It is heartening to see that recent traumas at Upton Park have not dampened that famous East End sense of humour. Björgólfur Gudmundsson, the West Ham United owner, may be Icelandic by birth, but he has learnt London ways. It has emerged that he is angling for £250 million if he is to sell the club. Cor blimey, guv’nor, you’re a right card, you are. ’Ere, lads, come and ’ave a listen to this.

To justify the fee, however, prospective purchasers may wish to ask a few questions. Such as, under Gudmundsson’s stewardship, have the team improved? No. Have the coaching staff attained new heights? No. Have the club grown in size or stature? No. Are sporting or financial prospects positive? No. At executive level, are the club more efficiently managed? Not particularly. Hey, hey now, gentlemen, don’t all dive for that chequebook at once.

What is remarkable is that Gudmundsson actually bought the club for £108 million, including debt. So with the prospect of relegation and a serious financial downturn under way, in two years — during which West Ham have become embroiled in the most expensive legal battle in football’s history, millions have been frittered away in the transfer market and two managers and one senior executive have been lost — by the calculation of the owners, the worth of the business has risen £142 million.

With accounting like that, no wonder they overpaid for Fredrik Ljungberg.

According to court papers submitted by Gudmundsson’s lawyers, the valuation is linked to a number of factors, mainly the recent price of £230 million obtained for Manchester City when some of the richest men on the planet came calling, which may prove something of a false reading. “West Ham is thought a more valuable club looking at its location in London, its loyal fanbase, more chance of linked real estate projects, proximity to the Olympic village and the fact it owns its ground,” the legal statement read.

Yet every one of those factors was also in place when Gudmundsson paid £108 million. He has not bought the ground, relocated the club to the capital or unearthed staunch support that did not previously exist. Real estate potential is the same as it ever was — development on the training ground at Chadwell Heath, a plan frozen in the present climate — while the Olympic link is simply irrelevant. So from where is the extra value of £142 million, or is Gudmundsson claiming that he underpaid?

It is not football’s bubble that has burst, it is the ownership bubble; the belief that all this new money came from men with infallible business brains, foolproof judges of financial markets. The money that is being demanded by Gudmundsson, by Mike Ashley at Newcastle United and by the American owners of Liverpool suggests only one thing: these guys were not as smart as they thought they were.

They believed that they had spotted something that was undervalued when, in fact, it was overvalued. And they won’t admit they were wrong. So they ask these inflated fees to prop up their egos, because if they simply tried to get their money back — and still there was no buyer — what would it say about their acumen?

West Ham is a mess that starts at the top and has done for more than a decade. The stewardship of Terence Brown, the former chairman, was calamitous and his successor, Eggert Magnússon, was foolish and wasteful, and any revival under Gudmundsson has been undermined by his parlous financial position after the Icelandic economic crash.

What happens at the club now will be considered to have great meaning for all, as if this is a lesson to be learnt throughout football, but in reality it is only one line of a song being sung from 10 Downing Street to the office of the financial advisers in your local high street. There are people whose business is business; and what they knew about business was nobody’s business.

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• Graham Spiers