West Ham United, deep in distress, hell-bound for relegation and perhaps worse, must rue the day when the young entrepreneur Kia Joorabchian crossed their path. It would appear to outsiders that when West Ham acquired the two Argentina internationals, Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano, from the Brazilian club Corinthians via Joorabchian’s company Media Sports Investment, they might have flouted the rules of Fifa, since joining another club was possibly, for both players, legally a bridge too far.

This in itself was a potential embarrassment, but the situation has now been seriously compounded by the accusation from the Premier League that the full details of the transfer were not disclosed, leaving the club facing a possible points deduction that would all but confirm relegation to the Championship.

All this is exacerbated by reports that the club has had to deal with compulsive gambling among some of its players, one of whom, the winger Matthew Etherington, admitted last week that he had “spent a residential week at the Sporting Chance Clinic [Tony Adams’s rehabilitation centre for troubled sportsmen] in January”.

Alas for Alan Curbishley, who has been obliged to sort out this problem off the field as well as all the problems he and the team confront on it. Today they will be posed by Tottenham Hotspur, who have the motivation of revenge for missing out on the fourth Champions League spot through defeat at Upton Park on the last day of last season.

Yet should Curbishley ever have been appointed at all? Put another way, should Alan Pardew have been sacked? This shines an embarrassingly harsh light on the Icelander Eggert Magnusson who took over the club in November and is now, to be fair, justified in a plea of “Not me, guv”, since the acquisition of the two Argentinians occurred under the previous regime.

Having said that, there is reason to see Magnusson’s regime so far as a series of disasters. He has had far too much to say on the subject of his managerial machinations, just as he has been criticised for his histrionics in the directors’ box, not least the way he plunges his head into his hands when things go wrong.

In retrospect, it is clear that he was quite wrong to dismiss Pardew after, in the almost traditional manner, giving him the ritual vote of confidence. He was out of order, shortly before the team’s abysmal capitulation at Charlton, to talk about the supposedly “cancerous” situation in the dressing room when Pardew was in charge. It reflected great credit on Pardew that as the goals went in at The Valley, he maintained a sober and composed demeanour.

Quite how far Curbishley is to blame for West Ham’s recent failings is a matter for debate. That he has poured out huge sums on players who have done little to justify the expense is beyond doubt. That he has failed to galvanise the team which has gone down to such embarrassing defeats as that at Charlton, and previously, by 6-0, at Reading. That Magnusson has given him a vote of confidence must fill him with no optimism.

How different from the homely regime of Ron Greenwood. During his notably productive 13 years in charge, he established the so-called West Ham Academy of Arts and Sciences. It was a regime that produced the three players so crucial to England’s 1966 World Cup victory in Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst.

John Lyall, who succeeded Greenwood and stayed for a largely productive 15 years, had success in the FA Cup, and kept the flame alive. Outstanding in those West Ham teams was Trevor Brooking, himself the embodiment of West Ham’s principles, of Greenwood’s demand for “good habits”. Indeed, it is interesting to speculate how different things might have been had Brooking been persuaded to carry on as manager, after a brief spell in charge in 2003. No disrespect to the club’s former outside-right Harry Redknapp, who bought and sold with seeming abandon, but often with success. He may have had his ups and downs, but there was always a buoyancy about his regime.

The problem was, for the club, that relegation in those days constituted appalling financial problems, players generally being entitled to the same large salaries in the lower division that they had in the Premiership. So it was that West Ham were forced to sell many young stars nurtured at Upton Park. Joe Cole, who to his credit worked ceaselessly to try to turn things around, Michael Carrick, now a Manchester United midfielder, Jermain Defoe, the striker sold to Spurs, and Glen Johnson, who has found his way via Chelsea to Portsmouth.

West Ham’s fans, always ready to applaud those players they think are truly committing themselves, were predictably distressed by the sale of so many stars. But Terry Brown, the former chairman who resigned from the board last week, could argue that in the ruthless economic circumstances, there was really no alternative.

And now? Doom and gloom abound. Those famous bubbles do, indeed, seem destined to fade and die.