Blackpool 1 West Ham 2: DAVID GOLD had a smile from ear to ear, Mark Noble was proudly wearing the play-off winner's medal that was going with him on his stag-do in Dubai later that evening while the man who scored the opening goal and also had a hand in the winner could not help but chuckle at the "Sex, Drugs and Carlton Cole" banner held up by West Ham United supporters. "I can't condone the drugs part," Cole said, "but sex, we all love. You know what I mean?"
It was that sort of day at Wembley as West Ham celebrated their return to the Premier League after a 12-month hiatus that would have brought considerable financial pain had it been extended.
“It would have cost probably another £30 million,” said Gold, West Ham’s co-owner, when asked what the ramifications would have been in the event of defeat. Hepredicted “the club’s got to find €20 million to ensure it doesn’t get relegated” from the Premier League, which seemed like a reasonable figure to put on the price of survival on the back of West Ham’s performance against Blackpool. Ian Holloway’s side had three decent opportunities before West Ham took the lead 10 minutes before half-time.
Had a couple of those Blackpool chances been converted, Sam Allardyce might have been facing a fight to hold on to his job. Instead the West Ham boss was asked whether a new contract, to replace the 12 months remaining on his existing one, was likely.
“Not for me. I don’t need one. I’m my own man now,” said Allardyce, sounding a lot more confident than he had looked in the tunnel before kick-off. “I don’t need the security of a contract to work in this game. Somewhere down the line in the middle of next year maybe, but not now.”
Other contract talks are more pressing. West Ham have made a priority of negotiations with Robert Green, who is out of contract in the summer. Discussions with Noble and Cole, who both have 12 months remaining on their deals, are expected to take place soon afterwards. Cole was close to joining Stoke City last summer but rejected the move and sacrificed a fair bit of money to lead the line in West Ham’s promotion assault.
“I’ve kept my mouth shut for quite a while but I did take a wage cut to stay in the Championship,” Cole said. “Half my wages just went. I thought, ‘I want to help the club get back to where we belong’. I didn’t want to leave the ship. I would not have been able to live with myself. It is just such a reward to get to the Premier League again with West Ham.”
Allardyce paid tribute to Cole for demonstrating “a real show of love for this club” as well as for scoring 15 goals this season, the last of which was the superbly taken strike that gave West Ham the lead here. Blackpool will have nightmares about Ricardo Vaz Te’s winner, when the forward rammed home from close range after Cole’s stabbed effort had squirted into his path via a touch from Matt Gilks, the goalkeeper.
Thomas Ince scored between those goals to equalise for Blackpool and for a period it seemed only a matter of time before Holloway’s side would add a second.
BLACKPOOL:Gilks, Eardley, Baptiste, Evatt, Crainey, Ferguson, Dobbie (Bednar 90), Angel (Dicko 90), Ince, Matt Phillips, Kevin Phillips (Sylvestre 71). Subs not used: Southern, Cathcart.
WEST HAM: Green, Demel (Faubert 57), Reid, Tomkins, Taylor, O'Neil (McCartney 53), Noble, Nolan, Collison, Cole, Vaz Te. Subs not used: Henderson, Maynard, Lansbury. Booked: Vaz Te.
Referee:Howard Webb (S Yorkshire).
Guardian Service
