Simon Jordan: £800m would not be enough to buy West Ham United
Simon Jordan believes you’d have to pay more than £800m to buy West Ham United after reports that Tottenham were subject to a £3.1bn takeover bid.
The Hammers are said to be subject of takeover interest from Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, who already owns 27% of the club and has an option to complete a full takeover in the future.
However with Spurs reportedly not interested in a sale at the £3.1bn price that has been touted (Financial Times, 15 February), Jordan told talkSPORT (16 February, 10:41) that it would likely cost around £1bn to buy West Ham now and that could be a more attractive proposition to buyers.
“That’s a difficult comparison because in my view Tottenham are a bigger club than West Ham,” he said.
“I think they’re a bigger club on the world stage. West Ham are one of those clubs that have a lot of relationships with fans as it attributes the success of the 1966 World Cup to it’s players, and there’s always this ‘West Ham way’.
“Then you get managers like Sam Allardyce who say, ‘what is the West Ham way? Never win anything and get relegated?’. That was the sort of facetious comment that Sam made.
“But if you’re going to have to pay four or five billion for Tottenham, or you could pay £800m for West Ham, which by the way, I don’t think you’ll be able to buy West Ham for £800m because Sullivan would go looking for more.
“I don’t believe you’d be buying West Ham for £800m now.
“It depends what you think you’re buying and the reasons you’re buying it for.
“Todd Boehly is buying Chelsea because there is a global footprint that Chelsea presents as an opportunity, and I think Tottenham foresee that in a lesser cap than that, but it’s still there.
“West Ham don’t rank in that space. They’re a great football club, sorry Lee Clayton, but they don’t.
“Tottenham are a bigger football club than West Ham. Chelsea are now a bigger football club, they weren’t, but they are now.
“Now somebody coming in and spending £800m or £1bn and being prepared to spend another £1.5bn on it, they’d change the argument.
“I know they did well last year, I know they got into Europe, but moments in time.”
Money
The amount of money in football at the moment is absolutely crazy, and the fact that Tottenham don’t feel that £3.1bn is enough to sell their club means automatically that we are worth more too.
The Hammers don’t have a set price involved in their deal with Kretinsky as far as reports have stated so far, and talk such as this will only earn David Sullivan extra cash in any future deal.
With that said, it also makes it more difficult to get Sullivan out of the door, which is something that many fans believe is necessary for West Ham to be able to move on and up a level going forward.
The most important thing about these valuations and also any future sale of the club is that we remain in the Premier League, so all this talk has to go on the back burner for now.
Secure survival, because despite recent results we’re still in a battle, and once we manage to do that then we can pay attention to all this chatter.