Only radical solution can stop crisis club becoming ‘another Sunderland’
the manager; and the appointment of David Moyes. There may even be a bitter laugh at Moyes being in that vast technical area, given he was in charge of Sunderland when they went down last season.
As with Sunderland, West Ham are asking their fans to postpone their anger for the common cause of avoiding relegation, which is fair enough. What else can they do? If they do fall out of the Premier League, the reality of where that will leave them is frightening.
West Ham cannot turn back to Upton Park, and moving to the Olympic Stadium was always an imperfect solution to their problem. As I have written before, Daniel Levy had it right when the Tottenham Hotspur chairman said the best idea would be to knock it down, build a bespoke football ground and fund a new athletics stadium back at Crystal Palace. But the politics of it all – rather than the costs – made it unacceptable, so West Ham going there as an anchor tenant was logical. Someone had to occupy it.
But West Ham are in this limbo. A limbo that means even when
Hopes that the move to the London Stadium would take the club to a new level were naive
they suggest laying a claret carpet around the area surrounding the pitch, to make it feel a little more like their own home and not quite so huge, it is apparently vetoed despite the club offering to pay the £140,000 cost. As ever, it seems, with this stadium there are two sides to the story, with operator E20 countering that it was happy to look at this idea but West Ham ended talks.
How are these particular Augean stables to be cleaned? There is the obvious demand for new owners and that, at Sunderland, appears to be a greater possibility with Ellis Short wanting out and lowering his asking price substantially.
At West Ham, and despite rumours, David Sullivan and David Gold insist they do not want to sell but they are under immense pressure. Maybe results and a better team will improve matters and on-field success would make a significant difference, even if it will feel like things could always turn quickly given how the stadium, and the owners, are such a venomous symbol.
So something practical has to give. Surely it has to be the acceptance that the stadium needs to be radically modified to make it far more fit for purpose to host a major football club?
It therefore needs the controversial contracts and the lease allowing West Ham to use the stadium to be fully re-negotiated and made far less complex and bureaucratic. That is going to be costly in itself and will add to the astonishing costs already incurred to get here. But, at this point, it needs West Ham to dig deep.
It needs the acceptance that it does not work to have them as anchor tenants with such little say, control and investment – in time and finance – in this stadium. It needs, also, for athletics to move out or for the realisation that it has to be football first.
There are cosmetic changes that can be made in terms of signage, in terms of re-modelling the ground to make it fit for purpose for football and in a way that we were told it would be. Seats need to be moved nearer the pitch, for example. It cannot be beyond the wit of an architecture firm experienced in stadium design to come up with a raft of solutions.
But it is a mess. Everyone accepts that and now that we have acceptance we have to have a solution. That requires far greater cooperation from the so-called “stakeholders”, while the fractious relationship between West Ham and the stadium operators has not helped and needs to be improved.
There is a lot of anger, starting from the stands. Much of it is justified, some of it is over the top, and there is no mitigation for fans fighting in the way they have done.
The danger is that even if West Ham survive this season it is only a matter of time before the same problems boil over again – unless a solution is found that requires the club to offer substantial investment and to take the lead in reworking the stadium.
Right now the fear is that West Ham are going to become another Sunderland. And a club who do not even have their own stadium to fall back on.