Hammers fans want a dream... not reality
EXCLUSIVE WEST HAM CO-OWNER DAVID SULLIVAN
GIVE or take the odd FA Cup game, David Sullivan has only nine more matchday journeys to make to Upton Park. By early May, a Saturday afternoon ritual that started 55 years ago when he was just 11 will be no more.
Tomorrow he will be there as Manchester City visit in the Barclays Premier League and, as he is driven left off Green Street into the directors’ car park, the West Ham joint-chairman will catch sight, as he always does, of the second-hand programme seller who is a reminder that he has not always had things his own way at his favourite football club.
‘When I was a kid I used to sell second-hand football programmes,’ Sullivan said this week. ‘I was a bit of an entrepreneur even at 11. I used to go to games with my mates and then go round the directors’ box afterwards because they would all drop the programmes on the floor.
‘At other grounds you would go to the groundsman, give him a fiver and he would have a room full of old programmes.
‘So I would pitch up at Wembley and big grounds and do a deal of 50 different programmes for six shillings and sixpence, which is about 32p. I had a little stall and would take about £100 in a day with my brother, which was untold money back then.
‘But West Ham was a problem. I shoved my pitch up outside West Ham and the stewards moved me on! They wouldn’t let me do it and I thought even then that I would come back one day and buy the place.
‘Funnily enough, that exact spot now is where a bloke stands every home game doing exactly the same thing as I wanted to do. I drive past him every weekend on the way in. I should stop and see what he has.’
It is six years ago this week that Sullivan made good his childhood promise along with co-owner David Gold. With a move to the Olympic Stadium inching closer, West Ham have the feel of a club making significant steps.
The club have, in Slaven Bilic, a manager who perhaps buys into its supporters’ romantic ideals rather more than did his predecessor, Sam Allardyce. West Ham also have players such as Frenchman Dimitri Payet and Argentinian Manuel Lanzini to satisfy those in East London who always thumb their noses at a rather more pragmatic style.
Sitting in a small room at West Ham’s new home this week, Sullivan certainly seemed content, happy to reveal that Bilic is already part-way to a new contract and to accept that the club’s four years with Allardyce often felt a little uncomfortable.
It is less than two years ago, remember, since Allardyce’s West Ham suffered the unusual indignity of being booed off after winning a home game against Hull.
‘Judge every manager over three years but I think we have got a very good one,’ Sullivan told Sportsmail. ‘He played for the club, knows what the supporters want, knows that the FA Cup is important to us. He tries to play good football.
‘Yes, it’s possible that we could review his contract and do something in the summer. But it’s more likely that we would do it next January. You do get one- season wonders, after all.
‘Unfortunately with Sam, although he did a good job, the supporters never warmed to him. Nobody ever sang his name. Maybe ’cos Sam swaggered a bit. Maybe it didn’t help.
‘When we were booed off after winning, it was the weirdest thing. I felt the same. That’s one of the reasons we knew we had to make a change. Sam had done his job well and we thanked him for doing it.
‘But, physically, he was tired. He needed three months off and he has had it and come back like a tiger as we all knew he would. With luck he will keep Sunderland up.
‘He is a good manager but he does it his way and at West Ham we do it our way. Sam never really bought into that. West Ham fans want a dream, they don’t want reality.’
The reality for West Ham right now is a position in the Premier League four points outside the top four. Manuel Pellegrini and his City team will face a side tomorrow more than capable of upsetting the established order.
Fortunately for City, Lanzini will be absent with a muscle problem but Payet, a £10million signing from Marseille, will not.
‘If Payet was 21 he would have been £30m but he is 28,’ said Sullivan. ‘Some clubs won’t sign 28-year-olds. They look for investments.
‘We are the opposite. We just want him to deliver for our club. We aren’t looking to sell him at a profit.
‘Lanzini was a gamble but the total cost of the loan deal was £4m for the season and also allows us to buy him for £10m. I love a deal when you can look at someone before you buy. That gamble has paid off. He is outstanding and he could improve.
‘Every signing is a risk. Some players, when they get to a certain level of income and life becomes comfortable, are not the player they were. Foreign players in particular. So we try to put them on huge appearanceap money so that they are driven to play and want to play. But it depends on the individual. Payet, forfo example, is a supreme professional s and doesn’t need that. When he and Lanzini are both in the team we are very special indeed.’
THE GREAT Newcastle and Sunderland forward Len Shackleton famously included in his autobiography a blank page headed: ‘What your average director knows about football.’
Sullivan would perhaps appreciate the gag but disagree with the sentiment. Essentially West Ham’s director of football he is, for example, already working on a way to ensure young teenage prospect Reece Oxford remains with the club beyond his current contract.
‘He is the highest-paid 17-year-old in the history of the club and has the highest signing- on fee of any 17-year-old who has ever been here,’ said Sullivan. ‘He signed for two years at the age of 17 and that’s the maximum length allowed. That can make a club who has invested in and developed a player very vulnerable and it can make you worry.
‘But we are optimistic he will be here for a long time. We will keep him. He is an exceptional talent.’
Sullivan and Gold bought their first club, Birmingham City, in 1993. Sixteen years later they sold it and
The supporters never warmed to Big Sam. Nobody ever sang his name
If Payet was 21 he would be worth £30m ... but he is 28 Judge every manager over three years but
we’ve got a very good one
turned their attention to West Ham United.
Football has changed much in that time. The average Birmingham player when they took over was earning £300 a week and foreign ownership was something that belonged in the future.
‘I think that trend is sad but it’s life,’ he said. ‘Local owners like Peter Coates at Stoke should be knighted.
‘Why do EastEnders actors get knighthoods (Barbara Windsor is now a Dame) but not someone like him? It’s baffling.’
Football fans have not changed much though. They are still suspicious, demanding and only occasionally grateful. At Birmingham a pitch invasion once saw home supporters making cut-throat gestures towards the directors’ box. ‘One of my sons still hasn’t forgotten that,’ revealed Sullivan. ‘He was 11 at the time, terrified.’
Just last February, meanwhile, Sullivan was confronted by a mob of 100 West Ham fans as he left an FA Cup defeat at West Bromwich early. The mobile phone footage was disturbing.
‘It was harrowing,’ he said. ‘I left early because my mum was dying. She was 98. It was the only game I left early that season.
‘I knew how the people felt. People thought it was maybe our year for the Cup and we were woeful that day, so poor. But as owners we were doing our best. I thought it was unfair.
‘Individually you could have had a debate with any one of those people but when they are a mob they are quite frightening.
‘ The real ringleaders were mid-50s upwards, English guys who were probably the remnants of the old ICF (the Inter City Firm hooligan group), you know. Real hardcore supporters.
‘Some of the younger ones I heard say it wasn’t right what the others were doing but it was just a bad day — one of those experiences you just want to forget.’
Sullivan has never heard from any of those who hounded him that day. No contrition, no apologies.
But he is more than tough enough to cope. On the day we met he arrived straight from an emergency Big talent: Payet has impressed supporters dental appointment and nursing sore ribs after a sparring session with one of his two sons.
Sullivan’s spirits are high these days, though. Under the forensic guidance of vice-chairman Karren Brady, the Olympic Stadium is slowly being transformed into a home for their club.
Currently the site is a work in progress but the digital impressions of the finished article help explain why corporate hospitality and executive boxes for next season are already sold out.
West Ham’s ticketing prices have helped season tickets sales, too. The club are determined to make their new stadium accessible to the community and Sullivan hopes that their example, and the riches due to arrive from next season’s new TV deal, will prompt other clubs to do the same.
‘Ticket pricing is always high up on the agenda at Premier League meetings,’ Sullivan said. ‘We have announced our prices and it is now up to other clubs to see if they follow suit.
‘I just hope all the new money won’t go straight to the players and agents, but I fear it might.
‘We have cut our prices by 25 per cent and made the bottom ones cheaper. Your gate income relative to TV money is small so I think it’s wrong to try and squeeze every last penny out of your supporters.
‘We have priced the stadium to sell it out but also so that we could say that we are giving back to the community. Next season the TV has gone up dramatically so we are all in a position — every club — to give something back if we want to.
‘We will only lose out by about £5m through what we have done. It won’t be the difference between success and failure. ‘We want to buy a striker in the summer for £20m and make a statement signing for when we arrive here. But that money doesn’t come from gate receipts. It’s from the other bit. ‘If you lose £5m it’s great for the supporters but for us it won’t make the difference between signing Ronaldo and not signing him. This is the most exciting time in the history of West Ham. It feels strange for the fans but it’s strange for us too.
‘But it’s an iconic stadium and I’m still in awe of it at the moment, even if it’s just a building site.
‘We are very lucky that this was being built in our borough. We are actually coming back to our borough. This is West Ham. We play in East Ham at the moment.
‘That kind of thing is important.’
LIKE the rest of the Premier League, West Ham have watched the example of Leicester City’s progress this season and taken heart.
Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal has said the English top flight will be more competitive in the future thanks to its TV riches and Sullivan agrees.
‘Normally two points a game gets you third in the table,’ he said. ‘This time the top teams are struggling to do that. It could be a one-season coincidence but I doubt it. It could be the money.
‘Leicester have given us all hope of getting in the top four but we all need that goalscorer, don’t we? When Andy Carroll has played he has been phenomenal. He has scored three winning goals.
‘He will be back in three weeks or maybe even two weeks on Saturday. He’s a great player and has played his best football this season.
‘But we need someone who is a star, doesn’t get injured and scores 20 goals a season. Where you find one you just don’t know.
‘You buy abroad and can they make the jump? You buy one here but will he do it the next season as well? Will the Watford striker (Odion Ighalo) do it next year? Will Jamie Vardy do it next year? I don’t know. That’s the question isn’t it?’
Tomorrow City will arrive with goalscoring talent of their own. Aguero, Bony, Sterling, Silva, Toure, De Bruyne. It is a frightening line-up but Bilic’s team have beaten them once this season.
At West Ham, the feeling of opportunity is back and it is priceless, even if Sullivan knows that gratitude to the owners in football will only ever stretch so far.
‘I think our fans respect that we go to games and that we are genuine supporters,’ he smiled.
‘They may prefer us to a “normal” foreign owner but if they could have a Sheik Mansour or Roman Abramovich then I think their loyalties to us would stretch beyond breaking point! I am comfortable with that, though. Don’t worry.
‘The first time we went back to Birmingham we had a very hostile reception.
‘Two years later we went back again and people were asking why we hadn’t stayed! That’s just life in football isn’t it?’ To join the priority list for season tickets at West Ham’s new home, visit whufc.com