Sullivan: We're paying Carroll's wages out of our own pockets... We want the best team because we are West Ham fans

Posted Friday, September 21, 2012 by Dailymail

Sullivan: We're paying Carroll's wages out of our own pockets... We want the best team because we are West Ham fans
Passionate: Sullivan admits he could not shirk from saving West Ham

‘Because of the mess we inherited we have to service a £100m debt. There are commitments that have to be paid and we have to pay interest on the debt. But we also had to put the money in to put together a team that
would get us promoted.

‘Armageddon might be an overstatement but it was very unpleasant to have to put that kind of money in just to get back to where we were. It particularly hurts because David and I didn’t earn 35 million quid last year. We certainly didn’t earn that much after tax. So we are spending capital. Spending our life savings. There is no point kidding ourselves.’

Had it not been West Ham, Sullivan says he and Gold would have avoided such a financial risk. The debts were enormous. There were millions owed to Sheffield United in the wake of the Carlos Tevez affair; all this when the assets amounted to so little and there was no guarantee of securing the Olympic Stadium.

‘As a business venture it made no sense at all,’ he says. ‘Not the deal we did. The club was £120m in debt with
very few assets. It was a mess. I knew, when the Icelandics were signing the players they were for the money they were paying, it made no financial sense. I sold them Matthew Upson from Birmingham. He came to me and said, “They’ve offered me four times the wages, please let me go”. I knew then that it wasn’t right.

‘But David and I are not in it for the money. We don’t want to go bust either. The aim is to make the club self-sufficient. But we want to put the best possible team on the pitch for the supporters of West Ham because we are supporters too.’

He agrees that people buy football clubs for different reasons. ‘Some of them make money,’ he says. ‘Blackpool made £30m last year. Swansea are making £15m a year, and they are doing a marvellous job because they have a fantastic team. If we ever get to a position where we are making money it will be ploughed back into the team. But we have to keep it alive in the meantime.

‘We are the guardians and custodians of the club for the supporters. We are just trustees really. And we are good custodians. In our 18 years at Birmingham the club was solvent the whole time. But we still owe money on Tevez. Because it’s a confidential agreement I can’t go into the figures but there is still a substantial amount to pay off. In fact we’ve just started litigation against the old solicitors because we think the club was wrongly advised. We are commencing High Court proceedings against them.

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