As a long-time West Ham fan – I hesitate to say supporter because I am no longer a regular at Upton Park, but still cherish and relish the memories the halcyon days of Moore, Hurst, Peters and the cultured stewardship of Ron Greenwood – the recent appointment of Karren Brady as vice-chairman has me blowing bubbles again.
If anyone can help the hapless Hammers hit the nail on the head it is surely the feisty, busty first lady of British football, who once famously remarked that all footballers are interested in are booze, clothes and the size of their willies. Then she ended up marrying one and running a football club.
That club was Birmingham City, where she was managing director, but at Upton Park I have no doubt she also will show she is not a woman to be trifled with. Shortly after her appointment at Birmingham she was travelling on the team bus to an away game wearing a virtually see-through top, which displayed her ample cleavage.
“Hey Karren,” one player cheekily called out, “I can see you boobs!”
“That’s good,” she replied coolly. “Because you won’t be able to see them when I transfer you to Crewe.” She did, too.
Mother-of-two Brady was the first appointment of West Ham’s new co-owners David Sullivan and David Gold, as she was at Birmingham. She may be officially part-time but we can be sure that off the pitch she will be running the show.
Soon after her arrival in Birmingham the club became known locally as ‘Tit and Brum’. But she soon set about getting results from one of the game’s greatest under-achievers. Sullivan called her “The Sacker”. She fired all but two of the backroom staff when she moved in, and then dismissed the eccentric but popular boss, Barry Fry and subsequently his successor, local hero Trevor Francis.
He went after failing to achieve Brady’s ordered goal of Premiership status, but her recruitment of the former Manchester United player, Steve Bruce as his replacement then did the trick, and in they climbed into the all-important elite.
One of her victims, the furious Fry, labelled her “a bimbo”. But she’s certainly more than that. She has brains as well as beauty and according to Fry, “is one hard bastard.”
In 2002 she was listed by Cosmopolitan Magazine as “one of the 100 most powerful women in the world.” It was her streak of ruthlessness that stopped Birmingham falling into football’s abyss. She also turned down the opportunity to take over as head-honcho of the Football Association, but is a now a member of Sport England’s board and part of England’s 2018 World Cup bid team.
It is from this platform that she now enters a wider world of sports politics, or more precisely, Olympic politics. Her first declaration was that she would like to see the Hammers move into the London 2012 stadium and the football club re-named West Ham Olympic. The latter may be a pipe dream as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would certainly put the block on it, so touchy are they about the use if the Olympic trademark. But the relatively short move to Stratford surely is feasible.
The stumbling blocks are that West Ham would want to rent rather than buy the new stadium, and would also want to dismantle the running track that Seb Coe and co have pledged to the IOC is sacrosanct as part of London’s Olympic legacy.
I hope Brady (pictured) and her two co-chairmen have the wit and wisdom between them to work something out moneywise because in so many ways it would be ideal to have the Hammers, the club slap in the middle of London’s new Olympic heartland, occupying it. And it now seems that even the Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell is coming round to that way of thinking. She knows it makes commercial sense.
Some form of retractable or roll-over seating, a la Paris’s Stade de France, could be a solution, although I have never subscribed to the view that athletics tracks are a no-no at football stadiums.
Only in Britain, it seems. The combination works well enough on the Continent and there are few complaints from British fans when attending Champions’ League finals in Europe, which invariably are played on pitched ringed with a track and consequently more easily policed.
“I am good at having ideas,” say Brady, under whom Birmingham showed a profit for the first time in their history. So you can bet she will come up with something. Her prudence brought a much-needed sense of financial reality into the game, declining to pay over-the-top salaries to the stars. “It is not so much finding the money to buy players, it is funding the wages that causes the problems. The purchase of a player won’t bankrupt you, but paying him ridiculous money for five years will,” she has said.
Fingers crossed, within a three or for years the foxiest lady in football will have the Hammers challenging for the Premiership title at the Olympic Stadium. Or bust.
Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games and numerous World Cups.