So Much for the Great Escape

It was too much to hope for, wasn’t it?

For a brief, shining moment, Amanda Staveley and her consortium riding into East London on a white horse seemed like a genuinely possible escape route. A clean break from the endless circus, the structural rot and the sheer, exhausting incompetence that has come to define life at the London Stadium.

Instead, we get Daniel Křetínský stepping up as West Ham’s largest shareholder.

A Czech billionaire, part-owner of Royal Mail and now, apparently, West Ham’s chief postman.

You couldn’t make it up.

And then there’s David Sullivan, still firmly entrenched in the background and somehow remaining part of the furniture at West Ham. I have never shaken hands with the man, and I have no intention of changing that now. Call it instinct, call it self-preservation, but some people simply don’t strike you as particularly handshake-friendly.

Yet his presence, and his particular brand of boardroom management, continues to hang over West Ham like a particularly persistent East London drizzle.

Perhaps Ms Staveley has a Plan B tucked away somewhere. Perhaps there is another twist coming in this increasingly ridiculous ownership saga. Football ownership has taught us one thing above all else: just when you think the circus has finally packed up and left town, someone wheels another tent onto the pitch.

For now, Křetínský is stepping into a more prominent position, while the old guard remains firmly in the picture.

So much for the clean break.

This is West Ham. Nothing is ever straightforward, nothing is ever clean, and somehow the farce always finds a way to extend its run.

Fortune’s Always Hiding, indeed.