Sullivan and the Fleecing of Gold

(This article has been submitted by Stani)

“Men still have to be governed by deception”…

…that's probably Sullivan’s favourite quote. Machiavelli once wrote “[the] one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived”, and unfortunately, Sullivan knows that in fans of football clubs he is always able to find such an attribute.

If you thought Duxbury was a snake, well let me tell you that the randy boys are no angels. One thing Duxbury did not do is squeeze every penny out of the supporters at every opportunity. Whether it was because he just wasn’t shrewd enough doesn’t matter. G&S are mugging us off at every opportunity and where there is no opportunity to do so, they’re creating them. I have signed up for the club emails and there is not a week that goes by without some kind of email selling me something which is totally useless but is a way of G&S making money.

They could have easily bought our club out right. They could have easily invested much more. They have the capacity to do so but they have not. Why? Because they are not the fans that they may have you believe they are. They are treating our club like any other business….in fact, like their other businesses. But a football club is not like any other business. West Ham was not the only club they looked at before purchasing. They looked at both Portsmouth and Crystal Palace which is why they knew so much about them. They are treating our club purely like a business.

Let’s take the recent hunt for a manager as an example of their deception. When reports started to surface that they had offered it to Grant already, G&S thought ‘we can’t be seen to be making an appointment without even having drawn up a short-list or spoken/interviewed other candidates’. So they play their media game (which they have done from day one) and release other names to the media just to make it seem as they they’ve been looking. Who are these other managers that were interviewed? Were Allardyce, Holloway or Jones interviewed? Was there even an interview process? So why are they fooling us and making us believe there was?

As for the Hitzlsperger signing; the first signing would have been the one they were wanting to set the tone with and it says it all that ours is an average player on a free. He’s a decent player, but surely if they wanted to give us a taste of things to come, we would be seeing someone better arriving? Then there’s the over-selling of him to us on the official site. What was the need to do so? We are not stupid David. I hope Grant is strong enough to make demands as now that they have got their man in, they will have to support him.

So let’s not have this subconscious resignation to G&S and stay wary of their every move and utterance. I would love for G&S to prove me wrong. The one hope I hold is that Sullivan is simply too dumb to get away with his games and will be seen for what he is eventually. So let him weave his tangled web.