No more BS: West Ham fans rejoice as Sullivan follows Brady out… | OneFootball

I’ve been teetotal for 18 months, but the news that David Sullivan has stepped down as co-owner of West Ham calls for celebratory champagne.

For Hammers fans, it feels akin to the silence across No Man’s Land after the 11am armistice, soldiers emerging blinking and uncomprehending from the trenches. Can it really be over?

Growing up, West Ham were seen as a club that blooded young players, tried to play attractive football and possessed a proper old-school ground in Upton Park. There was little to no animosity towards them.

This halo began to slip around the time of the Carlos Tevez affair, when West Ham escaped both a points deduction and relegation at the expense of a seething Sheffield United.

But a new perception began to crystallise once Sullivan arrived in 2010, alongside David Gold and Karren Brady. Suddenly, West Ham became a byword for grubbiness and a case study in charmlessness.

Managers were treated with casual disdain. Sullivan attempted to replace Avram Grant with Martin O’Neill mid-season in 2011, conducting negotiations through the media.

And Grant was reportedly barred from travelling on the team bus back from Wigan after relegation was confirmed. Scott Parker is said to have stepped in on the grounds of basic human decency.

Bilic, Pellegrini, Moyes, Lopetegui and Potter were all treated shabbily when their time was up.

Few Hammers fans feel affectionate towards Sam Allardyce, but there’s a satisfaction in imagining Big Sam telling the ‘poison dwarf’ to stick his job where the sun has never shone.

Money was spent, but rarely invested. Sixteen years later and West Ham have arguably the worst training facilities in the top two divisions and a scouting network that has largely consisted of several vintage editions of Football Manager.

Transfer business was conducted on social media, particularly during the Bilic era, through his son Jack.

Big-name targets were floated around season ticket renewal time, only to plead poverty when they inevitably went elsewhere. Sullivan is thought to want his son to carry on working at the club.

The short-termism was dispiriting as several smaller but more professionally run clubs overtook the Hammers. Everything was centred on meeting an immediate goal, usually avoiding relegation, as Michail Antonio has recently alluded to.

The stream of Academy products in the first team largely dried up, Declan Rice being a notable exception.

On the morning after winning the Conference League, Sullivan went on talkSPORT to announce Rice would be leaving the club that summer. This was already common knowledge, but the concept of time and place was alien to him.

It often felt like Sullivan would spend just enough to finish 17th, with anything else being a bonus. Players were panic bought in January (Ings, Snodgrass, Pablo…) when Premier League status was on the line.

On the other hand, he’d rarely invest when the club were pushing for Europe.

In 2024, when West Ham were sixth in January, Sullivan actively undermined David Moyes by selling Said Benrahma and Pablo Fornals from an already stretched squad. The Hammers’ form collapsed and Moyes walked away months later.

But Sullivan’s true legacy at West Ham will forever be knocking down Upton Park in an act of cultural vandalism from which the club has never truly recovered.

The move to the London Stadium was sold as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compete in the upper echelons of the Premier League on an equal footing with Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham.

This could still have been true, even after it quickly became apparent that the venue was singularly unsuited to football and West Ham fans had been sold a pup.

But the most damning point of all is that West Ham didn’t change enough. Largely due to Sullivan’s inept running of the club, they continued to be a mid-table team that often flirted with the drop.

A pattern of one top-flight relegation per decade has been maintained thanks to last season’s 18th-place finish, a campaign marked by extensive fan protests against their despised owner.

Groups such as Hammers United deserve great credit for changing the narrative in the national media. After years of dismissing West Ham fans as entitled, outlets started to report on the dysfunction Sullivan had overseen.

Forever concerned about his image, Sullivan fought back. At Liverpool in February, stewards were instructed by the club to confiscate banners and red cards from away supporters.

Brady abandoned the sinking ship in April, unmourned by every West Ham fan with the sole exception of Martin Samuel.

‘Two down, one to go’ was the rallying cry across social media. At the Leeds game, as relegation was confirmed, each goal was greeted by a volley of abuse at the squirming Sullivan in the director’s box.

Ultimately, he’d persuaded the fans to sacrifice much of what made their club special, yet failed to deliver the transformation that was supposed to justify it.

The plan was simply having a big stadium, with London tackily inserted onto a new badge, and watch the Champions League millions roll in.

Instead, next season will be spent back in the second tier. Most fans will agree that’s a price worth paying to be rid of Sullivan; West Ham have given up far more than they’ve gained under his ownership.