West Ham have four games to save themselves from financial oblivion

Posted Saturday, April 30, 2011 by theguardian.com

• Squad break-up inevitable if Premier League status is lost
• 'There would be a £40m hole in our cash flow,' says Sullivan

Avram Grant knows his tenure at Upton Park will probably come to an end if West Ham are relegated.

Manchester City, Blackburn Rovers, Wigan Athletic and Sunderland are all that now stand between West Ham United and oblivion. Six years after Alan Pardew guided the East End club back into the Premier League, Avram Grant has four games to prise his side off the bottom of the table, starting with Sunday's Eastlands meeting with Roberto Mancini's fourth-placed team.

Plunge into the Championship and a financial shadow will darken over the club. West Ham have around £80m of debt and will become tenants of the Olympic Stadium at Stratford for the start of the 2014-15 season, legal challenges allowing. Balancing the books will be far trickier in the proposed 60,000-seat stadium without the £45m a-year TV money from the Premier League, despite what the club and the Olympic Park Legacy Company may claim. Without Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal as visitors, it seems unlikely that in the Championship they could lift this season's average attendance of 33,000 to 60,000.

Asked how nervous he is regarding the challenge of staying up Grant says: "It's money time now. We need to be at our best. This is the money time." David Sullivan, the co-owner, is clear about the financial consequences if his club sink. He says: "There would be a £40m hole in our cash flow which would have to be met by myself and [co-owner] David Gold."

If West Ham are relegated it will be the beginning of the end for an underachieving squad. Sullivan again questioned the players' commitment this week, rating their prospects of staying up at only "25%". Scott Parker, West Ham's only star turn this campaign and duly recognised as the football writers' player of the year, is exempted from this criticism. But he would be sold to raise cash, though relegation would slice his value from around £15m to £10m. The midfielder would certainly be followed by many more, among them Carlton Cole, Robert Green, Mark Noble, Demba Ba, plus Thomas Hitzlsperger, the out-of-contract Matthew Upson and the loan signings Victor Obinna, Wayne Bridge and Robbie Keane.

These are all seasoned enough performers to suggest West Ham should not be two points from safety, and Julian Dicks, the former West Ham left-back, is clear where the blame lies. "It is down to the players," he says. "I have seen an improvements for certain games but it's not been continuous."

This has been the tale since Gold and Sullivan bought the club last January. After Gianfranco Zola managed to avoid the drop but was sacked last summer, Grant took over, only to suffer a whispering campaign against him. "I blame the manager because I've always said the most important person at a club is him," Tony Cottee, the former West Ham striker, says. "I was extremely disappointed with Avram Grant's appointment."

On the opening day West Ham left Villa Park having lost 3-0, and a turbulent eight months began. Standing 18th then, Grant and his troops had to wait nearly five more months for the table to show they were above the relegation zone.

Ahead of the visit of Wigan Athletic on 27 November West Ham were bottom, so the club designated the match a make-or-break "save our season" encounter. A 3-1 win followed but they remained 20th. When a Freddie Sears strike confirmed a 2-0 win at Wolves on New Year's day, Grant's mantra that fortunes would improve had a glimmer of credence.

Yet matters on and off the pitch were about to worsen for him. On 8 January Karren Brady, the vice-chairman, used her Saturday newspaper column to reveal that the deal to sign Steve Sidwell from Aston Villa was vetoed by her, not the manager, who then had to deal with awkward questions regarding this intervention. A week later West Ham were bottom, following a soul-destroying 5-0 reverse at Newcastle United, and Arsenal were due in east London.

That morning, reports claimed that Grant would be sacked whatever the result, with Martin O'Neill lined up to replace him. The owners were forced into denials and the sense of turbulence surrounding the club was heightened by the rumours. Arsenal defeated West Ham 3-0 but somehow Grant clung on. Cottee again: "The owners deserve credit for rescuing West Ham when they did as the club would have gone bankrupt. But since then they've made mistakes including the handling of the Martin O'Neill situation. If they'd sacked Avram Grant first they'd have got Martin."

Since that farrago, West Ham have escaped the dreaded drop zone for only a fortnight in March. Now, four defeats from their past four outings – West Ham's poorest sequence since the campaign's opening – have them once more in trouble.

"The ramifications of relegation don't bear thinking about," Cottee says. "They're £80m in debt [and] they pay a fortune to the players in wages. The top ones would leave, the younger players would be vulnerable to the bigger clubs: exactly what happened in 2003 when the club was relegated. And, they move to the new stadium in 2014."

If West Ham overcome the legal challenges by Tottenham Hotspur and Leyton Orient they will have to invest at least £95m in Stratford. This includes a £40m loan from Newham council, extending the debt to £120m. The OPLC says it has assurances that relegation would not affect the club's ability to take over the stadium, and Ian Tomkins, the club's Olympic Stadium director, says: "The business plan has been modelled on different scenarios. The stadium is not only about West Ham United – concerts, potential naming rights, there's a whole range of [financial] opportunities.

"It is about taking West Ham United to the next level, breaking out of what can become an almost cyclical pattern of staying up and then the threat of relegation."

Grant is still hopeful he can arrest the pattern now, and start building a firm base over the summer, with Premier League status intact. He says: "I like this stage of the season because you see the real character, the real players."