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 Under Sullivan and Brady the club has looked outdated and been overtaken by smaller clubs like Brighton, Bournemouth, Fulham and Brentford.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.

Moyes and Brady do the right thing

This is going to be a difficult time for all football clubs with no match revenue, no live TV payments and players on massive wages. Perhaps more so for the Hammers, who have spent a lot on players in the last two seasons. So it's good to see that David Moyes has agreed to take a voluntary pay cut of 30 per cut during lockdown and Karren Brady has tweeted that she is doing likewise. Another encouraging sign is that Mark Noble is one of the players administering the fund through which players plan to make voluntary donations to the NHS. 

Meanwhile the Guardian reports that the club is having a £30m rights issue to cover revenue shortcomings, which is "an invitation to existing shareholders to buy additional shares". Shares could then be offered elsewhere, which might perhaps be an opportunity for a potential new owner to get a stake in the club. It would be interesting to hear what financial/football journalists like David Conn have to say about this. The other positive news is that none of our players have as yet been caught in a "lockdown sex party" like Kyle Walker or illicitly training in the park like Jose Mourinho at Spurs.

While in the latest development the whole squad has agreed to take a reduction in wages and David Sullivan and David Gold have agreed to waive the interest on their loans. After all the ructions of the season so far it's good to see the club pulling together.

Another Brady own goal

There's an excellent Henry Winter piece in the Times taking issue with Karren Brady's Sun column in which she states that the season should be declared "null and void". This would of course conveniently end West Ham's relegation worries. It would be an absolute travesty if Liverpool, 25 points clear, were not awarded the title, and a way has to be found to finish the season, even if it's next autumn. I'd prefer West Ham to run the risk of relegation, rather than see Liverpool end up with nothing. Hammers fans care about fair play.

Sullivan and Gold should ban Brady from writing in the Sun as she's paid more than a million pounds a year by West Ham and the column has caused nothing but problems, most notably annoying the Leicester chairman so that he pulled out a loan deal for Islam Slimani and at one point even making a jibe about the signing of Robert Snodgrass being "not exactly a triumph." It's hard not to agree with Winter's conclusion that, "at a time when the situation confronting the country is one of such gravity, it is disgraceful that Brady could contemplate, let alone communicate such a shameless stance."

We've got our carpet back — and West Ham would consider buying London Stadium

Some interesting revelations from Karren Brady's appearance before the London Aseembly. The Daily Mail reports that an agreement has finally been reached about the carpet round the pitch. Sadly we can't have leopardskin, but it is going to be claret with a WHU badge and a dark blue border — something the LLDC could have agreed to a year ago. 

Brady also said that West Ham would definitely be interested in buying the London Stadium, "if it became a dedicated football stadium" with the odd concert and rugby match, but no athletics. She pointed out that West Ham originally offered to buy it during the bidding process, and that is surely Sullivan and Gold's long-term plan. You do wonder how long the LLDC can afford to lose around £20 million a year. 

Brady also claimed that the LLDC's estimate of the cost of staging each match had gone down from £250k a game to £43k a game, a figure she still disputed. At least relations with the LLDC appear to have improved slightly with the appointment of Lyn Garner as chief executive. 

Hopefully all this scrutiny from the London Assembly will ensure a better relationship between tenant and landlord — and better value for the taxpayer.

Race storm, player unrest and missed signings

It's an embarrassing morning to be a West Ham fan. "Race storm engulfs West Ham" was the headline on the front page of last night's Evening Standard and today's papers have more coverage of Africa-gate. Jacob Steinberg in the Guardian writes that Tony Henry's alleged comments about not signing African players have been a topic of much discussion in the dressing room. Credit to Cheikhou Kouyate for putting an "African and proud" selfie up on Instagram, which was liked by Pedro Obiang, Arthur Masuaku, Adrian and Manuel Lanzini. 

So we now have a rift between the players and club. Henry's position is surely untenable, but the worrying thing is who was copied into his email and who else knew about this. There's also the issue of who leaked the email to the press and what their motivation was. The Sun reports that the FA is investigating and can ask to see all emails and documents relating to recruitment.   

Meanwhile we're learning more about a number of failed deadline day signings. The Dendoncker saga doesn't appear to be the club's fault as the player wanted to come, but Anderlecht changed their mind about selling. 

West Ham were also trying to sign Leicester's Slimani writes the Guardian's Jacob Steinberg, but the deal was apparently scuppered because Leicester's owners had taken offence after Karren Brady wrote a piece in her Sun column claiming that Leicester's chairman was seen settling a large bill at "London's most expensive wine shop". She had since apologised and the matter was thought to have been resolved. It's a petty reaction from Leicester, but also a sign that Brady needs to be much more discrete about matters affecting West Ham. For example, her column recently had a needless dig at Robert Snodgrass who is still a West Ham player.

New signings Joao Mario and Jordan Hugill must wonder what they have got themselves into. Still, apart from the racism claims, the player unrest and the botched signings, the transfer window went rather well.