West Ham bans are right and just but prove the owners simply don’t get it over fan discontent

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When West Ham United fans took to the pitch during the 3-0 defeat to Burnley they literally crossed a line.

In this day and age running into the middle of the pitch during a major sporting event is simply not on, no matter how much sympathy most football fans have with West Ham supporters.

Fans feel the club has sold its soul for a deal with the devil and for what? Another relegation battle.

But too many column inches have already been written on a subject which has been done to death so we’ll leave that there.

But when unpopular Hammers co-owners David Sullivan and David Gold and their vice-chairman Karren Brady dished out lifetime bans to those supporters on Thursday it spoke volumes about the disconnect between a passionate fanbase and a dangerously out of touch board.

Of course the club had no option but to ban the fans even if they did protest in a non-violent way.

The club announced the bans with a stern statement on its official website on Wednesday which also carried a warning about further arrests to follow in the crucial upcoming six-pointer against Southampton.

But what the owners have failed to grasp is that the supporters they have banned for life knew that would be the outcome of their actions.

Those fans felt so strongly about the state of the club and were so desperate to highlight their grievances that they were willing to sacrifice their own futures as supporters to make a point.

The key to quelling the festering and ever-growing animosity from fans is not by paying lip service to various supporter groups with the same old tired rhetoric.

It is by taking affirmative action to fix the issues which matter most to the club’s lifeblood, it’s supporters – the same supporters who have not seen their club win a major trophy in nearly 40 years, the same supporters who stick with the club through thick and thin, and there’s been plenty of thin.

By all means ban those fans, but at least make an effort to speak to them and understand why.

The club can take away their season tickets but the protests have served their purpose to cast the owners and the way they run West Ham into the spotlight.

Now the ball is firmly in their park.