West Ham on brink a decade after David Sullivan announced his ‘big club’ feelings

The club chair said the move to the London Stadium showed they were not a ‘tinpot club’ but now relegation threat looms

When David Sullivan was pressed on why West Ham bothered to move to the London Stadium, the lack of substance to his argument offered a window into the club’s dysfunction. “I just think we feel like a big club,” Sullivan said in an interview with the Guardian in December 2017. “Not a tinpot club. When players come to look at West Ham, they look at where you play.”

Look deeper, though. Analysing the club chair’s answer nine years on, the conclusion is that this is an owner whose desire to win is cancelled out by his listlessness. Feeling like a big club, after all, is not the same as being a big club. It is a decade since West Ham departed from Upton Park, their tinpot home, and told their fans that doing so would take them to the next level. “A world-class stadium with a world-class team,” was the infamous sell from Karren Brady, the recently departed vice-chair, to which the best retort may be that line in the club’s recent accounts “forecasting a liquidity shortfall in summer 2026”, as well as the “severe but plausible scenario” of relegation causing an even bigger financial crisis three years after victory in the Conference League was followed by the £105m sale of Declan Rice to Arsenal.

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