Phase II starts

Less than a year after taking control of the club, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson is beefing up the management at West Ham to provide the structure needed to take on the challenge of building a new, larger ground for the club. That project is considered key to making good on Gudmundsson's goal of regular European football for West Ham. The changes include Eggert Magnusson relinquishing his executive duties, although he will retain his ownership stake and remain as non-executive chairman of the club. The move was foreshadowed, I think, when Gudmundsson gave his first interview to the English press two weeks ago in the Observer. Gudmundsson noted that Magnusson was important, but mostly as a public face. Now, this first phase of their ownership is over, and Magnusson will step back from the forefront.

A former spokesman for the 2012 London Olympic committee is thought to be a possible hire. West Ham tried to convince the organizing committee to build the Olympic stadium in such a way that West Ham could occupy it as their ground after the games, but the club were turned down and now are seeking to build their own ground of about 60,000 seats near the West Ham tube stop.

The Digger column in the Guardian reported that the London subsidiary of Gudmundsson's Landsbanki brokered the sale this week of a 6% interest in Arsenal's holding company to Alisher Usmanov, a Russian who increased his stake in the holding company to 21% with the purchase. Gudmundsson has many contacts in Russia, having founded a brewery that he later sold to Heineken for $400 million, the Digger wrote. Gudmundsson also was fighting fraud charges in Iceland at the time; he was eventually convicted on five minor bookeeping offenses.