West Ham remained hopeful today that the Premier League will take no further action regarding the Carlos Tevez affair, despite instigating a new inquiry together with the Football Association.

A club insider revealed that, while they were "surprised" that the Premier League, who fined the Upton Park club £5.5million for breaking League rules on the registration of Tevez, are re-opening the case, they will co-operate fully with any investigation.

Chief executive Scott Duxbury's position at the club also remains solid despite this new twist in what is becoming a long, drawn-out football saga.

The Premier League want to look at the case again following the latest independent commission's findings, in which chairman Justice Griffiths had questioned whether West Ham had, in fact, torn up the third-party agreement regarding Tevez for the last three matches of the season as stated to the Premier League at the time.

In his findings, Griffiths said: "If the Premier League had known what Mr Duxbury for West Ham was saying to Mr [Kia] Joorabchian's solicitor following the commission's decision, we are confident that the Premier League would have suspended Mr Tevez's registration as a West Ham player."

Joorabchian was Tevez's agent at the time and his lawyer, Graham Shear, gave evidence to the Griffiths' commission in which he said that Duxbury had provided verbal assurances that the third-party agreement still existed, despite the chief executive having informed the Premier League that the deal had been terminated.

West Ham have maintained that the third-party agreement had been torn up as stated while they intended to wait until after the season before discussing a summer transfer for Tevez with Joorabchian. West Ham have 14 days in which to submit evidence.

Manager Gianfranco Zola, meanwhile, has reiterated his desire to keep his big players and has assured the club's fans he has a good relationship with Wales striker Craig Bellamy, who is still being linked with a move to Manchester City.

With squad players such as Matthew Etherington, Calum Davenport and Lee Bowyer having either moved on or about to leave the club, Zola (below) believes the income will help him hang onto his big players.

"Yes, I want the big players to stay," he said. "I have a very good relationship with Craig, for example. He is a very positive influence."

Zola did admit, though, that although he needed to trim his senior squad, he does run the risk of leaving himself stretched if he hits injury problems similar to those experienced by former Hammers manager Alan Curbishley last season.

"We could be stretched but at the end of the day it is a risk we had to take because we had people here who just weren't getting a game and that is even worse.

"We are confident that we can keep the players fit but if we do have injuries we have young players here who can come in and do the job.

"Junior Stanislas, for example, has done well on loan at Southend while Kyel Reid has played particularly well at Blackpool.

"James Tomkins is back from Derby also while Freddie Sears is improving all the time.

"Our project is to make the team compete. We know we can't spend £200million so we want to attract talented young players.

"It doesn't mean we will always go abroad, we already have young talented young British players at this club.

"We want others to come here and get better."

Midfielder Valon Behrami is fit to return to the team for tomorrow's trip to Newcastle, while Matthew Upson and captain Lucas Neill are also included after missing the FA Cup tie against Barnsley.