Sullivan will be forever blowing bubbles

New West Ham co-owner David Sullivan maintains he and David Gold are at Upton Park “for life”.

The life-long Hammers fan has, along with business partner Gold, a former youth team player at Upton Park, acquired 50% of the Barclays Premier League outfit in a deal which values the club at £105m (€120m) and gives the duo operational and commercial control.

However, while living out a boyhood dream Sullivan – who helped turn the fortunes of Birmingham around before selling the club last year – admitted their latest venture made no business sense whatsoever.

West Ham’s overall debt stands at around £100m (€114m) owed to both banks and other clubs, including settlements to Sheffield United over the Carlos Tevez affair and former manager Alan Curbishley.

Sullivan, though, maintains he and Gold have come home and pledged to look for further investment to help take the club forwards.

“We bought this as supporters, not from a business point of view,” he said.

“We will raise more money and, with other people, will dig the club out of the mess it is in.”

Sullivan declared: “We plan to be here forever, ’til we die – and we hope that is a long time off.

“We are here to the end. We have not come here to hopefully bang it out to some Russian in five years' time.”