04/09/2009

A hidden agenda?

Yesterday the Guardian published an article on the dire economic situation of our Club. It appears a few days after the closure of the transfer window and is based on the Clubs account for 2008. These documents are not publicly available as yet but the Guardian has in some way acquired a copy, or at least parts of it. How is it that?
The Guardian must have gotten the documents from an inside source, and a source with some kind of motivation, or agenda.
Isn’t that funny, it’s just too late to scare any potential transfer targets or any of our most important players, but just in time to justify the meagre outcome on the transfer market. This implies that the source is someone that does not want to hurt West Ham.
What is the agenda of this source then?The accounts presented are 9 months old. As the Guardian points out (but then stops, not to bite the hand that feeds it the info) it tells the story on how the Club was run under the Icelandic hay-days. It paints a picture of financial naivety and football incompetence. And the guilt for this is left in the doorstep of Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson and Eggert Magnusson. The Club's current finance director, Nick Igoe, is stated saying that the business strategy was "fundamentally flawed". Igoe was also the financial director at that time! Still he doesn’t seem to have any part of it – the things you learn…

What the Guardian, in its turn, feeds us are numbers that according to a friend with some financial knowledge is incoherent. It does not make sense in the way it’s presented in the article and some of the figures seem to be contradictory. In his view the numbers can have been chosen and presented to paint the worst possible picture. This sounds like the doings of a scandal-hungry journalist, but it can also be the choice of the one in the Club with the agenda.

To make people happy when receiving bad news one can prepare them for worse. “Dad I was in a terrible car accident” makes daddy happy when he sees that there is only a scratch in the paint. Would he be happy if presented with the scratch right away? I think there is an analogy in the present doings at the Club. If news is presented like this – “Dad I was this close to total the car because some incompetent fool forced me of the road but thanks to my technique and competence I saved the situation and there is just this scratch” The one causing the scratch will not only get away with it, but will get praise for doing so!

What this article does NOT tell us is how the Club has been run the last 9 months. I think someone is laying out the fundament for someone to be happy with a “scratch”. The total catastrophe of 2008 will soon be compared to the much better situation we are in at present.
Who will gain from this?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Based on the Guardian article I can not see anyone in their right mind buying WHFC. My hammers accountant friend has the same thought.

So where does it leave us?

I would suggest in very deep mire with no finacial rainbow in sight.

Keep smiling with fingers crossed.

Hakan said...

Full marks to Joppe for reading between the lines. It was hardly a coincidence that the accounts were "obtained" by The Guardian a couple of days after the window closed. It's a time-honoured tactic of a new owner/board/CEO in any company to exaggerate the mistakes made by the previous leadership, in order to take as much credit as possible for any improvements.