Roeder fights to keep West Ham out of the abyss

Premiership: Upton Park manager faces Everton today knowing that defeat could hasten a drop that his club simply cannot afford

Glenn Roeder is in a tetchy mood. A story in the morning newspapers has linked his most valuable asset to today's opponents, Everton. "It is typical of what we have to put up with now," Roeder says as he leans forward. "Why didn't they write that last Monday instead of the day before the game?"

The player in question – Joe Cole – is going nowhere, he states. "The story is just about filling space. It's really poor stuff. In any case, as far as I am concerned, in the future, Joe Cole is the sort of player and person I want to be captain of this football club on a permanent basis."

It is also a fact that Cole, a prodigiously talented 21-year-old, is a bankable asset. If West Ham United are relegated then, as their director Trevor Brooking fears, "the soul of the club is in danger of getting ripped out". The truth is, however, that unless that soul is sacrificed – young players such as Cole, Michael Carrick and Jermain Defoe sold – there may not be a body to protect.

West Ham simply cannot afford to go down. The finances of having a wage bill of £33m, the sixth highest in the League, a further £33m in bank loans to repay and a predicted £21m drop in income to deal with if they are no longer in the Premiership, simply do not add up.

It has not been a healthy patient for some time. A bout of gastroenteritis may have hit the West Ham camp in the past week – Defoe and the defender Glenn Johnson have been laid low – but a malaise has affected the whole season.

West Ham are also paying for perceived excesses. Relegation would be harder on them than either Bolton Wanderers, West Brom or even Sunderland, saddled with debts, because they have been in the Premiership since the start and have become bloated on it.

The chairman, Terry Brown, refuses to do any interviews but his notes in the past two annual reports are revealing enough. In 2001 he wrote: "During the last seven years [under Harry Redknapp's management] we bought and sold 144 players, the equivalent of a team every season. The net deficit from player trading was £34m almost £5m a season. The annual wage bill rose from £5.5m to £28.1m. Only twice in 75 years of league football have we had a worse record than last season." Make that three times, of course, after this season's tribulations.

Last December, he was even blunter. "A priority must be to improve our financial results," he wrote. "No business can borrow money to fund losses over anything other than the shortest possible term."

Despite falling transfer fees, West Ham still value their playing squad at £80m. The club's directors believe they will be able to raise cash in an emergency. But, the truth is, the sums will be nothing compared to what they could have been.

Unsurprisingly, the strain of being in a relegation battle has shown. Apart from yesterday's outburst, there was anger recently at what can only be described as "Chipgate" – accusations that the regime at the Chadwell Heath training ground was simply too lax and which descended into a defence of whether or not chips were on the lunchtime menu.

And then, of course, there is Paolo Di Canio who has surely played his last game in claret and blue after being substituted against West Bromwich Albion and subsequently conducting a series of outbursts aimed at Roeder and the club's directors. He was at it again yesterday, accusing West Ham of reneging on contract negotiations. The simple fact is that at 33 and earning a staggering £38,000 a week, West Ham are only too pleased he is out of contract this summer. He will go, especially if they are relegated. Seven other players in a similar position can also expect to leave if the club go down, reducing the wage bill substantially.

Roeder did not want to be drawn on the subject of his volatile captain yesterday. "It is 19 days since the West Brom game and 17 of those 19 days he [Di Canio] has either been ill or been in Italy. So, no one has had any contact with him really," he says. "But it was good yesterday to see him happy and fit again." Roeder "saw him", of course, on television, interviewed in a cafe in Bologna, rather than in east London. He is due back in training on Monday. "I look forward to seeing him," says Roeder who, by explanation, adds that he does not like to conduct conversations with players "down the telephone line". "I understand what he is saying and why he is saying it so it is not a problem."

Despite all this, Roeder, born in Woodford just five miles from Upton Park and a childhood fan, still exudes the air of a decent citizen under siege. It is something he has clung on to since his appointment as manager in June 2001 after Steve McClaren preferred to go to Middlesbrough and Alan Curbishley stayed at Charlton Athletic. Despite finishing seventh last season, a fine achievement, it did not prevent questions still being asked about his suitability.

Keeping West Ham up now would surpass that. To do so they must confound the statisticians and become the first club at the bottom of the Premiership at Christmas to stay up. Two wins and six points have fashioned a lifeline that they appear able to hold on to. "The two victories have given the boys that little bit more confidence that two victories should give you," Roeder says.

During one of those wins – against Tottenham Hotspur on the first day of this month – Roeder fielded 10 English players, a far cry from Redknapp's multi-national cast. Of more importance to Roeder are the young players coming through. "We had four boys from the academy in the team and, apart from Manchester United, we are the Premiership team with the largest percentage coming through its ranks," he says.

Next up, he declares, will be Elliott Ward and Anton Ferdinand, the younger brother of Rio. "It is uncanny how similar they are," Roeder says. Youth is understandably a theme he warms to. "With the financial aspect of the game at the moment, the academy is going to be the lifeblood." The only problem will be, of course, that some of that lifeblood may have to be drained if West Ham lose that battle against relegation.