A decent guide to how well a football club is performing from a business perspective is the amount of profit they can make in player sales, and West Ham’s return in that regard during 2021/22 makes for embarrassing reading indeed.
Swiss Ramble have recently released figures for that period, and what it shows is just how poor the Hammers were in terms of bringing in extra finances when moving players on.
To put things into perspective, only Norwich City and Crystal Palace were worse off than West Ham’s £1m earned, and Leeds United level with the Irons.
Even Brentford, who, with respect, would be considered to be a smaller club that their London rivals, managed to earn £5m from player sales.
Those numbers pale into comparison with Chelsea who are top of this particular table with an astonishing £123m earned in player sales for the period concerned.
West Ham, if the 2021/22 figures are a reasonable guide, clearly need to look at the issue of profit from player sales because it suggests that in many cases they are buying players with no real resale value.
Perhaps one could even go as far to say that the Hammers have had to ‘panic buy’ in the past, and arguably when going down that road, clubs rarely get the deals that they hope to achieve.
Moving forward, David Sullivan and Daniel Kretinsky must ensure that this area of the business is dramatically improved.
Sunday League club, so no surprise their transfer dealings are so amateurish