What a week that was!
- Friday, 11th September 2026
- Allen Cummings
A week is a long time in politics, so they say - and right now that’s probably truer than ever. But a week is a long time in football too!
Let the new challenge begin
- Monday, 3rd August 2026
- Allen Cummings
And just like that, the ‘close season’ is about to end, we’ve entered the final month of the metrological summer (thank the Lord) and our national winter game is gearing up for a new season ahead. How time flies when you’re enjoying yourself.
Wave goodbye to the past - embrace the future
- Monday, 8th June 2026
- Allen Cummings
The final Sunday of the 2025/26 Premier League season, when our ultimate fate in a traumatic campaign was finally sealed, was just over two weeks ago.
Cut the Malick man some slack
- Friday, 8th May 2026
- Allen Cummings
I’m a life long West Ham fan – like many of us here on KUMB – and I’ll defend my fellow Hammers in a battle whenever and wherever I see fit. We’re a family! Sticking together is what we do. All for one and one for all, as a Musketeer once famously said.
A disappointment, not a disaster
- Monday, 23rd March 2026
- Allen Cummings
I can’t help feeling I’ve missed something since Sunday afternoon. It’s like I closed my eyes and when I opened them again time had leaped forward from March to May.
We're bang on tune for surviving now
- Monday, 9th March 2026
- Allen Cummings
Last Wednesday evening, following our crucial victory over Fulham and the resulting massive boost of three priceless points – having negotiated the bleak riverside trudge back to the underground, and survived the farcical squeeze trying to get into Putney Bridge station and its single District Line platform (don’t try telling me Stratford, with its numerous travel options is worse than that) - I eventually climbed back into my car just before midnight.
Refocus and go again
- Thursday, 5th February 2026
- Allen Cummings
Has our season suddenly imploded once again based on 45 minutes of football at Stamford Bridge last Saturday evening?
Double swoop is a blast from the past
- Wednesday, 28th January 2026
- Allen Cummings
Is it a coincidence that the recent upturn in fortune, albeit still in its infancy it has to be said, has coincided with the arrival of Taty Castellanos and Pablo Felipe?
A point-scoring palava
- Friday, 23rd January 2026
- Allen Cummings
While we were all still revelling in the delight of a weekend ridiculing those arrogant spuds from the north side of London, courtesy of that dramatic 93rd minute winner from Callum Wilson, a little lightbulb moment had switched on in the head of a certain diminutive individual in leafy Essex.
Support Scarles - don't slate him!
- Tuesday, 30th December 2025
- Allen Cummings
There’s nothing quite like a bit of downtime as an opportunity for reflection on what’s going on around you.
Quit the negativity, we're on the right road
- Thursday, 18th December 2025
- Allen Cummings
After a really encouraging performance at the Amex against Brighton, where we were only denied all three points by a truly appalling referee and an equally complicit VAR decision, the reverse we suffered at the hands of Aston Villa last Sunday was doubly hard to swallow.
Is Nuno slowly turning the corner?
- Monday, 17th November 2025
- Allen Cummings
Back-to-back wins – and maybe more importantly, both at home where we need to be strongest but where we have been nothing short of awful so often for so long - doesn’t mean our crisis is over. Not by a long way!
Lucas' Latin love-in: coming to an end?
- Tuesday, 28th October 2025
- Allen Cummings
£51m man Lucas Paqueta, bought from Lyon in 2022 appeared to tick all the boxes when he first arrived. A flair player with tricks and flicks to die for - and the air of a man supremely confident in his own ability.
Will Nuno have a place for Soucek?
- Wednesday, 15th October 2025
- Allen Cummings
Nuno Espirito Santo’s first two games – one a creditable away point at Everton and the other a not unexpected defeat against table-topping Arsenal - both came without our new Head Coach having the option of using the services of Tomas Soucek in his squad.
Moyes will know Potter's pain
- Friday, 26th September 2025
- Allen Cummings
Oh to be a fly on the wall at the Hill Dickinson Stadium on Monday night if Graham Potter is invited into the manager’s office for a glass of ‘red’.
Too much to ask for?
- Tuesday, 23rd September 2025
- Allen Cummings
I should come clean from the outset – I was all in favour of Graham Potter taking over from Julen Lopetegui midway through last season. To be fair, I suppose anyone taking over from the unintelligible Loopy Lou would have been viewed as an improvement.
Fab's back at 40 - and we love it
- Friday, 12th September 2025
- Allen Cummings
When West Ham officially announced that Lukasz Fabianski would be re-joining the club on a short term contract, the thought occurred to me how many of those who bemoaned the fact that we had the oldest squad in the Premier League at the end of last season – before the departure of Aaron Cresswell, Danny Ings and Fabianski himself, would be up in arms again at the re-signing of a 40-year-old goalkeeper.
Todibo: time to cut our losses?
- Saturday, 30th August 2025
- Allen Cummings
It’s getting very late in the transfer window – even for our club Last Minute FC – but I fear we may have missed a trick in not trying to move on the player who was in effect our first acquisition in this agonising summer transfer window – Jean-Clair Todibo.
Antonio deserved better than this
- Tuesday, 5th August 2025
- Allen Cummings
Whatever you think about Michail Antonio as a player, and he has divided opinion especially in recent years, I can’t help feeling more than a little upset that he now appears to have gone for good and we’ll never see him, with his formidable style of play, in a West Ham shirt again.
Too valuable to be sold - especially for £12m!
- Friday, 1st August 2025
- Allen Cummings
There’s an old saying that goes: “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone”! Meaning some things we take for granted and don’t really appreciate them until they are no longer there.
Goodbye and good riddance
- Tuesday, 15th July 2025
- Allen Cummings
I find it astonishing the fury and furore that has been generated amongst some of our fanbase around Mohammad Kudus’ departure to Tottenham.
Nothing changes until the biggest change of all
- Thursday, 3rd July 2025
- Allen Cummings
It doesn’t seem to matter how often we say it, shout it, write it or talk about it, “get out of our club!” falls on deaf ears with the one person it’s aimed at.
Any scapegoat will do
- Tuesday, 17th June 2025
- Allen Cummings
So after the brief, and hard to fathom, six-day sabbatical, the summer transfer window has re-opened for business.
West Ham weren't terrible - just not good enough!
- Tuesday, 20th May 2025
- Allen Cummings
I'm not quite sure what I expected on Sunday against Forest – although to be honest that’s mostly been the case with West Ham throughout the 65+ years I’ve supported them!
A season to forget - but don't write if off yet
- Thursday, 15th May 2025
- Allen Cummings
What a difference one game and three points can make.
JCT: Stick or Twist?
- Thursday, 8th May 2025
- Allen Cummings
It’s common knowledge, now that our Premier League status has finally been confirmed, that central defender Jean-Clair Todibo will be our first paid for addition of this summer transfer window.
The leaks Potter could do without
- Friday, 25th April 2025
- Allen Cummings
It’s not very often I concern myself with events going on in a particular part of north London. It’s certainly rarer still that I particularly care what goes on there!
Ferguson's future - is Potter up for the fight?
- Monday, 31st March 2025
- Allen Cummings
I have to admit there had been very little on the football front to capture my attention over the past 14 days or so of Premier League inactivity.
Potterball: necessity, not design
- Monday, 17th March 2025
- Allen Cummings
So what actually is Potterball? The derogatory made-up word banded around by some in our fanbase as a reference to the style of play Graham Potter has adopted since his arrival as successor to Julen Lopetegui.
JWP: a player our GP prescribed
- Monday, 10th March 2025
- Allen Cummings
When Graham Potter, after much media speculation, was finally confirmed as West Ham’s new head coach on a two-and-a-half year contract, the mid-season transfer window had already been open for nine days.
In Potter we trust
- Tuesday, 25th February 2025
- Allen Cummings
It was towards the end of last year I wrote a blog for KUMB saying never, in my 65 years-plus of supporting West Ham, had I felt so detached from the club that has been such a constant part of my life.
Potter's happy - we should be too
- Thursday, 13th February 2025
- Allen Cummings
There were an awful lot of West Ham fans left disappointed by the lack of activity in the recent January transfer window – and very vocal in sharing their feelings across social media. Although it’s also fair to say for those of us with reasonable memory it wasn’t totally unexpected.
Two to be grateful for
- Friday, 31st January 2025
- Allen Cummings
As Monday's transfer deadline draws ever closer the usual social media hysteria continues to rachet up to what appears to near suicidal levels for some of our fanbase.
Tourists - why do we dislike them so much?
- Monday, 13th January 2025
- Allen Cummings
This is a tricky one I know – so I’ve got my grandad’s old Home Guard tin hat at the ready. Could we have a civilised debate about ‘tourists’? Not visitors to our country but visitors to our home ground – the London Stadium.
Lucky Lopetegui - but for how much longer?
- Thursday, 2nd January 2025
- Allen Cummings
My old mum was a great one for her sayings. She had one for almost every occasion and every eventuality.
What's the point when the bar's set so low?
- Saturday, 21st December 2024
- Allen Cummings
So what can we as fans expect from the visit of Brighton to the London Stadium this weekend? If it’s anything like what our esteemed leadership appears happy to accept, the answer has to be ‘not a lot’!
Christmas cheer - of a kind - but for how long?
- Wednesday, 18th December 2024
- Allen Cummings
We have to respect the point we got from our visit to Bournemouth!
The agony for Bowen is clear to see
- Monday, 9th December 2024
- Allen Cummings
The saddest sight for me last Tuesday evening – apart from the King Power’s big screen showing ‘Leicester City 3 West Ham United 1 at the end of another shambolic 90+ minutes of football – was a little earlier in the evening a close-up TV shot of a dejected and despondent-looking Jarrod Bowen after yet another lung-bursting run forward had come to nothing!
I've become a reluctant Hammer - and I hate it
- Monday, 25th November 2024
- Allen Cummings
I saw a comment from a West Ham social media account the other day which actually resonated with me! That in itself is something of a rarity.
Time to give Paqueta the chop
- Friday, 1st November 2024
- Allen Cummings
Not that very long ago it’s a decision only a madman would have even contemplated let alone acted upon.
Lopetegui's made his mark once - would he do it again?
- Tuesday, 8th October 2024
- Allen Cummings
The more I’m seeing of Julen Lopetegui, the more I’m warming to him.
Lopetegui sailing close to the wind?
- Tuesday, 24th September 2024
- Allen Cummings
I’m not a sailor, by any stretch of the imagination.
The ins and outs of a West Ham summer
- Tuesday, 10th September 2024
- Allen Cummings
There was considerable excitement when the summer transfer window opened and it was reported Tim Steidten had jumped aboard a flight to Brazil – not for the first time it has to be said – to secure the signature of what we were told was an exciting 18-year-old Brazilian kid by the name of Luis Guilherme.
Roll up, roll up! Players for sale!
- Saturday, 24th August 2024
- Allen Cummings
Car Boot sales are traditionally a Sunday affair – where those of us with items surplus to our needs hope to move them on to someone willing to take them off our hands.
Is Duran still Lopetegui's man?
- Monday, 19th August 2024
- Allen Cummings
Julen Lopetegui should've been banging on Sullivan’s door first thing on Monday morning insisting he stumped up the cash to finally get the player who had sealed all three points for Aston Villa on Saturday – and left us with nothing on a day of great expectation.
The fight must go on
- Friday, 16th August 2024
- Allen Cummings
'Boycott the Betway' may have run its course. The game against Celta Vigo may have passed. That particular moment may have gone.
What a song and dance
- Friday, 26th July 2024
- Allen Cummings
There is no way I can pass myself off as a child of the 1980s – or any kind of expert of the music from that era.
No compromise
- Monday, 8th July 2024
- Allen Cummings
The signing of Max Kilman – almost certain to be the biggest outlay by West Ham in this current transfer window – is an important moment early in the reign of our new head coach Julen Lopetegui.
Stranger things have happened
- Friday, 28th June 2024
- Allen Cummings
I know there’s still a way to go yet until the new season begins – and maybe more importantly right now, until the current transfer window closes.
Time for Tim to stand up and be counted
- Monday, 10th June 2024
- Allen Cummings
Reputations will undoubtably be on the line when the new Premier League season kicks off on the weekend of 17/18 August.
The King is dead! Long live the King!
- Friday, 24th May 2024
- Allen Cummings
Maybe that’s a tad over-dramatic in describing the end of David Moyes’ reign as West Ham manager, and the start of Julen Lopetegui’s tenure as Head Coach (spot the subtle difference) - with a start date of 1 July now officially announced.
Roll up! Roll up! The fun's only just begun
- Friday, 26th April 2024
- Allen Cummings
It looks like the circus is back in town...
The final curtain can't come too soon
- Sunday, 21st April 2024
- Allen Cummings
I love my football – always have done! It’s been my go-to salvation for as long as I can remember being on this earth.