Simon Jordan shares West Ham United ‘desperation’ verdict live on talkSPORT amid Declan Rice ‘payday loan’ report
Simon Jordan insists West Ham United supporters do not need to fear the club’s financial strategy involving the sale of Declan Rice and is adamant the decision they took is not a “payday loan”.
The Times reported on Wednesday (3 January) that the Hammers had utilised a strategy to accelerate £30million of the £105million fee due in July 2024, instead accessing the funds in September 2023 and paying £1.8million in interest.
While this has left some Irons supporters worried, Jordan has insisted that this is a standard business practice in the footballing world and has nothing to do with the Hammers’ “desperation” or “bad cash flow management”.
Speaking on talkSPORT on Friday (5 January, 11:22) he said: “It’s called discounting, it’s a standard practice, its been done by football clubs ad infinitum. There’s nothing unusual about it, it’s done in business left, right and centre.
“We did it [at Palace] and clubs did it with us as well because what you do if you want to be able to sell a player and the club that wants to pay you on the nail, they want the terms on credit or they want to pay it over the length of a players contract, then sometimes that doesn’t suit the mechanics of how you want to do the deal.
“Now sometimes what you do is jack the price up to give them the payment terms and bring forward the money by discounting it and settling the debt to a bank. Now you know you’re going to get that money, that money is guaranteed because you’re a football creditor so it can’t not be paid.
“If it isn’t paid, it’s taken from the distributions of the TV money that clubs get, so what you’re doing is bringing it forward to payment. It’s standard business practice.
“It’s not a payday loan, it’s nothing to do with that. All the banks will do it, it’s a standard form of practice, it’s not a payday loan, and it has nothing to do with desperation. It has nothing to do with bad cash flow management, it has nothing to do with any concerns for anybody. Everybody does it.”
No need to panic
It seems as though this entire story has been entirely blown out of proportion and the actions taken by West Ham United in the sale of Rice have been repeated by teams in the Premier League up and down the country for years previously.
Yes, the Hammers will have had to pay interest on the £30million that they accelerated back in September, but in the grand scheme of things, that isn’t that big an issue for the Irons and their financial situation.
West Ham are an incredibly well-run football club at the moment and while this may seem like a poor business decision on the face of the report, it is likely something that they have done previously without it being made public.
Assuming nothing else emerges about this story in the coming days, supporters should just brush this off as just another story. Jordan seems pretty certain it’s nothing to worry about and he knows more about running a football club than most supporters or journalists.
In other West Ham news, one source close to the Hammers has insisted that no offers have yet been made for one exit linked star