Which must seem bitterly ironic for fans born to love West Ham who were duped into ending up somewhere they never wanted to. When Brady’s pay rise was announced last month, fan group West Ham United For Change claimed she “spends more time working on her brand than she does for the club”.Īnd a quick glimpse at the slick, official website of “Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge CBE” shows she is so conscious of her brand she’s given herself a Ronaldo-esque logo.Īnd her mantra is written large: “You can’t determine where you start in life but you can determine where you end up.” The club has announced it will put extra rows of seats behind the goals for next season but as cynics pointed out on social media, good luck filling them against Rotherham. West Ham vice-chairman Karren Brady has also come in for fierce criticism (Image: PA) And realised a trip to West Ham had gone from walking with trepidation towards a proper old school football ground to heading through an anonymous shopping mall to a muted athletics venue. Many rival fans were envious of their Olympic Stadium move because they got it for peanuts.īut that was before they visited it. They went from having a crowd that seemed almost on the pitch to one which feels like it resides in a different borough. Little thought was given to the disconnect between players and fans, the umbilical cord that holds a club together. Yet the only culture created at the new stadium is a toxic one among fans who despair at the soulless bowl, borne of a soulless vision, which could not be further from the cauldron of passion that was their old Upton Park home. She’s personally climbing financial hills, with last year’s pay package rising from £898,000 to £1.136m, although the club losses jumped to £28.2m. When West Ham moved to the London Stadium in 2016, vice-chairman Karren Brady bragged to businessmen they were moving to “the foothills of the financial sector” to “change the brand values,” and promised to “plug the debt, build the future and create the culture”. West Ham United co owners David Gold (right) and David Sullivan (Image: PA)

Much maligned soccer boss