West Ham will handle play-off pressure: Allardyce

May 19, 2012 by feitian0025

Sam Allardyce insists his West Ham stars can cope with the pressure of facing Blackpool with a lucrative place in the Premier League on the line in Saturday’s Championship play-off final at Wembley.

Allardyce’s side cracked under the strain of battling for automatic promotion from English football’s second tier and allowed Reading and Southampton to secure the first two spots in the top flight.

But the east London outfit rebounded impressively in the play-off semi-final against Cardiff, cruising to a 5-0 aggregate victory that kept them on course for an immediate return to the Premier League after last season’s relegation.

Now they must pass one final test against Ian Holloway’s Blackpool, who were relegated along with West Ham 12 months ago and are also desperate to seize the estimated £90 million ($142 million) at stake in world football’s single richest match.

Promotion to the Premier League is worth around £50 million in increased television income, gate receipts and commercial revenue, with another £40 million worth of parachute payments guaranteed to cushion the blow of relegation from the elite.

Allardyce, boosted by the return to fitness of Wales midfielder Jack Collison, has no doubts West Ham’s players are capable of dealing with the high-stakes clash.

“It’s a fabulous game to be involved in, particularly for the players,” Allardyce said.

“We are the favourites with all the pressure on us, so we have to handle that as we have done all season. Hopefully we can deliver and beat Blackpool for third time this season.

“We will treat them with the utmost respect and make sure we try to expose the weaknesses they have in their side if we can and as early as we can.

“We’ve got to live with the pressure to spur us on to give us our best performance. The pressure should bring the best out of us and not be one of those games where we actually freeze on the big stage.”