Finance Expert: West Ham United need to run up losses to bridge Premier League gap
We’re delighted to welcome football finance expert Dr Daniel Plumley as our exclusive West Ham United columnist. Each week he’ll be giving his views on the biggest talking points at the London Stadium...
Dan Plumley has insisted that West Ham United would need to run up some losses in order to bridge the “Enormous” gap in the Premier League.
The Irons posted a record turnover and £12million profit in their latest accounts, after missing out on Champions League football yet again for another year.
Finance Guru, Plumley, admitted that despite their poor start to this season, the Hammers may be happy to be best of the rest and turn consistent profits off that model.
“That comes down to how the club would define good performance,” he exclusively told West Ham Zone.
“If we’re talking about better than seventh position and starting to challenge the established elite over time, that’s really hard to do and remain profitable as the gap is so big between the big six and the rest so you have to overstretch to bridge the gap.
“If West Ham are genuinely happy with being the best of the rest, not saying they are, but as a hypothetical, then you could turn a profit on that model, it would fluctuate but you could become profitable and sustainable in that regard, but if you have your sights set higher up in the Premier League table, you would run up some losses to try and compete with the clubs higher up as the gap is enormous.”
The introduction of Daniel Kretinsky has really pushed West Ham United to another level.
It was clear in the accounts that the Czech businessman has really helped things behind the scenes financially, even if they weren’t even that bad under GSB before he arrived.
With big money spent over the summer, it will be interesting to see the accounts that follow the latest released ones, with that potentially set to change.