David Gold has claimed that he wants Gianfranco Zola to stay on as manager of West Ham United.
Joint chairman Gold, speaking to Sky Sports this lunchtime in the wake of the weekend's results that virtually assured West Ham of a place in next season's Premier League revealed that Zola has his support - although also added that Zola may decide to call it a day, despite being only a year into a five-year contract."I would very, very much like Franco to be our manager next season - that's assuming all things are equal," said Gold. "But Franco might be telling us it's time for a change; we'll have to see. What I can say is that I've recognised that warmth and respect by the players towards Franco and I recognised it early on when I came to the football club.
"He's been through an extraordinarily difficult period. In fact it goes all the way back to the beginning of the season when he lost players, players were sold to keep the finances of the club intact which was most unfortunate for him. He could have lost another three players in the January window and we managed to fence that off. But the thing that we were asking was 'keep West Ham in the Premier League' - that was his remit, he's achieved that."
The suggestion of a split between himself and fellow joint Chairman David Sullivan with regard to the Italian's future was however rebuffed by Gold who added:
I don't think that's fair, I think that's an assumption. We all have opinions - for example one scenario is that maybe Franco is saying to himself 'I've done my job, I've done what I came to do and I'm going to take some time out'. He might say that, so until we sit down and everybody gets an opportunity to express their feelings and tell us exactly where we are I think it's premature. The season's not over yet, we've still got two very, very important matches.
"We've still got two matches to go and there are four places to play for. Forgive me for being financial in my thoughts but those four places are worth three million pounds. Normally for clubs that would be an interesting period of the season but in our case, with having these huge debts, three million pounds is very important to the football club so there's lots to play for. After that we'll sit down and see where we go from there."
With the club's Premier League status (virtually) assured, thoughts will now inevitably turn towards the summer and the rebuilding of the playing squad that has been decimated in recent seasons - although for Gold, first on the list is the task of retaining the club's better players.
"That will be our determination, in all of our years in football [we aim] to keep our best players," he confirmed. "We 've got a great reputation of retaining our managers as well over the years. We're not a sacking football club, certainly West Ham is not a club that looks to lose its best players, we'll do everything in our power to keep our best players.
"We're still ambitious, we're very anxious to take West Ham United football club forward. We've got a wonderful opportunity coming up with the new Olympic Stadium and I'm very hopeful that that could take us to the next level - but time will tell."
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