Running a football club isn’t easy, and sometimes it can go horribly wrong

 

 

• FA’s trust in Fifa results in potential huge losses from playing in the World Cup

By Tony Attwood

It is interesting just how far away newspaper reporting of football has moved from reports by fans and others not employed by the media.   

It is over a year since the Daily Cannon ran the headline Wolves boss questions officials’ bias towards Manchester City, but ever since the media has become more and more positive about ManC, although they have started to examine the way some other football clubs are being run.   

Quite a bit of attention has focussed for example, on Leicester City, who earlier this month were deducted six points for breaking the rules in 2023/24.   And that of course, in turn reminds us that the Manchester City case, with well over 100 citations against them, is still ongoing, and no one is saying a word.   I mention it occasionally to remind the authorities that they might wish we had forgotten, but we haven’t.

But although the ManC issue is easy to understand (spending massive amounts on players without clarity on where the money came from) it is harder to see why West Ham United make a fuss, especially as the stadium owners say that their rent doesn’t even cover the cost of holding matches at the ground.

And now WHAM are saying they will face “serious” financial consequences if they are relegated, and so will need a rent cut.    In fact their last set of figures showed a loss of £104.2million, despite having a huge modern stadium and paying a modest rent.

WHAM blames their problems on losses from the sale of players, seemingly because the players they bought were not good enough.  And whose fault, we might ask, was that?   

In fact, the club has rather assumed that it is a “big club” by rights.  And yes they do get fairly big crowds.   And in fact, for each game this season in the league the crowd has been above 62,000.   In fact, they got over 59,000 for the match against Queens Park Rangers.

So the fans are doing their bit, which puts the blame fairly and squarely with the board – the board who were effectively given their ground by Boris Johnson after the London Olympics.

But now, as the situation in the east end unravels, we can see exactly what the club is up to.  Although it sounds unbelievable, WHAM are contemplating appealing to the Supreme Court after being ordered to pay around three and a half million pounds they owe to their landlords.

This comes about because after the London olympics Boris Johnson was desperate not to have the stadium stand empty.   So the government fixed things so that West Ham would play at the London Stadium without having to pay for building it.  The deal was that when West Ham sold shares in their company, the government would then receive some, if not all, of that income.

Now the majority of the shares are owned by individuals and companies, but West Ham seems to have refused to pay the full amount due to the state.   However, when the government gave WHAM the stadium, perhaps unsure of what sort of people they were dealing with, an obligatory dispute resolution system was set up for just such circumstances.  It has heard the case and said WHAM must pay up.  

Snce then, the fans have got involved in the debate about the stadium, and some blame WHAMs poor showing in the league as being due (in some way that I can’t quite understand) to the stadium.  In fact they also say the stadium is not hostile enough to visiting teams, so the fact that WHAM are heading for relegation is not the clu’bs fault, but the fault of the stadium that we, the taxpayers, gave them.

So London Stadium are now owed £3.6m plus all legal costs plus interest.  And interest is important since the case ended three years ago, and the Appeal Court judges were unanimous.  But WHAM still claim the judgment was “made in error.”  They are, it seems, still refusing to pay.

And now, in addition to all this, we have their slide down the league and out of Europe.  In order to stop the rot new players were bought and commercial activity increased.   But that didn’t work, and instead just added to the debt and took the club nearer relegation.

And they still have these bills from the past to pay.   Here is part of the current table…

 

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