A look back on David Sullivan’s tumultuous West Ham tenure | OneFootball

Just one season is quite the long time in football, and anything can change for better or worse – for West Ham, it’s been a rollercoaster slide back to the second tier over the final 14 years with David Sullivan as joint-chair.

Following their relegation from the Premier League on the final day of the season, the 71-year-old announced that he would depart the club after 16 years in the role amid “serious historical claims” of improper conduct.

Sullivan, who denies the allegations he references, said that his departure was necessary to avoid allowing “personal matters to become an unnecessary distraction” in their bid to return at the first time of asking.

With his tumultuous time at the London club now officially at an end, FromTheSpot looks back on his run as joint-chair and eventual majority shareholder and what went so wrong right at the last.

The Boelyn years: 2010-2016

David Sullivan and his late business partner David Gould acquired 50% of West Ham United in January 2010, a year before the club finished bottom and were relegated from the Premier League.

Their previous Icelandic owners had been unable to provide any further funding with the financial concerns of their parent companies until new ownership could be found, forcing a restructuring at the top.

Chelsea legend Gianfranco Zola was relieved of his duties at the club that year, and after their next manager Avram Grant came and went West Ham would return in the 2011/12 season with Sam Allardyce at the helm, courtesy of Ricardo Vaz Te’s goal against Blackpool in the Championship Playoff final at Wembley.

They would sign former players James Collins and George McCartney for the 2012/13 season, and also bring in new record signing Matt Jarvis and former Liverpool striker Andy Carroll on loan, and enjoyed a 3-1 home win against European champions Chelsea and a tenth place finish.

Hammers fans can look back fondly on these years, when club legend Mark Noble was still orchestrating the midfield and players like Winston Reid and James Tomkins providing a solid foundation at the back.

West Ham famously beat Manchester United 3-2 in their final match at the Boleyn Ground prior to their move to the London Stadium, with Reid scoring a dramatic late header to give their home of 112 years the perfect send-off.

Retired Senegalese striker Diafra Sakho opened the scoring before Michael Antonio levelled the game at 2-2 to cancel out United’s comeback, in a thriller that will remain forever in the memory of Irons fans that witnessed it.

Sakho joined the club from MC Metz in 2014, having started his career in the lower reaches of French football, while a then 25-year-old Antonio was signed from Nottingham Forest for roughly £7m.

Both players represent the club’s far shrewder recruitment in past seasons – bygones of an era now at it’s end – which would decline in a manner far too severe for the club to have much success past the 2023/24 campaign.

But it wasn’t an immediate disaster following their controversial move to the London Stadium.

The London Stadium: 2016-present

But prior to the end of the 2012/13 campaign, the club had secured a 99-year lease of the Olympic Stadium – set to host their home matches from the 2016/17 season onwards.

The ground was renamed the London Stadium, following the conclusion of the 2012 Olympic Games, and developed into a UEFA Category Four 66,000 all-seater.

Vice-chair Karren Brady, who exited the club during the past season, promised fans in 2013 that it would be a “world-class” football venue, yet it remains a highly unpopular move among West Ham supporters to this day.

Slaven Bilić would come in to oversee West Ham’s next season, in which they competed in the Europa League playoff round by virtue of winning the Premier League’s now defunct Fair Play table, and finish the next campaign seventh.

With the club’s failure to build on their Europa Conference League win in 2024, and David Moyes’ sacking having led the Hammers to a first ever continental triumph, these factors have driven protests throughout the season.

Moyes left the club having finished ninth in the 2023/24 campaign, enjoying a seven year spell at the club save for a season-long stint with former Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini in 2017/18 when they ended up in 13th in the Premier League.

Now at Everton, Moyes’ high point came when he led West Ham to sixth and seventh place finishes in back-to-back seasons between 2020 and 2022, the former being overshadowed by the COVID pandemic and ‘Project Restart’.

West Ham boasted several first-class talents in their ranks in the Conference League final against Fiorentina, captained by youth graduate and Arsenal midfielder Declan Rice.

Their line up featured reliable top flight talent Vladmír Coufal, former Chelsea full-back Emerson, Said Benrahma, Lucas Paquetá, and the aforementioned Antonio.

But West Ham’s latest campaign has been mired with relegation and much unrest among supporters in the face of their new home – often branded as ‘soulless’ by supporters – and underwhelming new signings.

An organised march took place before Graham Potter’s final match at the London Stadium, a 2-1 defeat to Crystal Palace on the 20th of September, followed by a boycott of Nuno Espirito Santo’s first match in charge of the club.

Supporters also carried out a sit-in protest following a 3-1 victory over Newcastle Untied on the 2nd of November, by which point the club were in serious trouble of their eventual relegation to the second tier.

What relegated West Ham

West Ham spent a total £172.8m on new signings this season, including Matheus Fernandes, Jean-Clair Todibo, El Hadji Malick Diouf, Mads Hermansen, and Soungoutou Magassa.

With poor results on the pitch resulting in Potter, now set to manage Sweden at the World Cup next week, losing his job at the London Stadium, Pablo and Taty Castellanos arrived as reinforcements in January, but it was too late.

Although they beat Leeds United 3-0 on the final day of the season and did their job when they needed to more than ever, Tottenham’s 1-0 victory at home to Everton condemned them to a first relegation in 14 years.

West Ham’s subpar recruitment was compounded by the considerable transfer expenditure and demotion to the second tier, a division below where the Hammers resided when Sullivan acquired 50% of the club alongside Gould.

There is also something to be said about Potter’s brief stint at the beginning of the season, in which West Ham appeared without attacking threat and lacking an identity while on the ball despite having spent a lot by that point.

On the whole, it’s possible that many supporters will view their journey with Sullivan as joint-chair as a failure overall, having regressed a tier despite lifting their first ever European trophy under Moyes.

Crystal Palace also struggled domestically in Oliver Glasner’s final season, in which he won the same competition for their first piece of continental silverware, the difference being they had simply recruited far, far better.

What next for West Ham?

It is yet to be seen who exactly will stand as the club’s majority shareholder and leading figurehead when West Ham fight to retake their place in the top flight in the 2026/27 Championship season.

Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský holds a 27% stake in club, technically making him the highest standing individual on the West Ham United Ownership Board, alongside the Vanessa Gold Family Trust (25.1%), and American investor Albert Smith (8%).

Chief executive officer Karim Virani, reporting into the current board of directors, will continue to be responsible for leading the club’s day-to-day operations for the immediate future.

Given their mammoth expenditure and quality of playing staff, the Hammers will be expected to walk the second tier and have no issues trying to secure an immediate return.

If it’s any consolation for the Hammers, a total of 21 clubs that have been relegated from the Premier League made an instant comeback, including Fulham in the 2021/22 campaign and Leeds United last season.

However, the list also features infamous ‘yo-yo’ clubs such as Burnley and Norwich City, as well as Leicester City who underwent a disaster this campaign, suffering a six-point deduction and back-to-back relegations to sink into League One.

Although their case study was largely a result of off-the-pitch financial mismanagement, they too recruited poorly considering their lofty ambitions of promotion back to the Premier League after going down the year before.

As for West Ham, this summer transfer window marks the most important period in their history for well over a decade – certainly since David Sullivan and David Gould first acquired their share in the club 16 years ago.