DESPITE fearing the club he supported as a child will be dropping out of the Premier League, Sunderland’s Anton Ferdinand insists he will put sentiment to one side at Upton Park tomorrow.

When Ferdinand, born and brought up in the Peckham area of south east London, followed his brother, Rio, through the ranks at Upton Park, he went on to make almost 150 appearances for West Ham United.

He returns there tomorrow with Sunderland, after being sold for £8m in 2008, and he could inflict a defeat that pushes his former club in to the Premier League relegation zone with four matches remaining.

Ferdinand, however, claims he will not be relaxing and that his only intention is to extend the Black Cats’ 11-point gap over the bottom three.

“I’m a professional and I’m sure the fans understand that,” said Ferdinand. “My family will all be there on Saturday and they will want me to win, first and foremost.

“But they would also like to see West Ham stay up. A draw would probably suit my family best, but not me. I’m going there to do a job.

“The Sunderland fans will be travelling there in vast numbers and I owe it to them to play my heart out.

“The West Ham fans will understand that too. Once the game is over, I will be hoping that West Ham stay up because the Premier League wouldn’t be the Premier League without West Ham in it, in my eyes anyway.”

While keeping Sunderland up has been his main concern in recent weeks, he has been saddened to see the Hammers drop down the table after seven games without a win.

Only a point separates them from third from bottom Burnley going in to the weekend’s round of fixtures and Ferdinand, part of the squad that last suffered relegation in 2003, remains perplexed as to why West Ham find themselves in such trouble.

“It does surprise me – very much so,” he said. “But if you look at the team that went down a few years ago, it had Joe Cole, Michael Carrick, David James, Paolo Di Canio, Jermain Defoe.

“You think to yourself, how did that team go down? But it did. I hope that come the end of the season, West Ham aren’t in that situation again.

“I hope they do what we [WH] did three years ago when we went to Manchester United and won on the last day of the season to stay up.

“There’s no such thing as a team that’s too good to go down from the Premier League. No-one is saying that West Ham are too good to go down, even though they have three England internationals in their starting 11. That counts for nothing. I am confident they will get out of it.”

One defeat in seven has eased Sunderland’s relegation worries, but Ferdinand claims none of Steve Bruce’s squad are ready to start banking on Premier League football again next season just yet.

He said: “The good thing is that we are looking upwards and not downwards, and we want to finish the season strongly and if we do that then this will have been a good season, considering the bad spell we had.

“Results breed confidence.

The boys have been very confident and you could see that in our first-half displays.

“But Saturday was the first time for a while we have played well in both halves, not just starting well and then going backwards.”

■ Sunderland’s new club shop opens next week at The Galleries in Washington, and manager Steve Bruce will perform the official opening. The new store opens for business at 9am on Thursday, April 15. Bruce will be available from 3pm-5pm to sign autographs for fans at the store.

Store opening details: Thursday, April 15, 3pm-5pm, Steve Bruce ribbon cutting & signing session; Friday, April 16, 10am- 2pm, SAFC Foundation speed cage session, Wessington Square; Saturday April 17, 9:30am-noon, Samson and Delilah visit The Galleries; Monday, April 19, 4pm- 5:30pm, Lorik Cana signing session; Tuesday April 20, 4pm-5:30pm, Craig Gordon signing session; Tuesday, April 27, 4pm- 5:30pm, Darren Bent signing session.