Graeme Souness has slammed the “unacceptable” conduct of Jack Sullivan at West Ham.
The Liverpool legend and high-profile pundit has used the example of the antics of teenager Sullivan, who has cultivated a following of 88,000 people on Twitter through dropping hints about Hammers transfers and team selections, about how the pressures on modern managers have reached new levels.
Souness criticised player power and outside influences for making the job of manager a virtually impossible one.
“The best two examples of player power undermining managers in recent seasons are Jose Mourinho at Chelsea and Claudio Ranieri at Leicester, both disgracefully sacked the season after winning the Premier League,” wrote Souness in the Sunday Times. “That’s the power of the modern player. If you fall out with a couple of them, you are toast. The board stop valuing your opinion and start to pay attention to the opinion of others.
“Look at the West Ham situation, where you have Jack Sullivan, son of the owner David Sullivan, on social media criticising the manager’s selections, substitutions and signings. All of that is unacceptable.”
OPINION
Since swapping the dugout for the TV studio, Souness has forged an excellent third career in which his no-nonsense observations frequently hit the bullseye. He is right, again, on how unhelpful Sullivan’s conduct must be for the incumbent West Ham manager. While the youngster’s passion for his club is clear, it is also blindingly obvious that it provides another layer of difficulty for Slaven Bilic. Whatever Sullivan says, it comes across as the voice of his father, who is the equal most important person at the club given that that he half-owns it with longstanding business partner David Gold.