the proms training grounds. I doubt one readily exists unfortunately.
Without one I’m guessing we are lagging seriously behind anyone in the league who has serious aspirations of winning anything.
Look at Spurs for example, they are a million miles away from us now in what they have, both in training ground facilities and their actual ground itself. They have invested properly, and will no doubt reap the rewards for this. Our East end spivs have put a few pennies in, compared to the income we receive from the Premier League, and we will reap the rewards, championship football if we are not careful.
We have four training pitches, indoor gym etc at RG and CH has been upgraded to include educational facilities etc. What exactly is the issue here. What do you want
16.5m in 10 years ! Man City spent 200mn on theirs and Man U are part way through a 50mn upgrade. Not even close to competing. Even Burnley spent 10.5 mn in one hit. Do we think prospective players are going to be impressed by Portakabins !
They hve wealthy owners we don’t and I think we need to get used to that. Not a defence just a fact
In fairness, it’s nothing special investment wise and peanuts compared to the top clubs. City 200m, Liverpool 60m etc But clearly better than it was.
Because our revenue & financial backing is peanuts compared to that of the top clubs…
Yes… a given…your point is?
My point is in reply to the previous post which states that our spending on training does not compare to that of the top clubs. Of course it doesn’t …my neighbour spent loads more on his kids’ education than I did, but he earns about 10X more than I did. Doesn’t mean he values his kids’ education more than I did mine.
A more useful comparison I suppose might be what percentage of our revenue goes on training facilities compared to other clubs, or investment on this compares to money spent on players. My guess is our owners would not show up too badly on that comparison, but I can’t provide that info .
I think you will find Chadwell Heath has been entirely upgraded at around £5m to include educational facilities and RG is pretty stae of art at about the same. Everybody seems happy unless of course one uses Twotter . This constant moaning about money is all well and good but it’s the same for about 12 other clubs yet we are forever talking about the top six.