Alan Curbishley has blamed the media for making his job almost impossible and denied that West Ham United were lucky to avoid being deducted points after an FA Premier League inquiry into the transfers of Carlos Tévez and Javier Mascherano.

The West Ham manager has become used to making the headlines for the wrong reasons since he replaced Alan Pardew last December, but after the club escaped a penalty on Friday that would have meant certain relegation and moved to within one point of safety in the Barclays Premiership by beating Wigan Athletic 3-0 on Saturday, Curbishley decided it was time to settle some old scores.

“We have had so much negative publicity and that has been par for the course ever since I came to the club,” Curbishley said before denying that he had wasted about £17 million by buying five players in January — Luis Boa Morte, Lucas Neill, Matthew Upson, Nigel Quashie and Calum Davenport — who have failed to make an impact at Upton Park.

“There have been so many negative articles having a go at my signings,” the manager said. “If you care to look at it, Neill came here and got injured twice and now he is showing what he is about. Boa Morte came in on the back of an injury, Davenport has been injured, Upson has been injured and Quashie is injured — they have all had problems.

“I tried to sign some experience to go with our young talent, but it has never materialised because they have been unfit. The players I have brought in have not been given a chance, but they are good players and this experience will hold them in good stead whatever happens to us.”

With the way that their relegation rivals are playing, one win — or even a draw — from their remaining two matches, at home to Bolton Wanderers on Saturday and away to Manchester United on the last day of the season, may be enough to keep West Ham up.

They were ten points from safety six weeks ago, but are now one point away from climbing out of the relegation zone after winning five of their past seven matches.

“We are going into the Bolton game with a chance of getting out of this,” Curbishley said. “I must admit when I first took over and had that terrible run, I would have taken the position we are in. There is a lot of ability in my team and we now have to do ourselves justice in the last two games.” If West Ham stay up, their fans will owe a lot to Tévez, who is ignoring the controversy surrounding his move from Corinthians last summer and turning in the kind of performances that convinced Diego Maradona that the 23-year-old forward was the “Argentinian prophet for the 21st century”.

On Friday, West Ham were fined £5.5 million — but avoided a points deduction — after admitting that they broke rules in respect of the controversial deals that brought Tévez and Mascherano to the club. “We would have accepted whatever decision the Premier League made,” Curbishley said. “We would have accepted a fine or a points deduction.” Curbishley denied that the record fine would be taken out of his transfer budget for next season, but Eggert Magnússon, the Icelandic chairman who bought the club in an £85 million deal last November, is set to withhold more than £1 million in payments due to Terence Brown, his predecessor.

“Mr Magnússon has been a very supportive and terrific chairman ever since I have been at the club,” Curbishley said. “He knows a lot more about football than most chairmen and he is very clued up. We haven’t started talking about next season yet — we just want to get through this one.”