West Ham to Defy Financial Fears With Promise of Carroll Partner

West Ham United are prepared to risk financial ruin in order to realise the club's ambitious transfer plans this summer after co-owner David Gold stated the club must sign two "quality" strikers during the off-season.

Andy Carroll is expected to join from Liverpool in a deal understood to be worth in the region of £15m with the England international set to sign a contract worth £100,000-a-week to become the club's highest-paid player.

The Hammers last week submitted a £14.5m bid for Sevilla striker Alvaro Negredo, which was rejected by the La Liga club and Gold wrote on Twitter on Thursday that the club require two strikers in the summer transfer window.

However, West Ham's ambitions in the transfer window are at odds with their crippling financial position, which sees the club in £70m worth of debt, a desperate economic state which forced the club into borrowing the equivalent of the £60m Premier League television money they would be entitled to in the 2013/14 campaign from a lending company in the British Virgin Islands.

In April, manager Sam Allardyce said the Premier League's now ratified Financial Fair Play regulations, introduced from next season, would prevent the club from signing Carroll due to the strict parameters regarding the maximum fraction of a club's income that can be spent on wage bills.

The club have also committed to contributing £15m towards the conversion of the Olympic Stadium ahead of the start of their tenancy in August 2016, paying an additional £2m a year in rent. The costs of the move will be subsidized by the sale of the Upton Park site, which is valued at £40m.

Prior to relegation from the Premier League in May 2011, 26 months after taking dual ownership with Gold at West Ham, co-owner David Sullivan said the club were in "a worse financial position than any other in the country."

Yet after finishing 10<sup>th in the Premier League, West Ham's substantial investment plans suggest an intention to bring European football back to east London, a further revenue stream for the club.

The club made a record loss of £25.5m for the year ending 31 May 2012 but Gold and Sullivan's promise to paying a significant windfall to the London Legacy Development Corporation as part of the deal that secured the Olympic Stadium should they sell the club in the next 10 years, means their commitment to West Ham is cemented for the foreseeable future.