From squad to stadium the problems grow and grow

Two years of abject misery and we are three fateful games away from a season which could yet end in relegation!

I still don’t think it will come to that but am as deeply concerned as it’s possible to be regarding the summer ahead and our third year at the London Stadium beyond it.

It hurts to be entirely honest, to bare the  soul and admit it, but the truth is everything seems to be crumbling around us.

The squad is simply not good enough to survive another season in the Premier League and the only genuine PL players I see are Zaba, with probably on season left in him; Ogbonna (just), Lanzini (though even he has been sub standard and injury prone), Masuaku and Antonio (same) and of course Arnie.

Declan is rising fast but cannot be expected to play a full season at the tender age of 19.

For me the first thing this board has to do regardless of whether we stay up or go down is to ensure that David Moyes does not receive an automatic contract – he is not the man to lead us on as we saw today.

That is the most simple of a multitude of problems to solve. We have to find an alternative  and I understand there are some available and on a provisional list. It has to be done.

The squad is a serious worry where working on my assessment – and you will have your own – we need two new keepers; two central defenders; two new midfielders and a couple of strikers.

And that only brings us up to minimum strength. Throw a new manager into the summer mix who has to get these players in and mould them into a team in one pre-season and you are looking at a massive job.

The board will need to dig deeper than they ever have in their lives because if you go £20 million for two keepers £50 million for the defenders, same again for midfielders and same for strikers, you are looking at £170 million and that is working on pretty conservative figures for PL football 2018!

We might get £50 million in sales but we would still be around £60 million short on even the most humble of estimated costs!

Then there’s the cost of the new boss and backroom team. That we got Moyes on £15k a week plus a stay up bonus kinda speaks volumes.

Remember when all that has been spent we still have only the thinnest of squads, a couple of our normal injury issues even would create mega problems.

New owners? It’s not going to happen with those currently in charge making that abundantly clear and in any event, buyers these days tend to do so when the club is at a lower level and much easier to buy cheaply (see Wolves for example).

Should we stay up, this board – as far as I can see – need to make that sort of  investment. Otherwise I really don’t know what is going to happen to this great old club of ours.

Fan protests are one thing but 1,000 of them won’t solve these serious and growing problems which somehow has to be solved now.

West Ham is in a footballing hospital ward, not in critical or on life support condition but in need of some major surgery.

And beyond all that there’s also the stadium issue which heads into court this November after becoming a disgraceful political football since Mayor Khan put the robes over his shoulders.

God only knows where that political soap opera – which has become part of West Ham’s DNA  these last few years – will end  but one solution may be to remove a Tory Baroness as the sparring partner to a Labour Mayor.

It’s a mess and I see no answers in the short term so some very serious leadership and investment is needed from the top of this club or we have a recipe for disaster on our hands.