Forget Grant, West Ham relegation is owners' fault

Avram Grant was undermined throughout his time as West Ham manager

When Avram Grant was unveiled as West Ham's new manager in June 2010, it was painfully clear to most he was not the right man for the job.

Sure enough, 11 months later West Ham are a Championship club and Grant finds himself out of a job.

Grant has took a great deal of criticism for the Hammers' plight, and some of it rightly so, but the true blame for their drop lies with David Sullivan, David Gold and Karren Brady.

Left to right: Co-owner David Gold, Vice-Chairman Karren Brady and Co-owner David Sullivan

All three have helped undermine not only Grant but also the players throughout their tenure at the club and need to be held to account.

They have also made some shocking decisions during their 17 month reign at the club, not least of which the appointment of Grant as manager last summer.

He landed the role on the back of the jobs he had done at Chelsea and Portsmouth, although it is hard to determine just how well he did at both those clubs.

At Chelsea, he inherited a very talented squad left behind by Jose Mourinho. It would have been hard not to get that team into contention for titles.

He deserves credit for the way he steadied the ship after the departure of Mourinho but questions have long been asked about whether it was Grant or the players who were the driving force.

He led them to the Champions League final - and was just a John Terry penalty kick away from winning it - and took the Premier League title race to the final day, but the way he was sacked immediately after shows Chelsea were not convinced Grant was to thank for those successes.

As for his time at Portsmouth, he did very well to lead them to the FA Cup final - Grant has excelled in cup competitions wherever he has been - but couldn't save them from relegation.

Grant was relegated with Portsmouth but led them to the FA Cup final

Keeping Pompey up was an impossible task, with ten points deducted for going into administration and a squad which had been thrown together not even being paid, and so some of the talk now about 'back-to-back relegations' may be a little bit harsh.

Grant is loved at Portsmouth but it really is hard to assess how well he did there as he had an impossible job.

Many are now arguing Grant is better suited to a Director of Football role, but surely the signs for this were always there and so it is something of a mystery what convinced West Ham's owners he was the right man for the manager's job.

He failed miserably as a manager at Upton Park but he has acted with great dignity throughout and he should hold his head high for how he has conducted himself in the face of adversity.

Sullivan, Gold and Brady though need to have a long look in the mirror for how they have handled themselves during their whole time at the club.

When they breezed through the doors in January 2010 they were heralded as the club's saviours, the trio to lead them out of the disastrous Icelandic consortium era.

They may have done a decent job behind the scenes with the financial situation, but that will not appease Hammers fans right now.

All West Ham fans see when they look at these three are failure and instability.

They promised stability when they took over, but within weeks they were undermining popular manager Gianfranco Zola and publically criticising the players.

Key players like Scott Parker seemed to love working for Zola

Zola's side may have been perilously close to the drop zone last season but the fact is they didn't go down.

The job he did at Upton Park now looks decent after Grant's reign, and he deserved better treatment from the board.

Zola may not have been doing an earth-shattering job but the players loved him and were prepared to do anything for their manager.

All this was ignored by the owners, with constant public statements made about Zola being 'too nice' to manage in a relegation battle, and Zola deserved to be treated with respect.

The owners', particularly Sullivan's, constant public moans at the players have been severely damaging too.

David Sullivan has repeatedly criticised players in public since taking over at West Ham

The last thing players want to hear when they are in a relegation battle is their owner questioning their commitment and stating they will be sold in the summer.

If such statements need to be made, then it should be left up to the manager to make them.

Sullivan's comments only served to unsettle the players and knock them off their games even more.

Sullivan in particular needs to learn that while he is free to say whatever he likes, such statements do no good for the team. In a way, his statements only act as a piece of free publicity for himself.

After sacking Zola, Sullivan and Gold needed to get their next managerial choice right. And they chose Avram Grant.

Grant's reign was a disaster from start to finish but he was hardly helped by the board.

Once they had appointed him, they should have stuck by him throughout the season and backed him all the way, but again they undermined him and didn't allow him to do his job.

The saga in January of the board offering the job to Martin O'Neill was a shambles.

As soon as Grant knew his job had been offered to another manager, he was a dead man walking. That's hardly ideal for a manager trying to guide his team away from relegation trouble.

They should have sacked him there and then despite O'Neill turning them down, as Grant knew his board had no confidence in him and his job had become impossible.

Instead, they allowed the situation to drag on until it met a very messy end at the DW Stadium on Sunday.

The owners acted in a very shoddy manner throughout Grant's time at the club and the way they sacked him summed it up.

Karren Brady asked Wigan chairman Dave Whelan for the use of a room to sack Grant in

Grant had done a bad job at Upton Park but acted with dignity throughout and never once criticised the owners for their constant public ramblings.

They should have done the decent thing and waited until the next day to sack him at the training ground. He deserved to be shown more respect.

Why there was such a rush to do it in the minutes following relegation is a mystery.

Grant would have been hurting just as much as them, perhaps more so. Talk about kicking a man while he is down.

The sight of Karren Brady asking Wigan chairman Dave Whelan for a room to sack Grant in just seemed pathetic and unprofessional.

Herself and the owners were possibly more to blame for the relegation than Grant yet they won't pay the price with their jobs.

Grant needed to be sacked but they couldn't even do that in a proper and decent manner.

Two weeks ago the owners decided not to travel to West Ham's away game against Manchester City because, as Sullivan put it, they were sick of the club's poor away record.

Anything the Hammers picked up in that game could have been pivotal, so it hardly instils confidence in the players when the owners can't even be bothered to turn up for games and write off the team's chances.

There has just been a catalogue of own goals from the owners all season.

As if Grant wasn't undermined enough with the public pursuit of Martin O'Neill, the board then decided to scrap the transfer of Steve Sidwell behind his back.

Avram Grant believed he had done enough to secure the signing of Steve Sidwell in January

Grant felt Sidwell could have made the difference and thought he had signed him in January.

He only found out the club had backed out on the deal when he contacted Sidwell. That is no way to treat a manager.

A manager should be treated as the most important person in the club and Grant had only been appointed a matter of months earlier, so his judgement should have been backed by the owners.

As if this wasn't bad enough, Karren Brady then used her newspaper column to reveal the reasons the club backed out on the Sidwell deal.

Her newspaper column can be a great insight for the fans but she went much too far with some of the things she revealed.

David Gold was the only one of the three not to undermine Grant in public, but even he has hardly endeared himself to fans at times this season.

He sounds committed to doing the best he can for the club in interviews but then ruins it by getting his helicopter into camera shot every time.

David Gold with his much-seen helicopter

He seemingly can't do an interview without his helicopter being shown in it and this just serves to distance himself from fans even more.

Another gripe West Ham fans have with the owners is the decision to move into the Olympic Stadium.

Upton Park is a special and historic place and fans do not want to leave to go to the graveyard of a stadium with a running track.

If there really is no other option but to leave Upton Park, fans want to go to a place which can generate a similar atmosphere and somewhere they can really call their own.

Fans will be too far away from the pitch at the Olympic Stadium and that will help kill the atmosphere West Ham's excellent supporters create.

Gold, Brady and Sullivan have been passionate about moving to the Olympic Stadium since taking over

The Olympic Stadium will never truly be theirs as they will have to share it with other sports.

The stadium is a poisoned chalice so the best thing West Ham's owners could do to help get fans back on side would be to scrap plans to go there. If not, the stadium will become a noose around the club's neck.

Despite the doom and gloom relegation has created at West Ham, there are some things to offer hope to Hammers fans.

Sullivan, Gold and Brady have had a disastrous start to life at the club but if they learned anything from their time at Birmingham, it was how to get a team out of the Championship.

They helped Birmingham win promotion three times so they know what it will take to get West Ham back on its feet.

However, they need to get their next managerial choice right and stick by their man.

No more silly statements, no more undermining, West Ham need stability from the top.

As for the next manager, Chris Hughton and Roberto di Matteo should both be at the forefront of the owners' minds.

Chris Hughton's Newcastle romped to the Championship title last season

They both won promotion last season and looked set to keep their respective clubs in the Premier League before being harshly sacked.

Others like Neil Warnock and Ian Holloway also know how to get a team promoted and should be at the very least on the shortlist. The owners cannot afford another appointment like Avram Grant as it is well-documented if promotion is not achieved immediately after relegation, it gets harder year on year.

West Ham's situation seems very similar to Newcastle's in 2009, where uncommitted players were flushed out of the club and youngsters were allowed to shine. West Ham need to learn from that and follow a similar blueprint, another reason Hughton may be a steady and sensible choice to take over as manager.

The likes of Freddie Sears (left) and Jack Collison offer hope for the future

Young talents, like Jack Collison, Zavon Hines and Freddie Sears need to be given the chance to shine in the second tier in the same way Newcastle gave chances to the likes of Andy Carroll.

The likes of Carlton Cole and Matthew Upson need to be allowed to leave as West Ham need a team full of committed players next season. That is why it is a real shame the likes of Scott Parker and Mark Noble may leave.

Scott Parker always showed full commitment for West Ham but now looks set to leave

Parker has been an inspiration since joining in 2007 and won the Football Writers' Player of the Year despite the relegation but needs to leave if he has ambitions of earning a regular England place. He would love to stay but he just cannot afford a season in the Championship.

As for Noble, he is another who epitomises everything West Ham will need next season and he would be a good choice to captain the side.

He is sure to have interest from Premier League clubs though so it will be interesting to see what he decides to do this summer. If he stays, the team should be built around him.

Others like Demba Ba seem certain to leave, but West Ham fans will be glad to see the back of loan signings Robbie Keane and Wayne Bridge.

They have probably both been paid fortunes in wages to try and keep West Ham up but neither showed the talent or commitment the club needed.

There was more than enough talent in the squad to stay up but too many players underperformed throughout the season.

Robert Green had a decent season but slipped up when it mattered. Matthew Upson was poor and too susceptible to injuries. Carlton Cole showed not enough desire and wasn't up for the battle.

Thomas Hitzlsperger is a very good player and showed that in glimpses, but injury meant he couldn't make his debut until February.

Everything that could have went wrong did go wrong and this was summed up in the game which sent them down at Wigan.

Robert Green after his error allowed Charles N'Zogbia to score Wigan's winner in stoppage time

2-0 up and seemingly cruising, they contrived to throw the game away and lost 3-2. Mental frailties cost them, and the players seemed to already be thinking of a potential must-win game against Sunderland this weekend as the game which could keep them up.

They took their eye off the ball and now the Sunderland game is a meaningless, painful occasion the club would rather not face.

The owners and players will feel the full wrath of the fans and rightly so.

A fraction of what fans are feeling right now became clear at the club's end-of-season dinner on Monday, which was stupidly allowed to go ahead despite the relegation.

West Ham's supporters deserve so much better and hopefully, for their sake, the club's stay in the Championship will be a short one.

If the owners continue acting as they have done this season though, it will be extremely difficult for the new manager and players to focus on the job at hand.

West Ham is a great club and lots of managers would do anything to land the job, but others will have seen the actions of the owners and thought, "No thanks".

West Ham need a strong but steady manager to come in and steady the ship, which is close to capsizing.

Fans will never forget how the owners have acted this season but they, and the owners themselves, need to look forward now.

West Ham United cannot afford to become the next Leeds.