• ‘It’ll be Armageddon if we go down – worse than Newcastle’
• Pay reductions reported to amount to 25% of salaries

The West Ham co-owner David Sullivan has revealed that players and management staff will be asked to take a salary cut even if the club avoids relegation from the Premier League and has warned that it will be “Armageddon” if the Londoners go down.

“Everyone will be asked to take a cut this summer,” Sullivan told the Sun, which reported that the pay reductions would amount to 25% of their salaries.

High earners such as Scott Parker and Kieron Dyer, who reportedly take home around £65,000-a-week are among those who may be affected, as well as the England defender Matthew Upson.

The full scale of the financial crisis at Upton Park is made clear in documents which the paper claims reveal the club owes £15m to other teams in outstanding fees for its current squad assembled for a costly £75m.

“It’ll be Armageddon if we go down. It’ll be worse than what’s gone on at Newcastle,” said Sullivan. “I can’t believe the contracts I’ve inherited. Every position is overpaid, whether in administration or on the playing side. All are earning more than they would at other clubs.

“We have made cutbacks already but may have to make another 20 or 30 people redundant by the summer. We have already had people in senior positions offer to take a voluntary 25% reduction to keep their jobs. It’s been gratefully accepted. If someone is doing a good job but is overpaid you still want to keep them. But many people at the training ground should take a voluntary pay cut. There’s an army of people supporting the first team. Everyone at the club will be asked to take a salary cut in the summer. The club is in a mess and we all have to pull together. If we go down I can’t even consider the situation.”

West Ham, two places off the bottom, face Sullivan and David Gold’s former club Birmingham City at Upton Park tomorrow evening. Gold has said he hopes his new club “whack” Alex McLeish’s side.

“I was at Birmingham City for years and it was great – but I really want to whack them,” he said. “I have a great fondness for Birmingham but it was said the way it ended. I am a lot wiser now than when I went there 17 years ago and I want to win. My allegiance is to West Ham – that it where my heart and sole is and I think of my mum looking down and going: ‘Come on you Hammers.’”

West Ham UnitedDavid SullivanPremier LeagueGregg Roughleyguardian.co.uk

Preparing for the Championship appeared to be the theme of Burnley’s January recruitment drive. The addition of players who had prospered outside the Premier League but rarely within it seemed to suggest a quiet admission of defeat in their valiant, and initially uplifting, attempt to punch above their weight. Yet when a pair of those self-same lower-league specialists scored here and another cleared off his own line, Burnley’s willingness to eschew big-name arrivals acquired a logic.

For Brian Laws, whose first win as a Premier League manager came after a career of more than 750 games with Grimsby, Scunthorpe and Sheffield Wednesday, both the manner of it and the result were heartening. He had renewed David Nugent’s loan from Portsmouth and signed the former Coventry defender Danny Fox from Celtic and watched each score. Their strikes sandwiched a clearance from Leon Cort, another arrival last month, off his own line. Between them, they can boast spells at Bury, Walsall and Southend.

West Ham’s ambitions stretch rather higher, but while Mido and Ilan, two of their newcomers, threatened, the result was no immediate endorsement of their recent shopping.

The first goal was a product of Laws’ frantic activity in the transfer window. Fox, the newcomer at left-back, provided the pass and Nugent a finish of casual aplomb. Yet it also owed much to the negligence of the West Ham defence, allowing Fox’s arrowed ball to travel some 50 yards before Matthew Upson misjudged the flight of it. Nugent left Robert Green stranded with his deft lob.

Burnley’s second was a similarly classy finish. After Jack Collison barged over Tyrone Mears, Fox curled in an unstoppable free-kick from an acute angle.

Another debutant had an opportunity to open his account. Benni McCarthy had the chance to supply an eloquent response to the Burnley supporters who remembered his recent past at Blackburn. After an injection of drive from Scott Parker, his weighted ball allowed McCarthy to defeat Brian Jensen. His shot lacked the power to beat the covering Cort.

Injured at the end of the first half, McCarthy did not re-emerge after the interval, affording Mido a bow. His first touch was a well-struck shot that ended up among the visiting fans behind Jensen’s goal.

Thereafter, Carlton Cole had a goal disallowed for offside and Junior Stanislas clipped the bar with a free-kick that bore distinct similarities to Fox’s.

A goal eventually arrived for West Ham when the third of their new strikers struck. Ilan, the Brazilian who came on a free transfer, had a tap-in after Jensen and Mido had collided while they challenged for Cole’s cross. Mido struck the post, but an equaliser eluded West Ham.

Premier LeagueBurnleyWest Ham UnitedRichard Jollyguardian.co.uk