‘West Ham are broken‘ claims the NY Times this evening. Tell us something we don’t know. Managerial duds, a stadium without soul or atmosphere along with countless other dreadful management decisions are reeled off ‘one more time’ as if fans themselves weren’t aware of the ten-year tale of catastrophe and financial mismanagement that has befallen their club.
Perpetual knee – jerk reacting is, if I remember right, how Michail Antonio described the failure at the club which seems to have no strategic plan.
The NYTimes highlights the colossal waste of money on failed transfers that has, ultimately, led West Ham to the second division of English football:
“Absurd and abysmal: West Ham are completely broken”
“In recent years hundreds of millions have been wasted on players who have made little-to-no impact on the team, with the likes of Gianluca Scamacca (£33m), Nayef Aguerd (£30m), Maxwell Cornet (£17m), Edson Alvarez (£33m), James Ward-Prowse (£29m), Maximilian Kilman (£40m) and Jean-Clair Todibo (£34m) all classed as failures.”
Colossal waste of money – Maximilian Kilman
Indeed, £216 million worth of failures, most with resale value of well under half what the club paid for them. And the worst part about it is that no structure has yet been put in place to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen again if – and at the moment it is a massive ‘if’, West Ham make it back through the Championship minefield to the Premier League promised-land in the next two seasons.
As the report sums up:
“It really didn’t have to be this way. West Ham have advantages that the majority of clubs across English football could only dream of. Last season they generated £238million in revenues, the ninth highest in the Premier League (and 20th across Europe).
They can afford to pay wages worth a combined £172m to their players, the ninth highest in the Premier League (and 17th across Europe). In the past five years they have spent £654m on players, with a net spend of £317m in the past five years being, yep, you guessed it, the ninth highest in the Premier League.
The only crumb of comfort for supporters is the hope that business mogul Daniel Kretinsky will hold more sway over the future direction of the football club. Or the prospect of West Ham ‘doing a Leicester’ and suffering successive relegations seems more than just an idle fear.
It’s about scoring goals, creating goals, and stopping the other team from scoring goals. I love skilful and entertaining players, but basics first please. Footballing success in England requires pace, stamina, a sporting IQ, and the willingness to work hard for a common cause. More goals come from those traits forcing opponents into mistakes than through brilliant play. We’ve had too many old/slow Fancy-Dans padding their retirement pots.
As any football fan knows, the problem was the managers who were all behind the time cheap dinosaurs. The players would’ve been great with up to date attacking coaches. The board are to blame!
Made a big mistake there should have read krentisky ISN’T doing. A good job at the post office .
I’ll bet he’s doing a good job for himself, however long it takes a first class letter to get delivered.
Krentisky is doing a very good job with post office so what makes you think he’ll turn this rabble around. Failure after Failure .
David I don’t believe Kretinsky has become a billionaire and the UK’s 26th richest by creating ‘failure after failure’.
The disaster is in the contribution that players don’t make. They blow out and are put out on loan bringing in loan fees while their value reduces on the books, a final transfer fee when they are sold ensures that no financial loss takes place but the cost is in the poorer performances that result due to their making little contribution.
Eventually the poorer performances get us relegated.
All roads lead to Sullivan. The club is run like it’s caught in a time warp and caught in an incompetent time warp at that, the next Lopetegui, Potter, or I’m not paying for Duran go get Fullkrug instead is just around the corner all the time that the club is his ego trip.
When do you expect David Sullivan to “blow out”?
The blow out could happen at any time as the decision making process is so deranged🤷🏻♂️.
We are paying our failures too much money! There are only fernandes,Summerville,castellanos,Bowen and mavropanos that are good enough to play in the premier league the others aren’t good enough!