In the car this morning, taking my boy to school and talking about the game last night and the almost inevitable relegation to follow, I was just left feeling so desperately sad by the whole situation.
We’re season ticket holders, I care deeply about this club. I love West Ham, I love football and I spend an inordinate amount of time reading the opinions of other like-minded and long-suffering fans. Like many others here on KUMB, I like to think I understand the game, I’m consumed by our players, our tactics, how I’d set us up if I were in charge and who I’d sign.I couldn’t attend last night’s game against Nottingham Forest as it clashed with the boy’s football training… YET in what was a season defining game, I wasn’t remotely bothered that we couldn’t attend, I would simply suffer watching it on the box instead. Incidentally the same decision many others elected to make, judging by the sheer number of empty seats visible while watching.
The apathy which has seemingly infected so many passionate supporters before me has firmly set in and it has left me wondering: how on earth did we get here?
Less than three years removed from having won the first trophy of my lifetime, we find ourselves resigned to relegation after 21 games, in the first week of January, before the 3rd Round of the FA Cup has even started!
In December 2023 we beat Tottenham and Arsenal away, Wolves and Manchester United at home and entered the new year in what now appears a dizzying 6th place. All while breezing through the group stages of Europe yet again.
Despite the series of disastrous events since, I’m not going to make-out that everything was great in the preceding years under David Moyes, plenty of performances underwhelmed, we were often too passive for my liking, had no discernible patterns of play beyond sitting deep and the final five months of his reign in particular were a tough watch.
Having entered 2024 with the hope that we might kick on; the only league matches we would win for the remainder of the season were against Brentford, Everton, Wolves and Luton. While we would finish in 9th place, a goal difference of -14 hinted at the defensive problems to come.
While many point to the departures of Pablo Fornals and Said Benrahama in the January of that season as having weakened the manager's position, both had seemingly lost the manager's trust and fallen out of his first XI, starting only four and five Premier League games respectively. While the inability to replace them, stretched a thin squad, their departure alone doesn’t explain how less than two years later we find ourselves seemingly staring into the abyss.
Fundamentally I believe part of football’s enduring appeal is hope. The hope that if you’re well managed, you set yourself up correctly, your players play to the maximum of their abilities and one or two of the opposition don’t, anyone can beat anyone.
However, all our hope seems to have been eroded. There is no trust in the boardroom, little faith in the man in the dugout (whoever that happens to be), no belief in the players who pull on the shirt and certainly no love for an athletics stadium which continues to drain what little life there is from a supporter base and club on life support.
Like so many others, I had the same sinking feeling the moment Crysencio Summerville’s goal was disallowed. It seemed inevitable that we’d go on to concede and eventually lose the game.
But poor refereeing decisions aside, let’s not kid ourselves that this was a ‘good’ performance. Sure, it was better than the Wolves display, but that can’t be the bar against which we evaluate progress.
While it was a revelation to see we have a striker in Taty Castellanos who can run at something approaching a sprint by PL standards we generally sat too deep, bypassed the midfield, left him isolated and chasing hopeful punts downfield alone.
The gap between our defence and our forwards continues to resemble a gaping chasm, that cedes possession and territory too easily, allowing the opposition to take control of the match and pin us back in our box which we remain comically inept at defending.
Like others, I’ve seen some improvements in Jean-Clair Todibo under this manager, however that we’ve signed a centre back for £35m that seemingly can’t judge the flight of the ball and head it away is peak West Ham.
In the build-up to Forest’s goal, Forest have a long throw from the right-hand side which he completely misjudges resulting in the corner they score from. And somehow he’s still better than the £40m defender that we signed in the same summer. Honestly, if you don’t laugh you’ll cry.
Post-equaliser and as the game, confidence and semblance of any tactical-plan began to slip away from us the manager brought on a target man and appeared to play him in centre-midfield.
I had assumed his introduction might see our new Argentine striker drop in to something resembling the number 10 role Paqueta had been occupying, especially as he looked more adept linking play rather than leading the line and Pablo the opposite.
But alas this would simply become the latest in a long line of baffling managerial decisions which includes fielding full-backs on the wrong side, a CM partnership of Irving and Soucek in back to back games, playing Callum Marshall upfront against Brentford and punting aimless long balls up to him.
Sadly neither Nuno Espirito Santo or the players seemed to have learnt anything from that ill-fated experiment and spent the last 10 minutes of the game thinking the best hope of getting a much-needed goal was to pass the ball ponderously across the backline before hanging up a long diagonal cross to the back post for the only man smaller than Marshall, KWP, in the squad to contest.
Suffice to say this did not result in a season saving equaliser and the majority of extra time was spent watching the referee award Forest soft foul after soft foul.
So 20 short (or long and excruciating depending on you outlook) months on from the disastrous appointment of Julen Lopetegui at the expense of Moyes, I’m thoroughly despondent at the thought of how we got here? How quickly? While getting every decision wrong in the process?
Having witnessed the past 15 years under this board and typing what has ultimately become a long, rambling and self-indulgent monologue, it’s very apparent that the ultimate blame lies with the board.
From one calamitous managerial appointment to the next, from one over-priced signing to the next, from getting into bed with one agent to the next, from flip-flapping between a data-led technical director model and back again, their fingerprints are all over the death of this club.
However, even accounting for all of that, the speed of the decline and the rot really is something to behold and the more I think about it the more I realise that the ‘foundations’ that I thought Moyes had established were built on nothing more than quicksand.
While he might have been over ambitious in targeting the likes of Diaz, Raphina, Nunez, Gallagher and McTomminay and his failure to pivot away from some of these targets to ‘less established’ but ‘attainable’ targets might ultimately have cost him his job, you always got the feeling that he cared, that he valued the funds he had at his disposal and he understood the values of the club.
Upon writing this piece it’s clear there are too many mistakes, poor decisions and blame to apportion. So I’ll simply wrap up by saying how desperately sad it is to see the thing so many of love us and care about so deeply be reduced to this so quickly while feeling so apathetic and helpless in the process.
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