These are heady days at Upton Park. West Ham fans are blowing bubbles again - but now they come from a bottle of vintage champagne.

Who would have thought that the club whose supporters wanted manager Sam Allardyce booted out at the end of last season would now be perched in the top four of the Premier League?

As they say: Funny old game football.

Because of the depressing way the Hammers were playing towards the end of last season, there were genuine fears among their followers that by the time they moved into the Olympic Stadium in 2016 the football fare on offer would be Championship, not Premiership.

Now it is no longer the nightmare of the Championship but a dream of the Champions' League.

Forget dreaded thoughts of welcoming Brentford or Bournemouth. Now they have Barcelona and Bayern in their sights. Perhaps...

West Ham are currently sitting in fourth place in the Premier League following a superb start to the season ©Getty Images



Certainly European football would be a welcome bonus for a stadium whose soaring costs are literally going through the roof with expensive work needed, mainly to strengthen that particular piece of construction, requiring an additional £36 million (£58 million/€46 million).

This takes the total expenditure on converting the stadium for football and athletics so far to £619 million ($1 billion/€785 million).

Much of this additional expense could have been offset had Sebastian Coe and co had listened to then sports minister Richard Caborn and planned the stadium as a multi-purpose unit, à la Stade de France, with retractable seating, when the Olympic bid was formulated.

It now emerges that contractors Balfour Beatty had encountered difficulties installing the complex roof that will cover the athletics track and the retractable seats that will be rolled into position during the football season.

Following negotiations with the contractor, the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) has agreed to pay Balfour Beatty an extra £35.9 million ($57.5 million/€45.5 million) on top of the £154 million ($247 million/€195 million) already agreed. The extra funding will not be paid for by either the Hammers or, we are assured, by the taxpayer. Instead it will come from an LLDC "contingency budget". How fortunate they had that, eh?

The stadium, originally designed to be reduced to a 25,000 capacity bowl after the Games, cost £429 million ($693 million/€543 million) to build in the first place. It is understood that the overall cost will rise still further because there are still a handful of smaller contracts still to be finalised.

The projected cost of converting the Olympic Stadium, shown in an artists impression, is expected to rise further over coming months ($304.3 million/€240.6 million) ©West Ham



The roof on the stadium, which West Ham will move into as primary tenants at the beginning of the 2016-17 season, is the largest of its kind in the world and requires construction techniques normally used to build oil rigs in the North Sea.

All of which makes it imperative that the stadium, the most significant tangible legacy of London 2012, is gainfully utilised.

For West Ham to move into it as a non-Premiership side be a national embarrassment.

Luckily their current change of fortune and apparently football philosophy have virtually eradicated that possibility, although next season is the crucial one irrespective of where they finish this campaign.

But the portents are favourable. West Ham are now playing with a panache (now that's a word I'd never have associated with Sam Allardyce) more reminiscent of their swinging sixties,when the great triumvirate of Moore, Hurst and Peters so beautifully bestrode the Boleyn ground under the stylish stewardship of Ron Greenwood.

Allardyce is no Greenwood but he seems to have got the message. Perversely fan power may have saved his job as I suspect the West Ham Board took cognisance of what the supporters were saying about his dour tactics and insisted he changed his up-and-under, long-ball ways.

These last few weeks have marked a remarkable switch in philospophy as Sam plays it again a different way, culminating in that 2-1 win over champions Manchester City on Saturday.

The cosmopolitan crop of players he brought in during the summer are responsible for West Ham's new and refreshingly adventurous approach.

Two of them, Diafra Sakho, whose injury on Saturday is a major blow, and Enner Valencia, form one of the most effective strike forces in the Premiership while Alex Song, on loan from Barcelona, now runs the show almost in the same imperious manner of the late, great Bobby Moore.

The West Ham team that will play in the Olympic Stadium will hope to emulate the great team of the 1960s and 1970s, led by England's 1966 World Cup winning captain Bobby Moore ©Getty Images



West Ham certainly seem to be getting it together, so much so that Big Sam has received praise from soccer's Caesar, Jose Mourinho, and even an impromptu kiss on the cheek from the terminally unloveable Russell Brand.

It is doubtful if the Olympic Stadium will be able to reproduce the atmosphere of the Boleyn, which will be sold to property developers the Galliard Group when the Hammers move.

But West Ham have fallen on their feet in securing an iconic venue for which they will contribute only £15 million ($24 million/€19 million) for a 99-year lease together with annual rent and a share of income as agreed with the LLDC and London Mayor Boris Johnson. Some bargain that.

What's more, they continue to make it abundantly clear there will be no ground-sharing with any other club, least of all Tottenham who need a temporary home for a season before their own new stadium is ready for 2018/19.

West Ham are at pains to point out that their right of veto is not just for one season as originally believed but actually for the duration of the entire year lease.

The renovated Olympic Stadium venue will have 54,000 seats and will also serve as the national competition stadium for athletics in the UK, hosting regional and international events, including the 2017 World Championships. Plus the odd pop concert.

As well as football, the London 2012 Olympic Stadium will host Rugby World Cup matches and the 2017 World Athletics Championships, and maybe the odd pop concert
©Getty Images



The venue in Stratford is also due to host five matches at next year's Rugby World Cup before becoming West Ham's permanent home.

But the danger is that it still will be under-used. So would it be an idea for some other major football fixtures to be held there?

Obviously the FA Cup is out of the equasion because of the agreement with Wembley, as are most England internationals, but what about the the Capital One (i.e. League) Cup and England Under 21 and women's international matches?

And might Frank Warren or Eddie Hearn be interested in staging the occasional blockbuster big fight there?

Meantime West Ham must keep those bubbles blowing and hope that, unlike in the lyrics, their dream does not "fade and die" before the end of next season.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.