EXTRA TIME

Brady Gone After 16 Years

April 24, 2026 at 5:45 am Leave a comment

In a statement, issued on April 21st, West Ham informed that Baroness Karren Brady (57), Vice-Chair of West Ham United, would step down from her role at the Club. On the same day West Ham United confirmed that Chief Financial Officer Andy Mollett and Executive Director Nathan Thompson had stepped down from their roles with immediate effect, after 14 years respectively over nine and a half years at the Club.

“The conflict over West Ham’s move from Upton Park has been at the heart of her 16-year tenure, with supporters left lamenting the loss of east London identity and her legacy is a stadium hated by the fans,” Sam Wallace writes in The Telegraph. Effectively it handed West Ham a new stadium for free – and an opportunity that any club in their position, at any time in their history, would have seized. The 99-year lease agreed originally at a cost to West Ham of just £2.5m a year, which is around £4m now, was dubbed “the deal of the century”, but West Ham remain a club without a home they can call their own. And the losses of more than £100m in the financial results for last season did not inspire confidence.

The stadium lies isolated in the Olympic Park, and the nostalgia for the lost Upton Park is felt ever more keenly, especially as Brady’s promise of “a world-class stadium with a world-class team” was never fulfilled and the club is fighting relegation again – not for the first time within the ten seasons that the Hammers have played at the “bowl” in Stratford.

Jacob Steinberg in The Guardian reminded his readers that chairman David Sullivan (who bought the Club in 2010 together with late David Gold and remains in his role) argued in 2017 that playing in the London Stadium meant West Ham no longer felt like a tinpot club. But the vibes were superficial, Steinberg says: “Feeling like a big club only goes so far. There are plenty of deft clubs in the top flight and West Ham are lagging behind. After 10 years in Stratford all the evidence shows that the stadium cannot cover up the structural flaws. Brady leaves with West Ham fighting for survival. It is a questionable legacy. In a season of few wins the overwhelming majority of supporters regard Brady going as a victory, but the work is far from done.“

The slogan “No more BS” now will change to a simple “Sullivan Out”, but regardless of the fact that some protests are going to continue, every supporter’s first and foremost duty must be to support their club in the fight against relegation – a fight that has now effectively become a two-horse race between West Ham and Tottenham, following Nottingham’s 5-0 victory over Sunderland on Friday night. Come on you Irons!

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