Lack of Transfer Day Deals Show the WHU Board is Broke

The transfer deadline day business done by the Board (or lack thereof) points to a club like West Ham being financially gutted by the global pandemic.

When you remove the emotion and cries of “Board Out!” from West Ham United supporters across the globe as the international transfer deadline day came and went with just one signing, it becomes apparent that the Club are in financial dire straits.

Every Premier League club gets a massive television rights fee payment as well as cash-based on where they finish in the table. Among the other large revenue streams for clubs is match day revenue: tickets, concessions and merchandise sold on match days.

Since the Corona Virus pandemic hit and first shut down the EPL for over four months; all matches since the restart of last season into this one have been played behind closed doors. West Ham have not had any game day revenue since early March.

This isn’t a “defend the board’ piece by any stretch. Quite the contrary. If every other Premiere League Club (well, outside of the Top 6) is dealing with the same financial hardships of no game-day revenues coming in, yet they can all spend money to bring in players to strengthen their squads why can’t WHU?

It could be the club overextended their financial reach going back 18-24 months with record signings (at the time) of Filipe Anderson and Sebastian Haller. There is some proof there as the story broke that the club missed instalment payments on Haller’s fee. Now they’ve loaned out Anderson just get out from under his wages.

It could also be that the “summer” transfer budget was spent in January to stave off relegation.

West Ham United’s Czech midfielder Tomas Soucek was signed in January 2020 to help save the club from relegation. (Photo by ANDY RAIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

West Ham paid a fee of £22 million for Jarrod Bowen and upwards of £17 million for Tomas Soucek in the January window. And now add on another £5.4 million for a new right-back, Vladimir Coufal. That’s around £45 million paid out in the last nine months. A period of time that by any metric, shows that revenues for all clubs in the EPL are down severely due to the pandemic.

But the board also generated money from players going out. Most obviously homegrown Grady Diangana at the beginning of the window to West Brom for 18m.

So what gives?

Clearly, the lack of fans on match day adding to the club’s regular cash flow has hurt. What other explanation is there? The club is saving costs to make the balance sheet look as good as possible for a pending potential sale? Possibly. But until that sale is announced; it is just a rumour.

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Is it that Gold & Sullivan are just lining their pockets? Maybe. But it’s not like they haven’t spent money this year. They have. And thank goodness for Soucek and Bowen! Where would we be without them?

More likely they spent money they didn’t have going back to the Pellegrini era and were not solvent enough to withstand the hardships brought about by the coronavirus. Crying about spending 50k to charter a plane for an EFL Cup match (which the club lost in spectacular fashion) is not a good look.

The facts are facts. This board is out of money. Despite its size, it’s loyal following across the world, and a huge stadium the owners don’t even pay for. They’ve got no money left to operate West Ham at the level it deserves or at the level they claimed to be aiming for after 2016. Sad but true.

All the supporters can do is get behind the guys and the manager and hope for some Championship reinforcements to fill out the numbers before that window closes in the next two weeks.

And of course, pray that there are no significant long terms injuries to deal with. It’s the West Ham Way.