After an empty January transfer window West Ham have finally signed a new player, but this alone might not placate a tetchy fanbase.
Two stories emerged last week, the reactions to which offered an insight into the mood at West Ham United this summer. The first was only tangentially related to West Ham United, but was related nevertheless. Appearing on TalkSport on June 15, twice bankrupt, formerly banned from football for three years, prospective shareholder in Birmingham City Laurence Bassini was claiming that David Sullivan, one of West Ham’s co-owners – the ‘S’ in ‘GSB’, the group that owns the club – was partially funding his £35m bid to buy him a 38% shareholding in Birmingham.
The second concerned the long-awaited transfer of defender Nayef Aguerd from Rennes. Aguerd’s move has reportedly been agreed for some time, but the day after Bassini’s little outburst, Thursday 16, a story emerged that Newcastle United were attempting to hijack the sale, after the player’s medical with West Ham had already been booked. Suddenly, and from quite out of nowhere, this £30m deal was reported to be in jeopardy.
It’s not difficult to see how those who continue to distrust the owners of the club could have added two plus two to make five. The Newcastle rumours were coming from a credible news source, and while the words of Laurence Bassini have seldom in the past turned out to be ‘credible’, he claims to be a childhood friend of Sullivan, and it is known that Sullivan and David Gold – the ‘G’ in ‘GSB’ – have an agreement in place to sell their remaining equity in the club to the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, who bought a 27% shareholding earlier this year (after a windfall tax clause expires next year) so Sullivan looking for something else to do wouldn’t be that surprising.
But while it may have been true that Newcastle wanted to hijack this particular transfer, they left it rather too late. The Aguerd to Newcastle story seemed to stop as soon as it began, and that signing has now finally been confirmed. And who can even say whether Laurence Bassini can even understand what’s coming out of his own mouth, most of the time? But in that brief window it had all sounded plausible, the suspiciously-minded hadn’t had far to leap to reach ‘looks like our marquee signing for this summer might be Birmingham City’.
West Ham United have been in a state of uneasy detente between the supporters and the owners of the…
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