Can we now get back to football please?

It's been enjoyable not to have to think about football for a fortnight. Meanwhile the repercussions from the Burnley game continue. The club had little choice but to ban for life the fans who ran on to the pitch during the game. Supporters are entitled to be angry when a club that makes a profit of £43 million and has gates of 57,000 isn't providing the promised "world class team for a world class stadium" and in fact appears to be going backwards. But there are legitimate ways of protesting, such as chants, banners, boycotts and marches. 

If every fan who had a grievance ran on to the pitch during the game it would be impossible to ever finish a match. How would we feel if a vital away game was abandoned with West Ham winning (unlikely, I know) simply because the home fans ran on to the pitch? None of us gets everything we want out of life and sometimes you have to accept that. Nor is coin-throwing at elderly men or making throat-slitting gestures ever acceptable.

Some progress is being made and the board is having to listen a little more. David Sullivan is stepping down as 'director of football' (which the club previously claimed he wasn't) and the club is appointing a chief executive. Karren Brady has accepted some fault lies with the board in her Sun column (although her claim that the club spent £80m on players last season is debatable if you deduct the revenue from player sales). In a meeting with WHUISA — which at least has elected leaders — David Sullivan has spoken about having fan representation at board level, or perhaps a former player (though I wouldn't trust players to know what the fans want). 

THE TRACKS OF MY TEARS
Meanwhile it's emerging that the fans were sold the vision of a new stadium with a co-operative landlord, when in fact Karren Brady is now labelling he LLDC as "vindictive". The club is in a High Court dispute with the LLDC over such matters as who pays for Sky TV and draught beer in the London Stadium. While there's still deadlock over putting in a new claret carpet over the running track, which would make he stadium feel much more like home and would only cost £140,000. This really needs to be sorted out quickly.

Meanwhile Martin Samuel, a Hammers fan, has written some thoughtful articles on the club's plight in the Daily Mail and suggests the ultimate solution might lie with the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022. If UK Athletics could use the 50,000 stadium in Birmingham as its base then that might finally allow the running track to be ditched at the London Stadium and the lower Betway Stand re-developed, he suggests.

It's never easy being a West Ham fan, but we're stuck with the same owners and players for the rest of the season. There's no point in protesting ourselves into the Championship. All that is needed is another two or three wins, so we need to concentrate on the next eight games before trying to bring in serious changes in the summer.