House of cards

When the final whistle blew on Saturday afternoon, Upton Park was almost half empty. Not because fans had walked away in disgust, but because of the opportunity that a 4-0 lead afforded them to avoid the gridlock that is E13 on matchdays (see above). Last week, the chance to move to Stratford and escape that gridlock for ever suddenly became a distant dream.

A week ago, West Ham fans woke to a familiarly depressing outcome. It was only two years ago that we were hit with the bombshell that our Icelandic owners had caved to Kevin McCabe’s media-backed whining, by agreeing to compensate Sheffield United to the tune of £20m. This time it was the Government caving to the whining of Daniel Levy and Barry Hearn.

As a West Ham fan, getting your head round this latest disappointment is made all the more challenging by the fact that everyone involved with this saga is talking utter rubbish. Karren Brady got the ball rolling last Tuesday when she declared, “We understand Ministers will make a statement later and will not pre-empt that”, before going on to do exactly that.

When the Sports Minister, Hugh Robertson, did speak, it was to claim that: “The key point is the action we have taken today is about removing the uncertainty”, ignoring the fact that no-one has any idea how this will all end.

Barry Hearn declared that he “couldn’t be happier if we had beaten West Ham in the Cup final”, underlying that his preoccupation is not with football, but with a fight for the sake of a fight. The money generated by last season’s FA Cup run presumably now sits in the bank account of Leyton Orient’s solicitors. O’s fans, whose team sit in the League One relegation zone, must be a tad frustrated that this money could not be invested in new players.

The newspapers reporting the story were no better. The Telegraph refused to acknowledge the existence of the Boelyn Ground by declaring West Ham ‘homeless’. But a day of bullshit would not be complete without Boris having his say.

“I believe it will also put us in the place where we always intended to be - delivering a lasting sustainable legacy for the stadium backed up by a robust but flexible business plan that provides a very good return to the taxpayer”. How £2m annual income for a stadium that cost £500m - and will incur £50m conversion costs and £5m annual running costs - is anyone’s guess.

The only way to wade through this balderdash, is to question Hearn and Levy’s winning argument: that £40m of funding from Newham Council is, under EU law, illegal state aid.

While it may be tempting to rail at Barry Hearn’s lack of class, Daniel Levy’s spitefulness and EU bureaucracy, the rule regarding state aid does not seem without logic and, fair or not, are there not people on West Ham’s payroll who are employed for their legal expertise?

If the rates that Newham were going to charge us were - as is claimed by the club - ‘commercial’ and not preferential, then why did we not seek the financing elsewhere? Had we done so, Hearn and Levy would have had no case and the keys to the Olympic Stadium would be ours.

It is this same kind of fuzzy thinking that got us into hot water over the signings of Tevez and Mascherano and which may get us in to further transfer-related trouble, as we refuse to pay a small Danish club Winston Reid’s transfer fee, in a tit-for-tat protest over Brescia’s inability to pay Alessandro Diamanti’s transfer fee – an issue that clearly has nothing to do with FC Midtjylland.

Brescia may be in the wrong (although their zero valuation of Diamanti seems accurate) but ripping off a completely innocent Danish club is completely perverse. It’s what cowboys do. And that is how our club is run.

For once, can we not get our own house in order before seeking to blame others. As regards the Diamanti situation, here’s an idea: why not demand the transfer fee up front. In a post-Lehmann Brothers world, that would seem the prudent thing to have done.

David Gold may be many fans’ flavour of the month right now, owing to his love of a retweet, but his tenure at West Ham to date has been nothing short of a disaster. Feeding the fans stories through the media about the return of Carlos Tevez is a great way of papering over the fact. Might it not be an idea to shelve the idea of us signing a prima donna that we cannot afford, and focus on the basics of running a business?

Saturday’s half-time entertainment came in the shape of the club’s new ‘Matchday Lotto’ – an alternative revenue stream that even League Two fans would wince at. There seems to be a feeling of chance to everything the club does right now. Act first. Ask questions later.

The club’s enthusiasm at the prospect of being Manchester City-style tenants in the Olympic Stadium may be well placed, and there may yet be a happy ending. But will the club put in place all the necessary controls to ensure that happy ending materialises with no further controversy? Don’t bet on it.

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