How West Ham’s stadium is costing all Londoners quite a lot of cash

 

 

 

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By Tony Attwood

The story about West Ham’s move from Upton Park to the so-called London Stadium has been covered step by step on this site, but if I may, I would like to update you in a few lines.   First a reminder of the background: the so-called London Stadium was built on the orders of Boris Johnson as part of the London Olympics.   It was said at the time that it would not cost the taxpayer anything because after the Olympics, it would be bought from the state, although by whom, it was never really clear.

Eventually, with no one coming forward to offer to buy the place, West Ham agreed to take it over, providing the state not only demanded no money for the site, but also paid for the conversion to a football stadium, which the state did.   And then gave it to West Ham.

That is insulting enough to the British taxpayer, but now we are told that London taxpayers will have to cough up an extra two and a half million pounds if West Ham collapse further and fall into the Championship, as most certainly seems a possibility.

To see how likely that is we can have a look at the Premier League bottom of the table…  West Ham are not doing as badly as some clubs, although seven points from the last  six games is not that great.  But I thought this was interesting as as we have recently been thinking about how far and how fast Tottenham Ho have actually slipped down in terms of their ability to beat other clubs….And although it looks rather worrying for WHAM, it is also interesting to see the true impact of late, for which we might have a look at the last six-game table.

 

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
13	West Ham United	6	2	1	3	8	10	-2	7
14	Nottingham Forest	6	2	1	3	6	8	-2	7
15	Brighton	6	1	3	2	8	8	0	6
16	Wolverhampton	6	1	3	2	6	6	0	6
17	Tottenham Ho!	6	1	3	2	7	8	-1	6
18	Sunderland	6	1	3	2	5	9	-4	6
19	Burnley	6	0	4	2	6	10	-4	4
20	Crystal Palace	6	0	2	4	3	9	-6	2

 

Where all this comes from (and as The Standard has had great fun explaining), is the original history of the stadium.  In that “West Ham’s lease agreement with City Hall contains a clause whereby the club’s rent would be slashed in half should they drop into the Championship.”   Now there is an inducement and a half.

And I find thjis a rather interesting issue, because being placed as they are, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility for the owners to edge WHAM down a league, and then use the money saved to buy in new players who will not only take WHAM to the top of the Championship, but also onwards and upwards in the Premier League.  Of course I have no evidence that such a thing is on anyone’s mind – it’s just a possibility.  Especially as a lot of WHAM fans have been rather negative about the stadium of late and how they would like the club to move somewhere else.

Which is rather like a spoilt child at Christmas who doesn’t like the presents given and demands something better.

Now I need to make this quite clear: I don’t have any inside information on this, and this story might well be a bit of tittle tattle, which of course would then put it on a par with 97% of the transfer stories that we see every day in the media.   But still, it makes one think about just the sort of deal Boris and co put together when they persuaded WHAM to move from their old ground.

It is also interesting in the context of the rebellion that has been seen recently among some WHAM supporters who have demanded a move away from the so-called London stadium to a ground that they find more acceptable.

Of course, there is also the fact that in the Championship West Ham would pick up four more home games than they get now, and that would mean they would have to spend more money on stewarding.   What I don’t know is whether, if that happens, the state (ie you and me) has to pay for that stewarding.   That may seem a bit of a whacky idea, but then the whole notion of building a stadium just for the Olympics and then giving it to a football club whose grand array of trophies this century are League 2 play off winners twice, FA Cup beaten finalists once, and Conference League winners a couple of years back.

Now I have nothing against lower-level teams – when I have the opportunity, I go and watch my local team in the Northern Premier League Midland Division.   But when they start using taxpayers’ money as West Ham have done, that does concern me, as one who actually does pay his taxes, month by month, year by year.