MNC: What next for West Ham and Tottenham?

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1:25This is the Monday Night Club with Mark Chapman. on the Football Daily Podcast. Welcome to the Monday Night Club. Joe Hart, Andros Townsend, Rory Smith with us this evening. MNC at bbc.co.uk if you want to get in touch. You were at the Etihad, weren't you, Joe, yesterday? I was, yeah. Yeah, I was evening everyone. Were you in tears? I wasn't, no. But it was an emotional day. It was emotional. It was nice, you know. It was nice to be in a stadium where everyone was happy. Villa were happy. City fans were happy. New stand opened, obviously Pep going, John going, Bernardo going. Like I say, Villa were in great spirits.

2:07They couldn't believe that they managed to pull that performance out. It was funny talking to a few of their lads after saying sports science is a load of rubbish. But no, it was just a magical day, magical day. And the right send-off for some pretty special people. Do you think then that will change Villa's perspective next season and they'll look to go on the lash a bit more often and have sort of five-hour playing journeys and not as much sleep. There'll be a few people that will be not wanting that to happen because there's a lot of jobs off the back of that being the opposite. But no, they just got through.

2:40I could tell, actually, I spoke to Bernardo and John. John particularly, he said the more the game got closer, the less he actually wanted to be out there and focus in because he was that emotionally rattled from the outpour of love and support and attention they've got over recent weeks that it was difficult to perform and Villa fair play to them. It was a pretty standoffish game but Ollie Watkins really stepped up obviously going into a big summer. We'll talk more about the goodbyes from the Premier League a little bit later on and we'll talk about Guardiola and Manchester City as well. Over the last few weeks Andros has joined the Monday Night Club from Thailand from London last week when we were in the same time zone so that was lovely and this week you are?

3:24I'm in sunny LA. this week. You're in LA? It's 11am so yeah Honestly. One life Andros one life lad, live it Are you looking for a club? What are you doing? I holiday with the family before the World Cup starts so again a few weeks resting Very nice. So Thailand you were 7 or 8 hours ahead then last week we were in the same time zone and today you're 7 or 8 hours behind. Thailand was 2am and then today is 11am so there's got to be a chance that we can get Andros to do this show from the international dateline so he can kind of hop in back and across and do it on different days funded by the BBC?

4:05maybe not funded by the BBC I could probably say definitely not funded by the BBC but the idea of getting you in a whole load of different time zones over the course of a season is quite a good challenge but would also have the sustainability police on my back so let's move on let's start let's start the tonight by talking about uh west ham they'll be in the championship next season and that will be the third time that they've gone down to uh the second tier we'll we'll talk nuno spirito santo in a moment we'll talk the squad in a moment i'm just going to come to you rory actually just from a media point of view as well really to start with which is because there was so much attention on spurs and whether they would go down do you think we have not ignored but underestimated the size of West Ham in going down?

4:59Yeah I think the idea that Spurs who are the ninth richest club on the planet could get relegated overshadowed the fact that West Ham who if you look at quite a lot of different kind of financial metrics are also a club that should not be getting relegated I think it's probably overshadowed it You can only have one main story, and the main story around that third relegation place was, will it be Tottenham? And I think that probably has kind of obscured a little bit just how significant it is that West Ham have gone, how long they've been in the Premier League, the size of club that they are, the kind of imprint they leave.

5:31But also, and maybe there's people at West Ham who'd be quite grateful for this, grateful that Tottenham have stolen focus a little bit. What an absolute kind of monument of incompetence it's been that West Ham are in the Championship. Is that how you would describe it, Joe? A monument of incompetence? I wouldn't use that word in no. That certainly wouldn't be in my vocab. But I get what Rory's saying. And the Tottenham story was gripping everyone, wasn't it? And West Ham seemed like when Nuno came in, everything seemed fine for a little bit. They were producing a few performances, getting some big results.

6:03But for it to happen how it did, obviously that Arsenal game, a lot relied on that. and Spurs kind of scraping through. And I think the Deserby appointment was huge, you know, because Tottenham were making mistake after mistake and then they really backed themselves and backed him to come in and do a job, of which he has, it seems. And West Ham have just slipped out the back door. It's a disaster. It's an absolute disaster to go out of the Premier League, especially with the squad that they had and obviously the stadium that they've in. And, you know, a couple of years ago, winning the European trophy, it's a real problem.

6:38there'll be a lot of finger pointing as there always is when when teams go down and a lot of west ham fans themselves will have different individuals that that they will want to blame and fans of other clubs come back and then throw accusations at west ham fans for for wanting more than or not being happy with what they what they had but the first person to discuss andros i would suggest is Nuno Espirito Santo because you sort of forget again how much of this season he's actually been in charge for there was an assumption oh he's going to come in and save them well he's been in charge for over 30 games I mean he's done the majority of the season some of this has to be on his shoulders of course a lot of it has to be on his shoulders the players shoulders but I think for West Ham it's sort of been a slow decline and I look at clubs like your Brightons, your Bournemouths, your Brentfords, they have a clear structure, a clear plan from the top.

7:38If a manager leaves or if a manager gets sacked, they have a manager to come in and not have to change everything. Where I look at like your Everton's and your West Ham's, it's like there's no real plan at the top. We go from David Moyes to Lopetegui to Potter, back to Nuno. It's like we're going from different styles and we're keeping the same sort of players. we're contacting the same agents to bring the players in there's no real person making the decisions they've spent the money you can't say they haven't spent money to improve the side but it's just like there's no real they're just spending money they're just doing things with no real plan and that's why we've seen Everton drop into the championship not because of a manager not because of the players some of some of their financial statistics are I mean backs up Andross's point, Rory, but it also highlights the size of West Ham, which is why I started with that, really.

8:34They brought in£238 million in revenues last season, which was ninth in the Premier League, the 20th in Europe, okay, 20th highest in Europe. Their wages were£172 million, again, the ninth highest in the Premier League. They've spent over the past five years£654 million pounds on players with a net spend of 317 million pounds again the ninth highest in the premier league those figures would suggest they and bearing in mind they don't pay a great deal of rent do they um you know so those figures would suggest they should be doing a lot better than they have been doing the thing with west ham and i say this this is not a chris sutton thing we Chris free tonight and I know Chris's whole stance is that West Ham fans didn't appreciate David Moyes enough.

9:28So kind of that's their original sin and everything, everything that's followed, they deserve. That's kind of Chris's logic on it. I don't agree with that. West Ham's problem is the ownership and the ownership's problem is they have have never demonstrated the slightest kind of hint that they know what they're doing. They seem not to have noticed that the league has changed around them. The Premier League now, basically, there are occasional teams who are a little bit chaotic, who kind of do mad things. Nottingham Forest aren't the most reliable. And, you know, it looks like Man United have made a sensible appointment in Carrick.

9:57But they've done, you know, a few kind of weird things in the last few years. West Ham have had this incredible gift of being in the Premier League for 14 years. Basically, one or two years where they've been kind of good to watch and they've had a push up towards sixth or seventh or obviously the conference they'd win. But basically, they finished mid-table. They've never really looked like they're trying that hard. they've never had a kind of coherent plan like like Bournemouth or Brentford or Brighton as the three teams that we tend to look at they've never shown the ambition of Sunderland or Aston Villa they've never shown the kind of wherewithal or the nows of Crystal Palace they've just sort of sat there they've earned over a billion pounds in television revenue and they have fritted it all away on a succession of ridiculous signings they sold Declan Rice for 105 million pounds what do they do with that money that's transformational money that is money that you can reinvest into your squad and kick on.

10:49West Ham blew it. What have they done with the television money they've got? How many players have they signed that have been sold on for a profit? It's not very many. Mateus Fernandes will go this summer probably for a profit. I think they paid 38 million quid for him. But not a vast amount of players have gone into West Ham and then been kind of kicked on and been sold on again and that money piled back into the squad. As Andros said, it's run like a medieval court where whoever's got the ear of the king gets to kind of determine policy. There's no strategy, there's no plan. And I don't take any real pleasure in this, but they've gone down because that kind of ineptitude gets punished in the Premier League now.

11:28You can't run your club like that. It's not how it works anymore. I think around the David Moyes situation, I think at the time he won them the Conference League, he steadied the ship. I think it was right for the West Ham fans to, okay, thank you, David Moyes, but we're a massive club. We want to go to the next level now. but I think the problem is that summer they get in Lopetegui who again I thought maybe a sensible appointment because it's a bridge between David Moyes and a Graham Potter for example it's in the middle so you can slowly progress but that summer when you want to go more progressive you sign Fulkeruk you sign Aramwamba Saka you sign some of your okay very good player you sign Max Killman these are not really players who are going to take you from David Moyes style of play to a progressive style of play which West Ham wanted to be so I think that was probably the breakdown after David Moyes that they didn't really back up what they wanted to do in the transfer market when you were there Joe and you were there 2018-19 weren't you so yeah when there was still the same ownership there so what what kind of club did you find do you think West Ham is because the other stat that i didn't give i didn't give in all the financial stuff they have the second highest attendances in the country with an average this season of over 60 000 so only manchester united have more now i appreciate that that's also partly down to ground size and if you know certain other clubs have bigger grounds then they may be above that but they get an average of over 60 000 and And they have gone down.

13:05So what kind of, you know, you've played across Europe. You've been at City. You've been at Spurs. When you look at how a club is run, how did you find it? It was very emotional. It was a very emotional club. A lot of frustration. The thing that I found that a lot of it revolved around, if I'm going to say that you play every Saturday, a lot of it revolved around the result on Saturday. If you won and you did all right, everything was fine. Everyone was good. if you lost and played badly, all hell broke loose. Fingers were getting pointed. Things got very aggressive and very upset. Now, look, to an average football fan, I think that's understandable because that's how football fans will work.

13:45Be quite emotional, love their team, up and down with the good results. Everything's fine. When it's not, everyone's a little bit more cranky. But what I've been around and went football when I've been in proper teams and businesses that are run well, like it's just it's a solid structure that we're talking about that win lose or draw it will keep moving forward and everyone knows exactly what's being asked of them everyone knows their positions where they need to step up there's accountability if things do start going wrong and I found at West Ham like I say it was very very much we were working towards the Saturday and seeing how we played fingers crossed and then work it out for the rest of the week and that's just not really what I've seen when I've been successful and been part of successful clubs that's not how it's been run.

14:28Joe, I'm going to ask you a very uncomfortable question because a lot's been made about the stadium and the atmosphere it creates and I will never blame the Everton fans for the David Moyes situation but okay the situation is not ideal, you're far from the pitch, it doesn't create a great atmosphere but I feel like the fans could have done more to make it better, to make it more hostile I've been there with Everton I've been there with Palace, I've been there with Luton and the one thing you say before the game is okay, if we start well, if we start fast, the fans will turn on the players so I think I feel like I don't know you was there for a whole season do you feel like they could have done more to create a positive atmosphere in that stadium well you know how it works Andros and you know Upton Park is now being remembered as this place that you could never go and win of course you could win you go there and you play well in the first 10 minutes at Upton Park same thing would happen and they'd feel it even more trust me they'd feel it even more because it is super aggressive and a West Ham fan will feel like they have every right whether you whether you think this is the right thing or not that when it's not going well they'll tell you and they'll vent and they'll be frustrated and they'll put pressure so i think yeah no doubt about it if you if you had a good first 10 minutes at the at the london stadium things would start to get a little bit eerie but i'm i'm not i'm not getting lost in the nostalgia mate you you know and i know that we could go to opton park and you could smash west ham and you could turn the place upside down with a good performance or winning your 50 50s for example and winning a few headers it turned just as aggressive there as it did at the London Stadium.

15:55But as someone who has sat in both grounds, admittedly from a work perspective, not from a fan perspective, do you know what, Andros? I'm not sure. I'm not sure fans could do anything in that place. And I would throw in a slightly different perspective in that I've done other sports in that stadium. I mean I was you know I was there for the Olympics but I've also done rugby league games in that stadium it is terrible it is terrible for atmosphere whatever I mean it was great for Super Saturday obviously but but but rugby league and and I have I I think when you go there I just think I feel really sorry for West Ham fans because I just think they're lost I just think they're absolutely lost in this um cavernous soulless bowl that I I look at it and I can't work out how from how it's constructed and how it's designed I'm no expert in stadium design but I can't work out how you create a an atmosphere there because you're so far away and there's nothing, it doesn't feel, you know, you look at the new Tottenham Grand, even where you were yesterday Joe, with the new top tier at the Etihad that's going to be the Guardiola stand, even just the way they've got the, what's it called, the camber is it camber, Rory, help me Oh, no, it's not called the camber your camber's on a road, what's it called?

17:30That's really annoying, yeah, the steep, you mean the steep anyhow, the steep bit, I'm sure steepness, yeah, I'm going to say that sometimes just keep it simple then, you just don't even have You don't have that at the London Stadium. And the ground isn't why you go down, but it can rip the heart out of a fan and the soul out of a fan. And I do feel for them there. I'd never thought, Joe's totally right. I've probably been guilty of the Upton Park revisionism, which would very much stand at odds with West Ham's home record while they played there. There is this idea that it was this kind of, this unconquerable bear pit.

18:09But I used to go to a lot of games at West Ham for work. and West Ham lost most of them because if Man City or Arsenal or Chelsea or whatever go to Upton Park, chances are they win. I think what the problem is with the London Stadium is that it represents what's happened to West Ham more broadly, which is, like Chapa says, the soul's been ripped out of the club. It feels like they feel like they are tourists in their own ground. There are also a lot of actual tourists there who are there to watch Premier League football, which is fair enough, because it's a massive global product and people want to go and see it.

18:40that then affects the atmosphere but the principal thing is that on the pitch you've got a club that has no identity that has no kind of other reason for being than staging football matches to to have access to the tv money in the premier league which keeps them in the premier keeps them one of the richest clubs in the world and kind of keeps them going west ham i don't think at any point certainly since moyes have given the impression that they want to be anything other than a premier league team they're not they've not kind of tried to reinvent themselves as like a springboard club or as a data club or whatever it might be they're just kind of there like andrew says they kind of sign whoever's around it's based on relationships there's no real kind of there's no strategy about recruitment if you look at their squad it's a really weird patch but i actually don't know apart from bowen and matthews fernandez is there anyone else in that squad that anyone's gonna want to buy in the summer even at wolves there's two or three you think you can see people kind of plucking a couple of players from there but with west ham given the money they've spent i'm not sure who gets i'm not sure how many premier league clubs are thinking do you know what west ham have gone down we'll take we'll take that one out of out of there i'm not sure that happens a lot this summer i think the problem with with the stadium is and you you mentioned the figures chappers is in the up in upton park getting the upton park revenue they would not have been able to be the big side that they are now spending the money with the wage structure that they have unless they move to a bigger stadium i think the problem is not the stadiums the problem is the how they've spent them the extra money they have from the revenue of the stadium which has been their biggest problem yeah and actually they've they've made a loss of over 140 over 104 million in their latest accounts to the 31st of may 2025 which bearing in mind all the other figures we gave earlier might seem slight surprising let's let's bring football finance expert rob wilson into this discussion just on west ham's finances what it might mean for them in the championship and thank you very much to everybody including paul in leeds the word i was looking for was rake rake of a stand okay i was about to say that yeah rob thank you very much for joining us pleasure mark as usual um they've recorded a loss of over 104 million in their latest accounts they brought in though as i said 238 million in revenues the rent is an extortionate on the ground.

21:02So how on earth have they lost so much money? Because you would have thought everything should be quite favourable for them, shouldn't it? I think that's where sport, football perhaps, has got this bad reputation. Because it is such a high revenue generating business, the natural assumption is, well, if you're generating that much money, everything's going to be rosy. the reality is for West Ham your statistics the fact you gave at the top of the show were spot on but being ninth in the revenue generating league doesn't make you a huge amount bigger than somebody that's 10th 11th or 12th and I was listening to Andros and Joe speaking there they used to one of them used the term it's a massive club it is a big club and I think it's almost fallen into that trap of not having any sort of as the guys have said structure or identity so So a lot of their recruitment is executive led.

21:57It doesn't follow this sort of sporting director model that we would typically see at Brentford or Brighton or Bournemouth who are also knocking around in that particular group. And I think the reality is they've just spent an extortionate amount on transfer fees and player wages. And those bills have kind of added up and they exceed what they've generated in terms of revenue. The one thing you didn't say, actually, in your fact check at the start, Mark, is they owe over£200 million of transfer liabilities. That's fees they've still got to pay. And, of course, they're going to be relegated. So there's£100 million worth of revenue that they're not going to earn next year.

22:36All right, they've got a£45 million parachute payment, but that's not going to be sufficient to really pay the debts as they fall due, so to speak, and cover the players' wages that they've currently got on the books. Which, and also you would expect, and this is just anecdotally, you know, you look at Leicester this season, you know, you watch Leicester on the telly in the Championship, the King Power was most definitely not full. It would be surprising, wouldn't it, if West Ham were getting 60 ,000 for, and I apologise in advance for picking a club at random, but Lincoln at home. all the data tells us if they start strong next year they will be able to keep a strong level of support in that stadium whether they get to 60 ,000 or not I think is up for debate of course it is but those fans are pretty passionate it's well connected with the community the big danger for West Ham now is they have an awful start to the season their August and September really doesn't go to plan and that's when you'll see a very very sharp decline in those matchday attendances which when you're playing in the championship with the amount of revenue that's on offer through things like solidarity payments you know you're going from essentially 120 million in the premier league down to 12 million in the championship it makes that matchday revenue so much more important when it's uh when you compare it to the wages that are going out and if they if they don't start well they're going to get into some very very hot water very quickly does the the championship next season goes to squad cost yes yeah and and that therefore is uh your your the cost of your squad is and that's wages and transfer fees has to be a percentage of your revenue and it can't exceed a percentage of that and that is what is it in the championship 70 is it it's about 70 okay so on the one hand for west ham the positive is that they're likely to have more revenue than anybody else in the championship so that should allow them to have quite an expensive squad but also their squad cost ratio at the moment i think is probably over 70 because they've been trying to stay in the premier league so they've kind of got cost cutting to do but but they could still be an add at an advantage this so they should be at an advantage based on their revenue profile absolutely the big challenge or the big unknown if you like is what relegation clauses the executive team are built into those player contracts and i think i've said to you before you really need to be putting in a 90 relegation clause for a player wage when you drop into the championship we hear a lot about sorry sorry andros's eyes nearly fell out of his head at that point so as a man as a man who we discussed last week has been at that end of the table an awful lot uh he looked very very shocked anyhow so 90 drop back to you rob sorry do you know what andros's reaction is exactly why why it doesn't happen so if you're if you're trying to to run an organization within its means you have to cut by 90 but what we also know is the agents are going to be fishing around to make sure they get the best deals for their clients that's absolutely how it should be but you've also then got that bit of jeopardy that where we know that the more you spend on transfers and wages, the more likely you are to be promoted.

25:52And in West Ham's case, the£45 million parachute payment actually makes them three times more likely to be promoted than any of the other teams in the division. So all things being equal, they should have relegation clauses baked into the contracts. The SCR, the squad cost ratio, should be favourable. And then they've got this little bit of extra revenue through the parachute payments to help out. But I suspect that their transfer exit door is going to be pretty busy this summer. They probably need to generate somewhere in the region of£150 to£180 million worth of transfer revenue just to keep the heads above water.

26:28Joe's eyes nearly burst out of his head at that one. Go on. How are they going to manage that one? You guys have talked about him, haven't you? I think Mateus Fernandes is probably worth somewhere between 50 and 60 million you know if we listen to what we're hearing in the press Manchester United will be all over him uh we've got Jean-Claire to be to Debo uh who had that fallout didn't he with Nuno a couple of weeks ago you know he will generate some transfer value uh Somerville will generate some value Konstantinos probably as well the two goalkeepers they've got will generate something that the key then is this goes back to the lack of sporting director the key then is how do the executive team really make that squad competitive in the championship if you rip the heart and soul out of the playing squad also going back to your very first point and then we'll move on Rob but it's fascinating if you still have a transfer liability on a player and then sell them do you then are you then paying the rest of the transfer liability as a as a lump sum on what you've brought in.

27:34How does that work? So it depends entirely on how the deal has been structured. So it can happen either way. So either you can retain that transfer liability on your balance sheet effectively. And as the terms of that transfer liability are seen, you would then be paying that money back. Or indeed, if that player is to transfer out of the club, you would use some of that lump sum to pay down that transfer liability. So I think Mateus Fernandes signed for£38 million from Southampton. There'll be a transfer liability attached to him. If they generate, let's say,£50 million, they've got a£12 million SCR, or PSR rather in old terms, profit on their books.

28:17But then they will have to recover that transfer liability with Southampton for sure. OK, Rob, thank you very much for coming on. Appreciate it. Rob Wilson, football finance expert. A joke in a side, did you always have a relegation clause in your contract and Ross yes more often it was around 25 percent 30 percent but the Luton one I had was was 50 percent wage drop so that's probably as a player I don't think anyone's signing a contract more than 50 percent relegation clause and then would you would you in like would your agent be if you had two or three teams kind of looking at you two or three options would one of the kind of potential deal makers deal breakers for those teams be how much is the is the relegation drop not really because especially i never sign a club thinking we're going to get relegated i think clubs have to put it in there in their contract just in case 25 is not going to make me sign for stoke over crystal palace for example and lute and i didn't have a choice 50 was i didn't have any other option so i signed the 50

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31:03This is the Monday Night Club with Mark Chapman. On the Football Daily Podcast.

31:12West Ham issued a statement today saying that they will be honest and transparent with the fans going forward. Spurs have also issued a statement. I'll read the paragraph from that after they finished 17th for a second successive season. Here's part of the club's statement. Last September, we recognised that something seismic had to change at Spurs. The Lewis family stepped in and authorised a full reset. That decision wasn't taken lightly and it came later than it should have. But what has been put in motion is real and it marks a genuine break from what had come before. As part of that process, we discovered some uncomfortable truths.

31:49The qualities that make Spurs distinct, our football, our ambition, the connection between the team and its supporters have been allowed to fade. Football success had not been driving our decisions. We did not have the right expertise in key roles. Is that accepting blame or is that passing blame to others? I've read it several times and I can't quite work it out, Rory. my instinct is it's it's trying to kind of suggest that the changes that were made at the start of the season so when Daniel Levy left and they kind of appointed a new kind of executive sets of executives to replace him that that was that that the kind of not having sporting success as the priority was associated with the with the old guard rather than the new that was how I read it but it's I mean yeah I agree it may well be I wonder if it's one of those public statements you get a lot now where it's sort of it's designed to look like it's accepting blame but really it's offering excuses that seems to be how it's done generally I think the hardest thing about that statement who said that yeah a club statement but who though that's the hardest thing I think for a Tottenham fan right now at least I say at least because it's harsh, very harsh to say it.

33:11When Daniel was at the top, he loved the club and he took it. He took it on the chin. There was some accountability for what was going on. Sorry, it's Peter Charrington, the non-exec chairman. Rory, what does non-exec chairman mean? How does that work? Does that mean he's saying, I am the one who is representing Tottenham. Everything I've done right now has not been spot on and I realise it and I realise I'm going to be working on it or is he just speaking on behalf of people who... Well, a non-exec chairman means that he's the chairman but doesn't actually make any of the decisions. That's the exec bit.

33:43So how are you supposed to get behind a statement with someone talking about such huge, it's a huge statement to make, right? Huge statement. And if someone, if the Khaldun made that statement or Sir Jim Rackbid made that statement, that's them saying it, representing their two clubs and saying, that's on me almost. I'm going to sort it out. That is just someone reading something on behalf of someone who we don't know who they are, but I'm also saying that I'm the Tottenham Hotspur. But I'm not convinced that the reason that Spurs have finished 17th two years in a row is because they've not had sporting priorities.