Who is the worst owner/chairman of West Ham in the last 50 years and why?

[El Scorchio]

• The Cearns
• Brown
• Icelandics/Eggman
• Sullivan

Be interested to know everyone's opinion and reasoning.

By the way Sullivan for me. I'm not really old enough to remember the full bond saga although I realise that might resonate even more with some others than anything else that's been done.

[Barty888]

They were ambitious

Sullivan is a traitor

[Mad Ferret]

Barty, 

Put the sniff away son.

[Barty888]

the Icelanders meant well and spent properly

Sullivan is worse than Brown!

Spent properly

On fucking Kieron Dyer and Freddie Ljundberg.

They bought many more and weren't cheapskates like Sullivan

[Far Cough UKunt]

What's the story with Jack Petchey?

[zico]

Charles Koors, West Ham United A Making of a Football Club is a fascinating read that delves deep into the ownership of the Club.  Quite an old book but it is interesting to see how West Ham was run.  From snippets out of various books I think with the Cearns in charge both Reg Pratt the Chairman and I think one of the Cearns brothers, Will Cearns I think, but may have got his name wrong, were very much supporters of John Lyall and taking the club forward.  I think it was Pratt who signed off on the £500,000 Phil Parkes transfer.  Think it all started to go wrong when Pratt and Will Cearns passed away and a couple of outsiders joined the board.  Think Lyall's sacking went down to 3 against 2.  From then on the "family feel" went.  I think the Cearns seemed ok, they were always in the background and there certainly wasn't any controversy with them.

Browns as said below seemed out of his depth and the Icelandics seemed to want to give it a go but paid ridiculous money on wages and fees on players either not good enough or well past their best.  Would have been interesting to see how it would have gone if the Icelandic banks hadn't gone belly up and Guðmundsson hadn't gone bankrupt!

Sullivan is just useless in every area so I would vote for him!

[Gary Strodders shank]

Not an owner or chairman but a managing director 

"the hammers bond is the only practical way forward"
Peter Storey 1991 

Total bonds sold less than 1000

Cost of implementing the scheme 1.3m

 

[Mad Ferret]

the Icelanders meant well and spent properly

Sullivan is worse than Brown!

Spent properly

On fucking Kieron Dyer and Freddie Ljundberg.

[Mad Dog]

The Icelandics were a victim of financial mismanagement when there was a global recession mainly due to the sub prime mortgage fiasco in America

Brown and sullivan were/are cunts deliberately

[Barty888]

the Icelanders meant well and spent properly

Sullivan is worse than Brown!

[twoleftfeet]

I was just thinking that we needed another thread about the chairman.

[El Scorchio]

Kind of what I think. The club was too big or became too big for the Cearns' or Brown as football as an industry went stratospheric and the sums of money became far too great for them (don't get me wrong, they were cheap, penny pinched and made poor decisions), the Icelandics were just torpedoed by the most incredible set of circumstances/bad luck you could imagine. (How often did we joke that if we ever got taken over by billionaires somehow they'd go broke overnight...) but there's actual malevolence and greed in Sullivan who you know would let the club burn tomorrow and take the money and run if it suited him to do so and there was nothing to stop him.

[Far Cough UKunt]

Brown was just in over his head, the cheap caravan park owner.

[Lee Trundle]

Sullivan is certainly the most stupid of them all.

But he's also been quite lucky.

[Far Cough UKunt]

Sullivan fo sho

[Grumpster]

Icelandics at least meant well, they were just clueless.

Sullivan has surrounded himself with absolute cunts, spouted a constant load of bollocks and took us away from Upton Park for no reason other than his own greed, so fuck him and Brady.

 

[Mad Ferret]

The Icelandics nearly killed the club, so them.