Fury and protests at the owners of this club are totally understandable. I get it.
I also understood the Terry Brown protests of the 90s, the Allardyce protests, the Bilic protests, the Pellegrini protests, the Moyes and return of Moyes protests.
Stay with this club for long enough and it becomes a predictable fact of Hammers life. It’s what people do when things go wrong!
I know why many want the board out. I understand all the reasons why. I also realise why numerous supporters groups are clamouring for an audience with the people who run this club but…..
…it’s happened before- very recently and very militantly – and in the end made absolutely no difference to a train events which is leading us to the brink of the EFL.
Fans demonstrate against then chairman Terry Brown’s ill fated Bond scheme
To protest and make the point is perfectly reasonable and hold the board responsible is justified as is the view that until 2023 comes around when the club is free to sell without a 20 per cent pay off to the government it won’t happen, if then!
There’s a view among the protesters that if they place the sort of pressure on GSB as was done at Birmingham – they will achieve the same outcome. Very very unlikely!
The figures involved were much smaller at St Andrew’s. Nothing is going to change at West Ham for three years minimum because whether it’s liked or not forget the romance because football is a business; this game is about MONEY in every area and to believe differently is delusional.
I understand that when there’s a feeling of helplessness people will protest, scream, shout, holler and nobody on CandH is claiming that’s wrong.
There has been a lack of vision at the club: You can’t go through Grant, Allardyce, Bilic, Moyes, Pellegrini and back to Moyes and claim differently.
Of course they carry responsibility – they run the show.
But we do not believe anything is going to change in the near or middle future for the reasons given above and thus we see it as a distraction.
We give views when we feel it necessary and thus the reason for this piece but we are not an unofficial or official protest group.
We were set up to bring news. If people don’t like that, or where they believe it comes from OK , but that’s what we do and will continue doing to the best of our ability!
COYI
The Brighton game has the potential to go full Burnley if they don’t spend inbetween
Protests may not work
40,000 empty seats in the championship next year probably will tho as they have alienated and lost so many of the hardcore fans that will be the reality when all the tourists and fans of other clubs don’t turn up next year
Burnley ot not, 40k empty seats or not – won’t happen til 2023 and what incentive does a seriously troubled club on and off the pitch with no gtound assets have to potential buyers. Real world Craig
Real world hugh
We are not just going to sit and take their crap any more
Wether it works or not
as i said. no problem
Yeah I felt like that at the last election and at many political situations – didn’t work but I spose I must have felt a bit better until reality dawned
So,Hugh, you are saying that clinging on till 2023 and an extra 20% of what looks,increasingly like pure profit is all that drives those self confessed “biggest fans” of West Ham on?
They are attention seekers and they hate bad press and that is all we have to fight with,imo.
Hugh.
At least get your facts right.
The Brown out protests happened in the 90s.
Keep trying…
so whats your point steve? does the fact you know the exact dates of one protest to the next make you feel better? Comgrats on the most pointless post of 2020. I only tend to remember great games, players and goals. But you stick to your protest love ins if it makes you feel better.
Blokes a supposed journalist. Get your facts right. It’s not hard once you take your rose tinted glasses off.
If you choose to remember all the great moments then hats off to you.
Some of us remember everything and don’t brush subjects under the carpet.
I don’t suppose uve ever made a mistake and later corrected. Well done you – now shut your mouth
im definitely NOT brushing it under the carpet as I respect your opinion – but i just sense a disproportionate anger towards C&H as if they are the boards spokespeople. yes occasioally there are factual errors here – but these arent errors that make any difference to the context or meaning of their editorial. I see loads of ridiculous errors in national newspapers all the time that annoy me as they are earning firtunes writing this stuff. I doubt C&H are moving to the Bahamas on the back of C&H!! You are looking for the tiniest thing to use as a stick to beat them with. While i as a fellow fan get the anger i just dont get why these giuys should have to take the hits as its pretty clear they are bystanders and not pro or anti the board.
I get your point but how does that change anything George?
Hugh,
I understand what you’re saying about the practicalities of the club not being sold, but I’m not quite sure what you think disillusioned, angry fans should be doing?
Our board are so deluded that if we just kept quiet, they would think they’re doing a fantastic job and, in all likelihood, spend even less as they’d believe we’re all happy.
You’ve just said in one of your replies – “won’t happen til 2023 and what incentive does a seriously troubled club on and off the pitch with no gtound assets have to potential buyers”. A serious buyer isn’t going to care about a ‘troubled club’ because fans protest, it will see a London club, with a sleeping fan base that have proven to sell out 60k seats, cheap rent, potential to buy the ground in the future etc. Why do you think dilapidated houses still get bought? Because serious buyers can see value, regardless of its current condition.
I fully believe in supporting Moyes, but I disagree that the protests aren’t a distraction, it’s our only weapon against a god awful board who are clueless, deluded and pathetic. The more protests, the more media attention on them, the more scrutiny – that’s how it works.
Think I was clear on that JB – whatever they wish and I don’t have a problem with it so ;ong as it stays in the bounds of legality
Probably the balanced piece you have written on here and I actually agree that protests are unlikely to have any impact on club ownership.
However, to sit back and do nothing about the slow death of a great institution and something we hold so dear feels wrong to many people and so any protest should be applauded as long as it stays constructive and doesn’t affect the situation inside the ground and the support of the players (regardless of the fact than very few of them really deserve support now).
Understood but I like to change things that I can and not things I can’tJM
Each to their own. Respect any that choose to accept the situation as it is and just watch the inevitable happen as much as I respect those that are willing to stand up and fight, regardless of the odds.
We are all West Ham fans, doesn’t mean we are all the same type of people.
It’s not a case of acceptance – it’s a case of doing what we do here and as stated we ain’t a protest group – no problem with those that choose to go that way.
Also according to them they have not had one enquiry about buying the club in ten years
What makes you think they’ll immediately be able to sell when they want to
Unless of course shock horror they lied about that
I don’t – I indicated that may not be the case
I except they are not multi billionaire owners but, we can’t keep buying a record signing every window & then sell him because h is so fed off carrying the team, to fund the next record signing in the next window. One good player can’t play in every position, surely we should have more than one decent player. I think if we had stayed at Upton park it would be a little bit more acceptable, the fact is like many of us who didn’t really want to move, we said okay if it means some sort of progression. We are in the top 20 richest clubs in the world, higher gate receipts & yet we can’t even seem to be able to spend like our time before the move. I never thought the top 4 was realistic. Even the top 7 would be hard enough, maybe too much but, I thought we would be battling in the top 10. We had the ideal opportunity when the move happened to attract some decent players & push on before everyone else starts building new stadiums. We haven’t gone forwards, infact we have gone backwards, how have we gone from that last night at Upton park, to Sheff utd coming up & us going down. They are fully responsible for this & if they are fans like us they would at least try & do something about it.
i agree with this. I also take the view that 9 out of 10 seasons in the Premier Lague isnt bad whe you consider what other similar sized clubs have put up with. And yes if youre on those people who thought G&S spelling out their aspirations was a cast iron guarantee of success then perhaps you need to take a look at what the fairy godmother put in your tea. For my own part ive quite enjoyed the ride so far, i certaonly feel we are a bigger club now than we have been at any point in the past 30 years. The next 10 years should be about consolidating our place in the top 10 of the PL. Anyone who thinks the board or anyone should be able GUARANTEE better knows they are just trying it on. And NO i dont work for G&S or C&H or MI5 or Mossad. Funny that, i just have my own opinion that our board are actually ok. I know that because after Brown and Egghead they hardly out a foot wrong for 6 years. The fact we havent become top 6 yet is not what they wanted but its life. Sorry about that
I have been a West Ham fan for many years and have
Seen this discontent over and over again I predicted at
the start of the season that we would struggle this season
teams that have come up from the championship have learnt that to succeed in the premier league they have to invest wisely not to over spend on Carlos kick a ball multi billion pound has beens from teams that let’s face it if they were assets wouldn’t sell look at Sheffield united not a super star insight West Ham are on par with this kind of team we are not Liverpool Manchester City / united etc my point is every season since I can remember some of our fans think we are I’m not saying let’s be content I’m saying let’s get back to basics from board to pitch get rid of some of our so called super stars who clearly don’t want to play for the cause or the shirt and look at players who will roll up there sleeves and fight to survive in this league or they will have to put up with a cold Tuesday night away game and a tin bath to share at a lower league team next season
spot on markus i see it very much like you. we are realists. we know our place in the world and that doesnt mean we cannot be the next man city ir chelsea but i looj at burnley and sheff utd and see clubs with passion and players with hunger. I woul dlove us to go back to the west ham way which is NOT buying siuccess through global managers or players. Our catchment area for young players is huge and we have a supermarket of amazing taent on our doorstep ie the football league. Haller, fornals, lanzini, anderson, snodgrass, diop etc are good on paper but barnes, maddison, cantwell, rice, longstaff are better on the pitch
Markus,
That’s all well and good and I actually agree with you on many of your points, but we can’t get ‘back to basics’ because we don’t even have that! The basics would be accepting we can’t sign superstar expensive signings and £150m a transfer window every year, and finding players who will roll up their sleeves and give 110% every game (e.g. Sheff Utd), however, to do that would take a scouting network, analysis in to player personalities etc. something most other clubs have. We’re amateur! In order to get players to buy in to our club, we need to show we have ambition, that we’re going somewhere. How are we supposed to keep players with ambition to win things, qualify for europe etc. if we have a training ground that most league one clubs would be disappointed with. I’ll always back the team, but there are fundamental basics that we’re not doing because the board haven’t put in place the system for us to do so
This is West Ham all over. We have one good season followed by nine poor seasons. I really enjoyed the last season at the Boleyn Ground and would love to see that more often than not. The old ground was ok, some good views, some not so. I certainly don’t think that staying there would have meant more of the good seasons than bad. I’m not necessarily pro the current board, certainly not against them though. But there have been protests against the board for the last 35 years or so that I remember (probably before that as well). The one thing which makes us West Ham is ‘we will never be happy with the board’. This isn’t a point the finger at the current board, this is across the generations of the history of West Ham United. If you go back to our first owner/chairman, Arnold Hills, he did not want Thames Ironworks to become professional and was ultimately hounded out, from the flames grew WHU. Subsequent generations have protested against subsequent boards, yet we have always been the same WHU, never really amounting to much but too big to drift down the leagues into obscurity.
I look forward to our next good season, the one in ten season when we finish in the top seven and may even get a semi-final of a cup. After that, there will be more protests against whoever represents the board then. This is being West Ham!
Wish Id written that Rock Hammer 🙂
But it misses the biggest issue of them all: what was the point of moving to a stadium which is not configured for football for more of the same?! I accept that GSB couldn’t guarantee success, but they knew before we moved that the LS would give a worse matchday viewing experience than UP. That’s why people are so angry now. Me included. And, by the way, I’m a realist. I understand where our place is in the football hierarchy, and that it would take a net spend of the best part of £1billion to materially improve it. I also put up with the one in 10 seasons of near success followed by nine poor aeasons.
Lee, I didn’t want to leave either and I don’t like the stadium or the urban wilderness surrounding it. As an older bloke my eyesight isn’t what it once was and viewing is an issue from Bobby Moore Upper – even in the front row. I find it a sanitized footballing experience which ;eaves me pretty cold. I’m not ANGRY but there’s now a miss in my life. I also of course put up with the one in 10 years for around 60 years. The stadium was overhyped and is a disappointment. Having said all that, West Ham Mark 11 remains my club. I’m unlikely for WHUFC to not nbe part of my life
Thanks Hugh, I’ll take that as high praise indeed 👍
Why does it have ‘be West Ham’?! Why can’t we *hope* and look towards having a board who aren’t prepared to accept utter mediocrity? It’s staggering that some fans are just happy to accept the status quo and having ‘one good season in 10’. I think 90% of the fans would be happy with the board if they were honest, had integrity, put in place a strategy etc, even if that meant up and down seasons. It’s honestly like you lot have battered wife syndrome, happy to take the crap the board throw at us and accept it as normality. Work towards something better! Whether that’s realistically going to happen is utterly irrelevant.
At last some honesty – given those facts I will return to the club I dearly love in 3 years when hopefully they go. I will not be hoodwinked any longer. Further, this article is far more appreciated than the ludicrous predictor of points piece published yesterday – lets stick to the facts and then we can all independently make our choices re. West Ham.