Terry Brown has promised not to repeat his mistakes of the past as West Ham look to establish themselves as a Premier League force once more.
The Hammers Chairman has promised to give manager Alan Pardew a summer war chest of £20m - the largest ever single transfer budget in the history of the club.And talking to the Sun newspaper today, Brown vowed to learn from his mistakes - and keep hold of the next generation of talented youngsters emerging from Tony Carr's academy.
This season Anton Ferdinand, Elliott Ward and Mark Noble have all impressed for the first team whilst Pardew can look forward to calling on promising young talents such as Chris Cohen, Hogan Ephraim and Kyel Reid in the next season or two.
"This next batch of kids won’t go the same way as the last generation - provided we consolidate in the Premiership," Brown told the Sun.
"We’ve another batch coming through - and it’s important we bring on young players."
Whilst some of those youngsters will play an important role during next season's campaign, Brown appears to be under no illusion that a sizeable investment is required in order to ensure the Hammers have a fighting chance of holding on to their Premiership status.
"This summer Alan Pardew will be working on a budget of £20m in salaries and transfers," he confirmed, surprising many - not least, one would assume, Financial Director Nick Igoe who told fans recently that Pardew's budget would be just £15m.
"There isn’t the level of debt we had when we got relegated — it’s gone now. We came down with £48m of debt and we’ve had to get it down to £24m for it to be manageable. But there was never any chance of us going under because we acted quickly after relegation two years ago.
"If we came down again we would be in a similar position to Charlton or West Brom when they came up and went down. We won’t have to sell a lot of players."
Critics of Brown have pointed out that his comments come in the build-up to season ticket renewals, the prices of which take a healthy rise this season due to West Ham's promotion to the Premiership.
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