The relationship that West ham United fans have with their clubs current ownership is not at all a healthy one. Mistakes have certainly been made by the Irons’ co-owners David Sullivan and David Gold, from dud signings to slips of the tongue, there are plenty of examples.
Gold is particularly bad when it comes to making these ridiculous gaffes, and just last week we ‘liked’ a tweet on Twitter describing Caroline Flack, who tragically took her own life, as ‘weak’. For that, he had to apologise (The Daily Mail) and promised to donate to a mental health charity.
However, these sorts of incidents simply aren’t good enough yet they continue to happen. One opinion of the 83-year-old that didn’t go down at all well was when he tweeted out back in May 2017 that ‘playing teenagers doesn’t guarantee success‘ and that it’s ‘extremely unlikely that a teenager will break into a PL team‘, comments that didn’t go down well with the fans.
However, in a recent interview with the club following in from Jeremy Ngakia’s debut in the Premier League, Gold appears to have changed his opinion on youngsters, as he described the club’s youth system, The Academy of Football, as the ‘life-blood’ of the club (whufc.com).
Will GSB sell up?
Yes
No
In full, Gold said:
‘It’s a fabulous day. This Club is famous for its Academy – it’s the very root, the lifeblood, of our football club.’
‘Here we are adding another name to the graduate’s board. You can see we had Declan [Rice’s full debut] in 2017, Grady Diangana in 2018, and Ben Johnson in 2019, so every year somebody is getting on this list.’
‘As fans, we feel it’s part of us, that they are closer to us because they have come through this great Academy. It keeps that spirit going alongside those great names of the past.’
