I listened to an interview with Dave Bassett on some podcast or other, he said that within football it was common knowledge (or words to that effect). Would’ve been moot if we hadn’t chucked away a 2-0 lead at Chelsea, of course!
I think it looks dodgy but who knows? We went down because we were shabite, as we did 12 years later with a helping hand from Jagielka against Wigan, which looks way more dodgy than this, rather than West Ham cheating!