History, heritage and heart... that’s the Hammers of old – but not today
FOR some reason, it took an entire week and was not even through the club’s official channels. But Karren Brady has sort of apologised and sort of taken some blame for the scenes at the London Stadium last Saturday. In doing so in her newspaper column, she referred to West Ham as being known around the football world for its history, its heritage and, above all, its heart. For starters, it really, really isn’t. No more than most football clubs, anyway. Does it have history, heritage and heart? Sure, but it is hardly a global symbol of those abstract qualities. And it is a little rich talking about history, heritage and heart when you have moved the club to an athletics stadium and plastered LONDON on the club crest. Brady, David Sullivan and THE inclusion of relatively unheralded players such as Alfie Mawson and James Tarkowski along with slots for the likes of Danny Welbeck and Jake Livermore in Gareth Southgate’s latest squad shows just how shallow England’s pool of elite standard players actually is. David Gold can dress up the stadium move in whatever manner they want but, quite simply, it was and it remains a piece of naked commercial opportunism – one that is pretty much irreversible, certainly in short and medium term.
As Brady said yesterday, “we have moved and there is no going back”.
So West Ham are stuck with an arena that is only truly fit for footballing purpose in the sense it has a large rectangle of grass in its middle.
Brady highlights the attempts to make it feel more like ‘home’ but getting permission to put a claret-coloured cover over the track is not going to make fans suddenly feel fuzzy.
Long term, it will be a generational thing, it is the way time works. Relatively soon, there will be a generation of West Ham supporters who have known nothing other than And even though he is expected to return long before the start of the World Cup, throw in Harry Kane’s injury and you realise just how tough a job Southgate (right) has.
But, assuming England end up going to Russia, let’s not get too negative about the personnel. Looking down Southgate’s list, it the London Stadium. In the meanwhile, the only way to make the stadium bearable to the majority is to win football matches. In football, winning is a panacea, a magic bullet, a cure-all. The pitch does not get invaded if you are one up against Burnley and snapping at the heels of the Big Six. Brady can have all the meetings she likes with the London Mayor about how to improve practical things at the stadium but that is all trivia compared to the one thing she, Sullivan and Gold (insets), can do to calm the mutinous factions. That is to help produce a winning team. There was one telling line in Brady’s mea culpa lite. “We are in the process of entirely restructuring our player recruitment. This will change the way we handle transfers in the future, giving the is easy to dwell on the names you think are lucky to be included.
But as England head into friendlies against Holland and Italy, the progress made by Raheem Sterling, the sparkling cameo from Marcus Rashford against Liverpool and the returning form of Dele Alli give Glenn Murray jokingly implies he can’t quite believe he has not been called up by Gareth Southgate… and when Danny Welbeck’s name appeared, neither could a lot of people control to the manager and the football staff.”
There you have it. By logical extension, non-football staff have been involved in a transfer policy that, like the stadium, has not been fit for purpose in recent times.
And while Brady points to a record spend of £80million in 2016-17, the net spend over the last four transfer windows is less than £30m.
Not only that, decisions on who have been bought and sold have obviously been influenced by people not qualified to properly judge a footballer. However steeped in tradition your club, signing and selling the wrong players will not give you a winning team.
So, if the unlikely gist of what Brady is saying, amidst all the flannel, is that this board will now just write the cheques, at least West Ham fans have something positive to latch on to.
As well as all that history, heritage and heart, of course.