Broken promises? West Ham United fans know all about those.
The London Stadium was supposed to be a ‘world-class’ stadium for a ‘world-class’ football team, after all. When Karren Brady resigned from her role as vice-chair in the spring – thirteen years after her infamous declarations – West Ham United had a one-way ticket to the Championship rather than the Champions League.
‘The most successful football stadium migration in history’ it most certainly wasn’t.
What is YOUR proudest moment as a West Ham fan? 🥇
Just the 50k season ticket renewals! Not bad for a relegated side…
In an open letter to supporters in 2015, meanwhile, Davids Gold and Sullivan pledged an ambitious approach to recruitment centred around players befitting the ‘West Ham Way’. The academy, they added, would also be at the forefront of a new era at West Ham United.
When Daniel Kretinsky took charge following the dual departures of Sullivan and Brady a decade later, he found himself at the helm of a recently-relegated club losing cash, losing their brightest young assets, and saddled with a 60,000 seater white elephant of a stadium.
At least, in stark contrast to the old regime, Kretinsky means what he says.
Daniel Kretinsky had to sell Mateus Fernandes and Crysencio Summerville at West Ham United
The West Ham fans have taken fondly to Kretinsky’s ambition, honesty and decisiveness.
One of Sullivan’s last acts was to lose a power struggle regarding the future of Nuno Espirito Santo; the ‘Czech Sphinx’ wanted him to stay, and the ‘Czech Sphinx’ would get his wish.
He promised also to put the building blocks in place a ‘stronger future’; the appointment of Nils Koppen as Director of Player Recruitment should modernise what was previously an antiquated, owner and manager-led approach to transfers.
Kretinsky would go on to say that his ‘goal’ was ‘to retain as many of our key players as possible’. As Crysencio Summerville closes in on a move to Al Hilal, only a few weeks after Mateus Fernandes was sold to arch rivals Tottenham, some may accuse Kretinsky of the same ills as his predecessors; broken pledges, going back against his word, over-promising and under-delivering.
The reality, though, is that Fernandes and Summerville were always going to move on. Relegation made sure of that. Signed from Southampton in 2025 and Leeds in 2024, neither the Iberian nor the Dutchman are homegrown talents with a lifelong connection to West Ham.
Merely footballers who, although they did their very best for the club, were never going to play Championship football immediately after forcing their way onto the international scene.
Kretinsky pledges no more major sales at the Hammers
On the face of it, yes, Kretinsky did promise to keep West Ham’s key players before then agreeing to sell two of them. But look at it from a different perspective; by cashing in on Fernandes and Summerville, for huge money, Kretinsky has also removed the financial pressure for further sales.
Fernandes and Summerville could earn West Ham around £150 million combined. If you include those Al Hilal add-ons, the summer of 2026 will be the most lucrative in Hammers’ history in terms of sales. Greater even than 2023, when Declan Rice joined Arsenal for a nine-figure sum.
Sullivan ‘buckled’ when selling Mohammed Kudus to Tottenham for a knock-down fee of £54.5 million twelve months ago. A year on, Kretinsky has successfully eked far more out of both Fernandes and Summerville than anyone could realistically have imagined at the start of the summer.
If you had told the Hammers fans at the end of May that Jarrod Bowen would sign a new deal, that Konstantinos Mavropanos, Taty Castellanos, Mads Hermansen, El Hadji Malick Diouf and Tomas Soucek would be playing Championship football, they’d have bitten your hand clean off.
Hammers News can reveal that West Ham will not entertain offers for any of their remaining key players. Such a hardline stance would not have been possible without bringing in £85 million up-front for Fernandes and an initial £55 million for Summerville.
Or, for that matter, without convincing the dressing room that West Ham remains a project worth committing themselves to.
“I flew out to Prague in the Czech Republic to meet Daniel and Jiri [Svarc, Kretinsky’s right-hand man],” Bowen said last week when confirming that an England international with 20 Premier League goal contributions last season would be spending one of his prime years facing Lincoln, Bolton and Bristol City.
How would you feel if Kretinsky brought Disasi BACK to West Ham? 🇫🇷
A Chelsea source thinks the return is possible…
“The ambition that I got from them – certainly in terms of the direction the club wants to move in – it interests me a lot. It didn’t take a lot for me [to decide I wanted to stay], because this club means a lot to me.”
“For me, the main thing is to get this club back into the Premier League. And speaking to people in the club about what we want to do moving forward as a club for the better of the club, it was a no-brainer for me to be here and the vision is clear.
“It’s the Premier League.”
Cashing in on Mateus Fernandes and Crysencio Summerville was an unavoidable necessity for the long and short-term good of West Ham United. Could you ever have said the same of the Brady and Sullivan-driven departure from Upton Park?
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