Joe Cole speaks out on David Sullivan and Karren Brady amid West Ham fan frustrations
Joe Cole has blamed the West Ham ownership for the frustrations that the club’s fans are continually forced to wrestle with.
Nuno Espirito Santo finally got his first win in charge of the club on Sunday as West Ham beat Newcastle 3-1 but that still wasn’t enough to take them out of the bottom three.
Since winning the Europa Conference League under David Moyes in 2023 there has been a steady decline at the club, with Nuno the third permanent manager since the Scot’s departure.
The London Stadium continues to be a particularly grating factor for the fanbase whenever fortunes dip and ex-Irons youth product Cole has pointed the finger at David Sullivan and Karren Brady‘s stewardship of the club for why fans are so often unhappy.
Joe Cole laments David Moyes exit amid ongoing struggles
There have been regular fan protests amid long-term upset at West Ham ownership ever since leaving Upton Park nine years ago, with the height of the Moyes era serving to quieten dissent as much as anything in the intervening years.
Since the Scot left a season and a half ago off the back of a bad campaign of his own it has been downhill from there, with Julen Lopetegui and then Graham Potter both proving the wrong appointments.
Nuno’s reign has belatedly got off the ground, but it is still only four points from a possible 15 under the Portuguese and Cole is clear that Sullivan got it badly wrong with Moyes, while criticising the way they run the club compared to Premier League rivals.
Speaking live on talkSPORT he told Jeff Stelling: “They should never have let him go. If anything they should’ve given him more say and more power to keep driving that club forward.
“But I think the way they’re set up with Sullivan and Brady, I know they want what’s right for the club, they do, but they’re business first. Business first and foremost and they like to be in control.
“I’ve always thought with West Ham, if you’ve got a real top manager like David Moyes and he’s proven himself why would you not go to him, ‘David, how do we take this club forward?’ and reshape the whole thing, like what it seems to be [Mikel] Arteta is doing, who is emerging as a top manager.
“You can tell that decisions made at that club [Arsenal] are by the manager and I think West Ham desperately needs that, and I hope Nuno can establish himself and gain that kind of power.
“West Ham should be, certainly in the top half of the Premier League. It’s such a well-supported club. If it was run in the way that a Brentford or a Brighton was run the sky’s the limit for West Ham. That’s why the frustration’s there with the West Ham fans.”
West Ham success papers over cracks until Sullivan sells
It would be too simplistic to say Sullivan is just a bad owner and Brady a bad vice-chair as it is impossible to know from the outside all the goings on behind closed doors.
But it isn’t hard to point at confused and contradictory decision-making in recent years that has undercut progress, not least with the Moyes succession plan.
What good did it do to leave Upton Park for the larger then-Olympic Stadium if the increased revenues are then wasted amid lurches between different short-term plans?
Plenty of fanbases don’t love their owners but it certainly feels like under the current regime the best West Ham can hope for is for personalities such as Moyes or Jarrod Bowen can paper over deep-seated unhappiness with the board unless or until there is a change.
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