MOST football clubs would be staring down the barrel following relegation from the Premier League: West Ham United, have, in addition had the board room turmoil and uncertainty following first Karren Brady and then Chairman David Sullivan making fast exits from the board room, been in a financial and ownership crisis which is unprecedented in the club’s history.
The club owes around £190 million in unpaid transfer fees and pay day loans and last season lost £105 million. Former majority shareholder Sullivan resigned from his position before the allegations made by BBC’s Panorama were aired.
Nobody can say with any degree of certainty who will be playing for the club next season: Crysenicio Summerville and Mateus Fernandes, two of the Hammers’ biggest box office draws, are odds-on to be sold this summer.
But West Ham United aren’t ‘most football clubs’.
Massive vote of confidence by over 35,000 West Ham fans
And yet.
West Ham revealed today on the club web site that more than 35000 season ticket holders have renewed their seats for next season in the Championship.
A remarkable boost for Daniel Kretinsky’s alliance with Vanessa Gold as the duo seek to take majority control in the boardroom. Despite everything that has gone on at West Ham in the last two seasons, the drab football, managerial cock-ups, BS out protests and the ultimate disaster of relegation, as whufc.com puts it:
“With a little over a week until the deadline, more Hammers supporters have already renewed their tickets than the [whole] stadium capacity of any other Club competing in the Championship next term.”
If Daniel Kretinsky and Vanessa Gold were ever looking for a massive vote of confidence in the direction they seem to be heading in this strange new world of the post – Sullivan era, they just got it.
COYI
Kretinsky and Gold combined have a majority stake; the initial Gold disposal plan was to sell equal shares to Sullivan and Kretinsky, but only DK’s has moved forward post-Panorama. With Tripp, Terry Brown et al going with DK, effectively he now has a controlling interest.
The doom mongers who predicted an empty stadium were always going to be wrong. The away end will be full every week as Championship fans will want to be at their team’s ‘cup final’, and we were always going to have 30,000 ST holders plus 10,000 casuals.
If we suffer a second season down there, it’ll be different as the novelty wears off, but this coming season?
Strap in!