A consortium led by former Newcastle United co-owner Amanda Staveley has had an offer accepted for Vanessa Gold’s 25.1% stake in West Ham United.

The 52-year-old businesswoman is reportedly willing to pay £160 million for Vanessa Gold’s (formerly David Gold’s) 25.1% stake in the East London football club.

Rather than getting into the nitty-gritty financial side of the deal, I thought it would be good to see some of the things she could bring to West Ham United if her investment team were to get involved with the Hammers.

1. A sense of community

Since Karim Virani took over as CEO of West Ham United, the club has begun to take more steps towards appeasing the fans, including having more substantive discussions with fan groups and developing plans to change the badge.

When Staveley came in, she knew Newcastle fans were not loving life; they had felt like Mike Ashley had neglected the club and wasn’t trying to make it better, especially on a match day.

Staveley took their advice and took steps to make the match day better. The most well-known things she did was introducing fan tifos or banners ahead of matches. Huge presentations of their favourite players and achievements were up at St James’ Park ahead of some of their biggest matches.

But it wasn’t only that; even David Sullivan has done things like that before at West Ham. Staveley went out of her way to speak to fan groups after almost every game, therefore improving fan relations and making the club feel like a much better place to be around.

She also improved the matchday experience for the fans by upgrading the stadium’s hospitality areas, food and drink offerings, concourses, and general presentation. The London Stadium has been neglected at West Ham because we don’t own it. Our stance has been: if we don’t own it, why should we spend money on it? Well, maybe to make your fans happier?

In the context of what a football player costs, Amanda Staveley would push to spend that small bit of money on things like the stadium experience to make it a better place for our fans; that’s what this club needs right now, like Newcastle, West Ham United needs to be healed.

2. Huge finances

Amanda Staveley has a Saudi-backed consortium behind her. At Newcastle, she owned 10%, the Reuben brothers owned 10%, and Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund (PIF) owned the other 80%.

With Staveley looking at 25% to begin with, and Kretinsky, Sullivan, and co sharing the rest of the club between them, we’re not going to have the same money available to us compared to what she had at Newcastle, but with the SCR rules, like Newcastle found out, we can’t spend crazy amounts of money anyway.

It seems like Staveley would eventually like to become the majority shareholder, so if this happens, I can’t imagine it will be too long until she either makes an offer for Sullivan’s shares which everyone would love to see, or maybe even Daniel Kretinsky’s.

The introduction of Staveley won’t do too much in the short term, or increase our transfer window spending too much compared to what we’ve become used to in the past five or six years. However, if she has any say in it she will hire football people to make football decisions, and we will spend the money a lot more wisely than we have.

Staveley will also spend money elsewhere, like mentioned earlier, she will invest in things like tifo’s and things to make the matchday better. But most importantly, she will probably invest in the stadium, it does sound like she would want to own the stadium eventually, but in the meantime, she would be a lot more likely to spend money to improve the stadium for us before owning it.

3. Eddie Howe

Amanda Staveley and Eddie Howe had a great relationship during her time in the North East, and great timing, as soon as Staveley made her her move for the Hammers, Howe left his post as manager of Newcastle United.

With Kretinsky, Sullivan, and Gold backing Nuno Espirito Santo, it will be interesting to see what happens if things start to go wrong early in the season, if Amanda comes in, would the Hammers’ next managerial target be the former Bournemouth man.

Staveley was a key part in the hiring of Eddie Howe at Newcastle in November 2021, in fact, she opted for the Englishman over serial European competition winner Unai Emery.

In an interview in 2025, Amanda Staveley said: “I was so convinced. You always make wrong decisions. Eddie was a really good decision, but it was collective. It was a board decision. We did our due diligence. We looked at his style of play and we knew he trained on the grass.

“For me, I didn’t want someone that was just going to run it from the (distance) and not be involved in the training themselves. He excited me about that. I also realised that he will be someone that will get better and learn, but he is also able to learn from his mistakes. You have to be able to do that. I knew immediately (that he was the right man for the job).”

It’s clear she loves Eddie Howe, they had brilliant success at Newcastle, and I’d say there’s a great chance we see him at West Ham one day if Amanda Staveley does in fact invest in West Ham United.