West Ham have breathed new life into their Premier League survival hopes but still have a mountain to climb to avoid a ‘world first’ – although it would come with a £500m bonus.
Victory at Tottenham Hotspur last time out saw a flicker of light emerge at the end of a dark tunnel for West Ham.
It was way back in June that Hammers News revealed West Ham are set to post record £100m losses in their next accounts.
That was not helped by the struggles of last season, which saw the club finish 14th after three consecutive campaigns in Europe, which resulted in their only major trophy of the last 46 years.
So the very last thing West Ham needed this season was for things to get any worse.
That is precisely what has happened, though.
The £500m bonus to West Ham being relegated
Hammers fans have long felt the club has been sleep-walking to relegation.
Prior to last gasp 2-1 victory at Spurs, West Ham had won just 19 of their last 78 Premier League games dating back to the turn of the year 2024.
The chances of escaping relegation just went up 👆
At that stage, the Irons were sitting in the top six at the halfway stage of the season following wins over Man United and Arsenal.
David Moyes rejected the terms of a new deal which removed his final say on transfers, ceding that to since sacked technical director Tim Steidten, and demoted his son Dave Junior from the scouting department.
When Moyes said at the time the deal ‘has to be right for me and my family’ that is what he was referring to.
Moyes’ assistant at the time, Kevin Nolan, has since gone on record to state that West Ham fell apart when players got wind the contract offer had been withdrawn and Moyes would be leaving.
West Ham have been a car crash ever since.
Moyes’ final six months yielded only five victories and the three managers who have followed him have added just 15 more in the 59 league matches since.
The latest, Nuno Espirito Santo, has managed just three of them and must somehow find at least another six to give West Ham any realistic hope of staying up.
Staying on the Premier League gravy train has become the be all and end all for the majority of clubs.
Falling off it now threatens to cause chaos with West Ham’s finances.
‘World first’ looms for Hammers unless Nuno turns things around
But there is a £500m bonus to West Ham being relegated as a ‘world first’ looms large.
Karren Brady will be back on TV screens in The Apprentice next week and the show’s profile of the West Ham vice-chair states that the club are currently worth £1bn and are the 14th-most valuable team in the world.
Would you take relegation if it meant that David Sullivan would leave?! 🤔
Not a nice position to be in – but what would YOU choose if you had to?
Brady had previously listed West Ham as being worth £800m on her own personal website.
But the latest figures from Forbes claim West Ham are now worth £840m.
That may go some way to explain why there has not been a long queue of suitors when West Ham fans have been campaigning for the club to be taken over amid an uprising against Brady, David Sullivan and the board.
Only the Premier League’s so-called “big six” had a higher valuation than West Ham and being a member of the world’s richest league is the biggest factor in deciding those values.
West Ham are on course to do something no club has managed in history, though, according to The Telegraph.
While the Spurs win gives real hope West Ham can still survive, the reality is Nuno’s side are six points adrift of safety and have just 16 games remaining to get at least six – if not seven victories.
Make no bones about it, staying up will be a tall order.
If they fail then history will be made for all the wrong reasons because No team worth more than $1bn (£740m) have ever been relegated to the Championship.
It means West Ham are facing hundreds of millions of pounds being wiped off their value overnight, the biggest such fall in the history of the game.
West Ham could be first club worth over £740m to be relegated
West Ham’s value would likely plummet, by anything between £340-500m.
So how is that good news?
They say every cloud has a silver lining and in this case that would represent making West Ham’s chances of being taken over much more realistic.
At almost half the price, and no more than £500m, the Hammers would suddenly become a much more attractive proposition for mega rich US or Middle Eastern owners.
A hugely discounted figure for a club who would be favourites to bounce straight back to the Premier League would undoubtedly stir interest at a time when fan pressure on Sullivan and co to sell would be nuclear.
The club’s London location, a massive and fiercely loyal fanbase and the stadium size – with the potential to own it outright – would also be huge carrots dangling for new investors.
So while relegation would be a disaster taking a wrecking ball to West Ham’s finances, it may turn out to be the best thing to happen to them for years.
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