West Ham's under-fire owners and their interest payments add fuel to simmering fan tension

The Hammers co-owners have been paid £17million in interest on loans between 2015 and 2017 - the highest in the Premier League

West Ham’s co-owners David Sullivan and David Gold are not flavour of the month at the moment in east London.

The duo have come under-fire for a lack of investment this summer after the club narrowly avoided relegation in 2019/20. The sale of Grady Diangana for £18million to West Bromwich Albion added fuel to the flames even further.

It’s not just this summer that hasseen the two David’s and vice-chairman Karren Brady come under fire. Ever since the club moved from their spiritual home of Upton Park to London Stadium in 2016, there has been a lot of anger directed at the trio.

It all came to a head in March 2018 when, having gone 2-0 down against Burnley, a Hammers fan stormed the pitch with a corner flag and hundreds descended on the concourse below the directors box to vent their fury.

West ham responded to that by hiring Manuel Pellegrini on an £8million a year contract and handing him a transfer warchest of more than £150million but that backfired spectacularly and Pellegrini was sacked in November last year.

It was a case of backing the wrong horse for the Hammers owners and in a new, Covid world for the Premier League are pleading poverty and having to sell players before they can buy anyone else.

The failure to shift the likes of Felipe Anderson, Manuel Lanzini and Jack Wilshere this summer, all of who are high earners at the club, effectively sealed Diangana’s fate despite the winger not wanting to leave and Moyes not wanting the winger to exit the club.

Moyes is now struggling to recruit for his defence that shipped 62 goals last season and is in desperate need of surgery. The club has seen two bids rejected for Burnley’s James Tarkowski and a third bid is expected to be knocked back as well.

So when it emerges the club’s owners have taken £17million back out of the club in interest payments on loans, that news is not going to be greeted well. Southampton are second in the table when it comes to interest payments and their owners have only taken out £5million between 2015 and 2017.

While it is not necessarily new and groundbreaking news, it’s still confirmation of why the owners of the club are in the dire situation in terms of their relationship with the fanbase.

In August 2016, West Ham repaid Gold and Sullivan £4.2million of loans as well as £2.2million of accrued interest, which had reached a mighty £12.7million by the end of the season.

Around the same time, the repayment date of the shareholder loans - £45million - was kicked back to 1 January 2020 through a refinancing deal.

The 2017/18 season was the tipping point: between August 2017 and August 2018, Gold and Sullivan paid themselves a little under £14.6million in interest owed to them on their loans.

This broke down into two payments totalling £10million in August 2017 on shareholder loans that had accrued interest of 6% and three payments totalling £4.59million in August 2018 on shareholder loans that had accrued interest of 4-4.25%.

Separate to these shareholder loans, in the 2017/18 season, £9.5million was handed to the club from shareholders, repayable upon the club changing hands.

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The owners also pumped in £30million to the club earlier this year amid the Covid-19 pandemic which allowed the club to keep all of its staff off the Government furlough scheme. Effectively, Sulllivan, Gold and other shareholders bought some of their shares for a second time to inject some cash into the coffers.

A small pocket of fans stood outside London Stadium on Saturday for the opening game of the Premier League season against Newcastle United to protest against the board. Those numbers are expected to get bigger despite social distancing currently being in place.

Last season, thousands descended on a protest march against the owners as well as fan group Hammers United organised a mass demonstration.

A poor start to the Premier League season will see pressure ramp up once more on those at the top of West Ham, who were named the 17th richest club in the world earlier this season. That seems a world away from reality.