As if 2024 could not get any worse. But even on the last day, there was another vicious kick in the teeth.
Or actually from that nasty piece of work Alexis Mac Allister into Jarrod Bowen’s left leg, late, high and predictably unpunished by that dreadful referee Antony Taylor.Bowen, who could be out for as long as eight weeks, has five goals and four assists this season when he has been our only player showing any sort of form. It's a cruel end to a 12-month period that’s best forgotten.
Those who didn’t think we were in a relegation fight, well we are now. We have a manager in Julen Lopetegui whose job is hanging by a thread. And an owner in David Sullivan who has long ago lost the faith of our fans to do the right thing, and quickly.
And it all comes after a shocking home defeat by Liverpool, who cut us to shreds, won 5-0 - and it could have been ten. Losing Bowen in that game, in that way, just about summed up our year.
Watching, it looked like Liverpool had targeted our skipper and effectively kicked him out of the match. Taylor did nothing about it. THere wasn't even a booking for Mac Allister’s assault.
OK, I’m biased, but Bowen has been our only shining light this term, so it’s hard to take. Manchester City next, then Aston Villa in the FA Cup, games it seems Lopetegui has been given to turn around our fortunes. Good luck with that.
Sullivan, it seems, is doing everything he can think of not to sack the Spanish coach. It’s either pride, a financial issue or we can’t find anyone to work for us.
Frankly this has dragged on for too long. I wanted him gone after the spineless 4-1 defeat at Spurs in October. The 3-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest and the terrible performance against Everton should have sealed his fate.
After Everton we have won three in eight, two against Wolves and Southampton and still Sullivan wouldn’t pull the trigger. He had the last international break in which to act and chose not to, in a period when there was time to sort out the issue.
I seriously cannot see where there’s been any real improvement since then. Loopy has been given two games to save his job, then three, then he was expected to win four over the Xmas break. And so it goes on.
We have ended 2024 with just 12 wins from 46 games in all competitions, losing 20. We have conceded 91 goals in that time and only three clubs in the country have conceded more - Luton Town, Carlisle (both relegated) and Morecambe. You cannot average conceding two goals a game and expect anything other than the mess we are in.
The lame, tame performance against Liverpool summed it up. They were brilliant, the best they’ve been for a few seasons and it was all too easy for them. In the mess of Lopetegui’s reign, we have lost any credibility against the big clubs.
And in the pathetic attempts to justify keeping him on, we’ve been told that Bournemouth was a free hit it because they are better than us. Similar against Brighton.
Obviously Liverpool and next Manchester City, but are we seriously expected to accept that we are inferior to Brighton and Bournemouth who, against those two clubs last season, we managed a win and three draws?
And now the injury to our captain just makes the whole scenario much worse. And of course as the transfer window approaches, a power battle seems to be raging. Sullivan, ably assisted by his pet agent Walt Salthouse, looks to be taking over the deals (again) with Tim Steidten - remember him? - sidelined.
We seem to need to sell before we can buy, but with Bowen out there seems no sense in letting Mo Kudus go, or the German tugboat Niclas Fullkrug for that matter. No Michel Antonio, no Bowen and with just Danny Ings to fall back on, selling any front man would be foolhardy. But then you never know with our owner.
These last few days has seen a meltdown from fans on social media, and the abuse dished out to Sullivan has been off the scale.
So we all sit and wait to see how Sullivan reacts to the expected next two defeats, at which point he’ll have to do something positive, with seemingly Michael Carrick as the latest bookies favourite, with word continually that Sullivan has never been a Graham Potter fan.
The day had started so well with news that our most successful manager in 30 years, David Moyes, was getting an OBE for his services to football.
Of course that opened up all the old fault lines over his departure. Fans who wanted him to stay were very quick to underline how much he achieved at West Ham and how much of a decline since his departure.
Moyes was seen in a BBC interview by my old friend and colleague Simon Stone, the Scot sitting happily by a sparkling festive tree. But he even managed to say something really nice about West Ham.
"I had a brilliant time at West Ham, thank you for everybody at West Ham who helped get me the OBE," he said. "Obviously the players who were magnificent, and obviously the (European) trophy was special as well". Pretty classy that, and it must have left a few of his ‘haters’ spluttering.
And no, I’m not making a case for a third spell in charge, you don’t usually go back to a club twice let alone three times. But one supporter put it to me that had Sullivan’s contract offer - quickly withdrawn - allowed Moyes to continue to oversee the transfer policy, would he have signed it and where would we be now?
Just a thought, the second half of last season was a disaster, but if Sullivan had acted differently would we be in the position we are in now? I think I’ll leave it there.
One final point from a rollercoaster of a day. It seems our beloved ‘chief executive’ Karren Brady got an £80,000 increase in her wages last year, and that at time that she is pursuing a policy to screw money out of kids and the old folk in this never-ending concessions row.
Things don’t change, do they? Just to say to all our supporters, my match going mates, and all at KUMB, Happy New Year one and all, it surely can’t be as bad as the last 12 months.
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