Brady quits as Kretinsky and Sullivan share power

It's all change at West Ham. With rather strange timing Karren Brady has announced she's quitting as vice-chair after 16 years. Most West Ham fans will feel that's a good thing. Her achievements do include negotiating a cheap rent for the London Stadium and getting 50,000 season ticket holders. But these are far outweighed by the negatives. 

Brady wildly over-promised about the move to the London Stadium and we've never got close to, "a world class stadium with a world class team." The London Stadium has improved with the squaring off of the ends and this year's games have proved you can get a decent atmosphere there, though Brady and Sullivan never really seemed to appreciate that the rake of the stands is wrong. Long-term we need to buy the LS and reconfigure at least one side of it.

Brady and Sullivan did win a trophy and stumble upon a good manager in David Moyes, though they twice let him go when he should have been kept. They've appointed a lot of duffers, with only Allardyce and Bilic being relative successes. Grant, Pellegrini, Lopetegui and Potter all failed, while going through three recruitment gurus in Rob Newman, Tim Steidten and Kyle Macaulay shows a real lack of strategy. There's a long list of terrible signings. Under Sullivan and Brady the club has looked outdated and been overtaken by smaller clubs like Brighton, Bournemouth, Fulham and Brentford. While Lord Sugar surely wouldn't approve of a £104m loss last season and a relegation struggle.

Now the Guardian reports that Daniel Kretinsky and David Sullivan are buying the late David Gold's shares and will each own 40 per cent of the club. You sense that Kretinsky has despaired at the way the club is run and now wants a bigger say. While David Sullivan hasn't gone, any change is welcome. Kretinsky is called The Sphinx because no-one knows much about him, but he will surely want to see a more efficient business making money and competing in the top half of the Premier League. Sullivan is now 77 and Kretinsky surely has his eyes on ultimately taking over.