WEST Ham supporters like to think the Blitz spirit retains a little race memory in the stands at Upton Park. There's a certain mordant stoicism in a fan-base that delights in bellowing out the refrain and like our dreams they fade and die. When their team runs out against Manchester United this afternoon, they'll take a perverse pride in recognising West Ham as hopeless bankrupts facing the Premier League's super-rich.
That's not entirely accurate. West Ham's present survival is reliant on a fiscal loophole that means they can get away with delaying the exact reckoning of their debts, but the last reliable figures suggest that they owe a little north of £100million
. Manchester United meanwhile, courtesy of the ingenious deal with which the Glazer family leveraged ownership of the club, are in hock for £600million. Trust the big boys to outshine the minnows by a factor of six, even in terms of their overdraft.
The huge difference between the two clubs amounts to the difference in status between the Glazers and West Ham's hapless ex-owner Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson. When the credit crunch chomped its molars, Gudmundsson had to sing that old Bruce Springsteen line about having debts no honest man can pay, leaving the club as an asset in the estate of the bankrupt bank Straumur. The Glazers, by contrast, are still charming the banknotes out of their assorted creditors, albeit with diminishing success.
On the field both clubs are maintaining the status quo in the face of potential meltdown. West Ham under Gianfranco Zola are emulating their traditional role as entertaining relegation battlers, while Manchester United are sustaining another title challenge.
In the case of West Ham it might be argued that fiscal imperatives have improved the team. In the brief months before the Gudmundsson bubble faded and expired, extravagant salaries were doled out to the likes of Freddie Ljungberg, Craig Bellamy, Lucas Neill and Kieron Dyer, none of whom made a substantial difference to the team's fortunes. Dyer remains at Upton Park, but is unlikely to be a first-team regular any time soon. There are also substantial doubts about whether that other long-term injury victim Dean Ashton will ever play again.
In the absence of these luminaries, Zola has turned to academy graduates Mark Noble, Jack Collison, Zavon Hines, Junior Stanislas and James Tomkins, and picked up cheapish acquisitions like Alessandro Diamanti, Luis Jimenez and Guillermo Franco. It will take time for them to blend, but prospects are promising, with the excellent Scott Parker the fulcrum of the side. In the meantime Zola will wonder whether January will bring a fire-sale and the possible departure of the England internationals Matthew Upson, Carlton Cole and Robert Green. That will depend on whether the creditors want cash in hand, or are prepared to believe that preserving West Ham's Premier League status will prove more valuable in the long-term.
Manchester United have been linked, rather surprisingly, with Cole, but January might also find them counting the pennies. Earlier this week Sir Alex Ferguson was conspicuously supportive of the young players who had been criticised after the Besiktas defeat. If you had read those comments alongside a Manchester United balance sheet, it would have been tempting to interpret them as 'Better learn to love Darron Gibson and Danny Welbeck, guys, because they are the future for Austerity United'.
This week United exercised their option of refusal on the 18-year-old Serbian Adem Ljajic. His compatriot Zoran Tosic is still at United, although it is apparent that, in the current climate, the £16.5million deal for the two Serbs was unrealistic in the extreme.
Tosic is 22, and doing okay in the reserves, but looks a long shot to play much part in United's future.
The £80million United received for Cristiano Ronaldo was not reinvested in any substantial way, nor is it likely to be this season, unless United plunder the cash-strapped strugglers in the Premier League. Otherwise United will be more reliant on their youth policy than has been the case in recent seasons.
Ferguson was intemperate in his disdain for reporters who had criticised his young players, but its reasonable to say that Gibson, Welbeck and Federico Macheda lack the star quality exuded by a teenage Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, or even Ryan Giggs (who played 51 times for United in the 1991-92 season, when he was just 18).
At a club that has relished Roy Keane, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt in recent seasons, Gibson's appetite for destruction is an asset and he seems the likeliest academy graduate to get a regular first-team start.
West Ham have given United difficulties at Upton Park in recent seasons. The caveat this afternoon is that Zola's team is so fragile that they need a five-goal head-start (as they managed against Burnley last week) to be confident of getting three points.
United should pay West Ham the compliment of putting out their strongest side. With games against Aston Villa, Fulham, Hull and Wigan , United's festive calendar is hardly studded with ominous obstacles. West Ham's December offers testing derbies against Chelsea and Tottenham. Zola's season, though, may yet turn on the creaking open of the transfer window in January.
