West Ham owners should stick to business!

There are many people in English football who have enough money to get involved with a club, but nowhere near enough common sense or knowledge about football to mean that they should do.

Interview

In an interview due to be aired on the BBC tomorrow, West Ham’s co-owner David Gold talks about the fact that players will leave West Ham if they are relegated.

“It’s unfair to tell a player to forego your potential England career to come down and play in the Championship. It’s unrealistic. It impacts on his career. Would I try to stop them? Of course, I would try but you would have a one in 10 chance.”

Looking at the position West Ham are in, Gold goes on to do a bit of personal soul searching.

“Do I blame myself? There is no doubt you end up blaming yourself. You go over the decisions you have made and yes, you have to take the blame. At the time you think you have done the best job. When the January transfer window closed I thought we had done enough.”

You may think that Mr Gold is saying nothing wrong or unusual and in some ways you may be right. However, I would look at this from another angle.

Safety

West Ham are just three points from safety with three games left to play. If they win two of those three games they will probably be safe. Those three games are all against other teams struggling at the wrong end of the table. They start with a home game against a Blackburn side who apart from one win, have been in free fall. Then comes a visit to fellow relegation zone battlers Wigan and finally a home game against a dispirited and battered Sunderland side who can’t wait for the season to end.

They still have a realistic chance of beating the drop and they are fighting for their lives. What will they watch on television on Saturday lunchtime, before taking the field in the crucial game agaist Blackburn? Their own owner telling the world that he blames himself for the fact his team are probably getting relegated and that half of the players will leave when they do!

Hope

I can only hope that the players are motivating each other and listening to Avram Grant and preparing to give their all for the West Ham fans, rather than listening to a man who loves his own importance and the sound of his own voice. So Parker and Green and Cole and Upson might leave if the worst comes to the worst and West Ham do go down. No shit Sherlock! I think everyone could have worked that out. Why bother saying it just before a big game?

I’m sure Mr Gold and his equally likeable and motivational partner Mr Sullivan, (I didn’t bother going to watch us at Manchester City because we’re rubbish away and it was on television anyway) have done a huge amount for the club and have probably kept them in business when they could have folded. They may be brilliant business men, I don’t know. I just think they should stick to business and let the football men deal with the football.