West Ham co-owner David Gold defended the club’s move from Upton Park to the London Stadium as he joined talkSPORT for an exclusive interview to look back on ten years in charge of the east Londoners.
Ahead of planned protests from supporters this weekend, Gold responded to fan criticism and claimed the stadium move is ‘the best thing we’ve done’.
The chief also insisted he and fellow co-owner David Sullivan cannot be held accountable for failing to achieve the club’s ‘hope and dreams’ since moving into their new home.
West Ham left the historic Boleyn Ground – the club’s home for 112 years – in 2016 to take up residence in the converted former London 2012 Olympic Stadium.
But the move to a venue often described as soulless and not fit for football has cause widespread anger and resentment throughout their fanbase, with Gold, Sullivan and vice-chairman Karren Brady accused of ‘killing’ the east London team.
Gold says the hatred from sections of the supporters towards him is ‘hurtful’, especially as a boyhood Hammers fan who grew up on Green Street, just yards away from Upton Park.
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Many furious fans have attacked their owners for breaking their promises of a bold new era for West Ham, playing in a state-of-the-art stadium, battling in the Premier League top-six and back in European competition.
But Gold says those lofty ambitions were ‘not written in stone’ and were ultimately out of their control, admitting they may have promised too much.
Lifelong Hammer Ian Abrahams sat down with the West Ham chief for talkSPORT this week, and you can listen to that interview IN FULL above.
Or read below for the highlights:
‘NOBODY LOVED UPTON PARK MORE THAN ME… BUT IT WASN’T MY UPTON PARK’
“I’ll start off by saying that after ten years I’m a bit disappointed that we have not achieved more.
“I would have loved to get to a cup final and I’m still hopeful in my lifetime.
“I still say the best thing we’ve done since we’ve been here is take the club to the Olympic Stadium. I know there are a lot of fans that loved Upton Park, nobody loved Upton Park more than me.
“I actually played 20 games as a young player at Upton Park – you can imagine the wonderful experience and those memories will never leave me.
“And in actual fact, when it was first mooted that we were interested in the Olympic Stadium and that it would mean leaving Upton Park, my thoughts were ‘I don’t want to leave Upton Park’. All my memories, all my young life as a young man all revolved around Upton Park.
“I loved Upton Park, and I didn’t want to leave because of my memories.
“But then I suddenly realised 90 per cent of Upton Park was completely different to my early memories – the chicken run had gone, the urinals had gone… it had completely changed.
“But my memories, I can look into my mind and see it all, I can see Ernie Gregory, I can see Parsons and Tucker… I can see these old great players. I can see Bobby Moore, I can see Martin Peters, Trevor Brooking and Alan Devonshire, they’re there in my mind.
“So I thought ‘we can leave Upton Park’, because those memories of mine and of people a similar age to me, we have them forever.”
Taking West Ham to the London Stadium is the best thing we’ve done – David Gold speaks to talkSPORT’s Ian Abrahams
ON ‘BROKEN PROMISES’ AND ‘LETTING FANS DOWN’
“Those promises are not written in stone – they were our hopes and dreams.
“Upping the capacity from 35,000 at Upton Park to 60,000 at the Olympic Stadium – that is a promise we know we can deliver.
“But of course there were promises we made that were hopeful promises; you can’t guarantee that your players aren’t going to get injured and therefore you’re not going to get into the top-half of the table, or into a cup final, or you’re not going to progress as you hope.
“There are promises you know you can deliver and there are promises you hope you can deliver, and we shouldn’t be lambasted because we failed in some of those promises.
“Those promises still exist and we promise to do the absolute best we can, and I feel that every day we’re doing the best. We’re not leaving stones unturned – we’re doing everything we can to continually improve this football club.
“And the aim remains, and that is to challenge at the very top of football – whether that’s winning the FA Cup, getting into Europe, challenging the top-six.
“Leicester did it, it’s beginning to happen. And you’re seeing clubs like Arsenal and Manchester United that aren’t doing as well as they have been over the past 20 years.
“It’s happening, but is it going to happen overnight? Clearly not.
“That’s where I feel we’ve let the fans down, but I want them to know it’s not for the want of trying.
“We shouldn’t have been so positive, we should have made it clear that these are our hopes and dreams.
“But we’re going to do everything in our power to try and achieve those things.”
‘LONDON STADIUM HAS ITS FAULTS’
“It’s an amazing stadium. True, it has its faults, but we’re constantly working on improving the experience for the fans at the London Stadium. I believe it’s ongoing.
“If you remember the first day you walked in there, there might have been 100 things you’d like to change. Today there’s less than 100.
“Are still 50 or 20 things to do? Yes, there’s plenty to do.
“I suppose, and I might get in trouble for this, but my ambition, our ambition, is to stop using the London Stadium as an athletics venue sometime in the future.
“No disrespect, you don’t fill the stadium with 60,000 people to watch athletics, you need a stadium of 20,000 and of course that was the original idea, to strip this down to a 25,000-seater stadium – thankfully they didn’t do that and we have what we have today.
“But we have to find a way to facilitate athletics in another venue, that way we can start to talk about bringing the seating close to the pitch on the west side.
“We’re already hoping to moving the seating behind the goals to bring fans close to the pitch.
“There’s a lot more we can do in due course, so the future is can you bring the seating closer to the pitch on the west side, and I think that would be a massive improvement.
“But in the meantime we are doing all the other things. A lot of them that we promised we’re delivering, and some that we promised that we haven’t yet delivered, but we will in due course.”
‘WE SHOULD HAVE STUCK WITH MOYES’
“I really liked working with David Moyes first time around.
“In different circumstances, it was only that unique opportunity to bring in somebody of that stature [Manuel Pellegrini] that precluded us from keeping David.
“Don’t forget, David had a six month contract until the end of the season and he fulfilled that.
“It’s not like we sacked him, we didn’t sack David Moyes.
“But personally, and certainly with hindsight, I would have liked to have kept him.”
THANKS FANS FOR PASSIONATE SUPPORT – ‘BEST IN THE COUNTRY’
“We have a fanbase that is, quite frankly, remarkable.
“We’ve got 60,000 people coming to every match at the London Stadium and we’re looking to expand it to 62,500.
“You have to say the fanbase is just tremendous.
“I know a lot of owners would say our fans are the best in the country, but I have no doubt in my mind as you travel around that our fans are the best.
“Particularly when you go away, that’s when you really notice it.
“Often when you go to an away game, people might look around and think: ‘Where are our fans?’
“You don’t say that about West Ham fans! You can see where they are and you can hear them straight away. This is their club, they’ve come to support their club.
“We are very, very fortunate and it’s what gives us the chance to compete, because of that fanbase.”
