" Do Our Board Need To Compete With West Ham ? "

off the field if we are ever going to get to the Premier League.

Yesterday we lost to West Ham on the field and most anyone who watched the game would agree that they just had to much for our team to cope with. After the game MM commented on the HUGE budget that West Ham was operating with this season and how hard it is to compete with them on the field.

West Ham are owned by David Sullivan and David Gold and each has a 32% shareholding whilst 35 % of shares are held by a bank. The used their personal funds to pay the £70m price for buying a 64% stake in the club, this despite the club having recorded debts of £120m at the time they purchased it.

In their first season on top of the £70m purchase price they also provided a further £34m to help reduce interest payments, which they felt were unmanageable, to purchase players and continue paying the monies owing to Sheffield Utd for the Tevez affair. At the time of the takeover the total cost to West Ham was recorded as £30m and 80% remained outstanding and has to be repaid by 2013. As this is a football debt it must be repaid and they are financing it. As a result of the additional £34m and savings in interest payments they have reduced the clubs overall debts by £18m in one season.

Their personal joint wealth is approx £1b but despite throwing 10% of that at West Ham they decided, after being relegated with the loss of PL revenues estimated at £35-£40m to make up the shortfall out of their personal funds. As a result West Ham who have recorded turnover of £80m in their last publshed accounts, with wages recorded at 68% of turnover, are operating on a wage budget of £54m. They decided to do this to have the best possible chance to return to the PL at the first attempt.

I'm not advocating for a minute that our board fund a wage budget of £54m at our club but anyone think they could do more like repaying debt and reducing interest payments, converting debt to equity or maybe even like Sullivan and Gold say look to give us the best possible chance of getting promoted here is £10m, we are giving the money interest free, Malky go spend it.

But if our board are really serious about making the PL it shows the level of commitment you have to be prepared to show to make it happen.

Good post ..........It's the old cliché though....you get what you pay for.

Not really. Swansea, Norwich, Blackpool, Burnley to name a few got promoted spending next to nothing. Leicester are doing well arent they.

This clubs fans dont have a clue. Moan like f**k at the £12m loss yet calling for the board to gamble on promotion and spend.

Not really. Swansea, Norwich, Blackpool, Burnley to name a few got promoted spending next to nothing. Leicester are doing well arent they.

This clubs fans dont have a clue. Moan like f**k at the £12m loss yet calling for the board to gamble on promotion and spend.

Good point Craig, I was thinking more along the lines of spending the cash to bring in the players to strengthen the squad and push for promotion, opposed to reckless spending..

Shortly after buying West Ham Utd David Sullivan went on record and said,

"We were the most insolvent club in the country. The previous owners would do any deal as long as they didn't have to pay in the current year. Two years Season Tickets money was taken in adavance and this season we hae had to put down £7m to cover it, next season we will have to put another £7.7m to cover it. Everything at the club has a charge against it, the ground, the training ground every conceivable asset of the club has a charge against it.

We had a choice to make this season, run it like an administrator and sell all the players and try and fight offrelegation or have a real go at getting promoted. We decided to have a real go"

That's what we had to take on yesterday, the no matter what it takes we are getting promoted, little wonder for me we looked second best.

isn't that what pompy tried to do as well?

Don't agree with this.

We looked very average yesterday but if we had played them a month or two ago we would have beaten them. Whether our current form is just a bad run or a sign of a tired team I wouldn't like to argue but I would say that if we had managed to bring in a 2-3 players in the New Year then MM would have been able to rest under-perfoming/tired players and we might have avoided this bad spell.

And that isn't a dig at either MM or TG/VT for not getting more players in as we don't really know for sure why more didn't arrive.

As someone has pointed out you don't need to spend big to get promoted and I for one am glad we aren't throwing money around like we did in previous times.

isn't that what pompy tried to do as well?

I think it's very similar also the mortgaging season ticket is what Rangers have done which is part of the reason David Sullivan said West Ham was the most insolvent club in the country.

But Sullivan and Gold are throwing huge amounts of their money to sort it out.

It would be interesting to see what happens at West Ham if they don't get promoted.

It would be interesting to see what happens at West Ham if they don't get promoted.

Good point Craig but somehow I think thse two won't let the club go into administration. They are men with deep pockets on a mission.

Who was it that said we needed owners with deep pockets.

I think they also had a £20 million pound parachute payment ?
I suspect Sullivan and Gold were banking on the move to the Olympic stadium ?

They paid 3.5m for Nolan, decent business but then gave him a 5 year deal on massive money as well. Fine for this season but he isn't prem class anymore and still have to pay him big wages for 4 more years.

They paid 3.5m for Nolan, decent business but then gave him a 5 year deal on massive money as well. Fine for this season but he isn't prem class anymore and still have to pay him big wages for 4 more years.

That's the problem West Ham's going to have as well as Leicester in a few years.

They've spent all this money on players that aren't worth the team sheet they're written on in the premiership and with the high wages they've been throwing they'll never get rid of them until their contracts are up.


It's why, in some ways, the Dave Jones loan plan was a good idea if it had paid off.

Not really. Swansea, Norwich, Blackpool, Burnley to name a few got promoted spending next to nothing. Leicester are doing well arent they.

This clubs fans dont have a clue. Moan like f**k at the £12m loss yet calling for the board to gamble on promotion and spend.

SPOT ON MATE.. Theres a few on here who continue to contradict themselves

Yep good posting craig
dont forget big sam (admitedly a good manager) is on a fat salary aswell,it looks highly likely west ham will get promoted but like mentioned look at Leicester-it doesnt look like their gamble is going to pay off and id be very concerned if i was one of their supporters

Not really. Swansea, Norwich, Blackpool, Burnley to name a few got promoted spending next to nothing. Leicester are doing well arent they.

This clubs fans dont have a clue. Moan like f**k at the £12m loss yet calling for the board to gamble on promotion and spend.

Point is though, none of those clubs had any idea they'd get promoted. If you told them at the start of their season that they'd be going up then they would have pissed themselves. What happened to those was simply put, they won the lottery. No club's board is going to "plan to do a Swansea", as in "right then people, we'll not spend and we'll go up because others have done so. They didn't plan it, it just fell in their laps. It would be like you and I going in to work and telling the boss to do one because we are doing the lottery and this weekend we'll be a millionaire's. For some that is very much the truth, we see photos of the lucky fuckers on the telle every week. BUT IT IS NOT something you can plan for or use as an example of being a millionaire. Nor can you use that as a plan for the Premiership.

For a club like West Ham and bigger clubs like that, they actually plan to go there rather than play the lottery. It's easy to see that the more money you throw at it the better your chances. Every season there's at least 2 clubs who have the money to throw at it and the sad truth is those 2 are probably the one's going to go up. There is of course a 3rd club with drop down money to spend so lets not forget about them. That club though will be in the play-off lottery, probably.

So the owners of any club wishing to move up the divisions has a very hard decision to make. Do we throw shit loads of money at it so that we can compete with the top two? Or do we spend wise and hope we get in the play-off's? Then go up that way? The problem is though there are 20 or so other clubs with that plan and only a few will get the chance.

It's easy to have pop at the people who post here complaining about living beyond our means and at the same time seem to want to invest heavily. In reality I think those people just want to see one or the other - Either you spend hard to compete with the top two OR you live within your means and do what you can to get in to the play-off's. Cardiff, I'm sorry, are doing neither. They are not spending enough to have a real go at the top two and at the same time spending more than they can afford. Surely if that carries on then that's all that will happen (assuming they don't win the lottery) is the club will stay in this division whilst getting deeper and deeper in debt.

No.... This is not the old days when a local businessman wanted the notoriety of being the chairman of the local football team.

Chairmen are in it for the perceived growth in the value of premier league "franchises". It' the far east's league of choice. The investments are loans at a market value interest rates. These guys are not sugar daddies ! The loans are safe as long as they are repaid or deferred, but when third parties are involved, banks, piss off previous owners or the dreaded taxman the debt becomes an issue.

Sullivan and Gold bought a dog, loyal support has helped, so have the parachute payments,but this could be another Pompey, especially if Pompey go bust and they don't do automatic.

Our guys appear sensible and have a plan. Last seasons crash and burn didn't work, lets build the business by investing in young talent both on the playing and management side, both have resales values to keep the balance book happy.

Lets have a club for our kids and their kids.

It would be interesting to see what happens at West Ham if they don't get promoted.

the suligolds would have to sell more jazz mags

off the field if we are ever going to get to the Premier League.

Yesterday we lost to West Ham on the field and most anyone who watched the game would agree that they just had to much for our team to cope with. After the game MM commented on the HUGE budget that West Ham was operating with this season and how hard it is to compete with them on the field.

West Ham are owned by David Sullivan and David Gold and each has a 32% shareholding whilst 35 % of shares are held by a bank. The used their personal funds to pay the £70m price for buying a 64% stake in the club, this despite the club having recorded debts of £120m at the time they purchased it.

In their first season on top of the £70m purchase price they also provided a further £34m to help reduce interest payments, which they felt were unmanageable, to purchase players and continue paying the monies owing to Sheffield Utd for the Tevez affair. At the time of the takeover the total cost to West Ham was recorded as £30m and 80% remained outstanding and has to be repaid by 2013. As this is a football debt it must be repaid and they are financing it. As a result of the additional £34m and savings in interest payments they have reduced the clubs overall debts by £18m in one season.

Their personal joint wealth is approx £1b but despite throwing 10% of that at West Ham they decided, after being relegated with the loss of PL revenues estimated at £35-£40m to make up the shortfall out of their personal funds. As a result West Ham who have recorded turnover of £80m in their last publshed accounts, with wages recorded at 68% of turnover, are operating on a wage budget of £54m. They decided to do this to have the best possible chance to return to the PL at the first attempt.

I'm not advocating for a minute that our board fund a wage budget of £54m at our club but anyone think they could do more like repaying debt and reducing interest payments, converting debt to equity or maybe even like Sullivan and Gold say look to give us the best possible chance of getting promoted here is £10m, we are giving the money interest free, Malky go spend it.

But if our board are really serious about making the PL it shows the level of commitment you have to be prepared to show to make it happen.

Whether or not they go up this season (and I think they will) in the next few years
all the borrowing is going to catch up with them. Are the porn barons shelling out
money from their own accounts?? Are they bollocks.

West Ham WILL be another Pompey in the next couple of years, and the pervo boys
will be nowhere to be seen. But you can bet they will be wanting their money back!!

Pompeys support is awesome.

It didnt help them one bit though

Thank you to everyone who commented on the thread and of course the answer is our board should not look to compete with West Ham as what is happening there this season is madness.

In my opinion it's little wonder we struggled on Sunday, be it Cup Final hangover, tiredness or the wrong team on the wrong day it was always going to be a big ask. The fact West Ham are operating with a playing budget 3 times bigger than ours was for me clearly demonstrated by having Carlton Cole and Gary O'Neill on the bench. Also having players like John Carew and Matt Taylor back in London sort of says it all.

Whatever your feelings about the result or performance one thing that stands out for me is that Sunday will not define our season. I still believe that we will make the playoffs and given where we were in June 2011 that will represent winning the lottery.

However this season the Carling Cup Final demonstrated we have a squad of players with the mental strength to take on a superior team and give them a hell of a fright.

For me the playoffs will hold no fears and whatever happens come the summer MM will continue to develop the squad within a realistic budget, and that will see us move forward again next season.