In the hysterical overreaction to the most high-profile VAR intervention in Premier League history, amid a rush to blame the system, a question was posed by too many: what if it was the decision to sentence West Ham to relegation. It wasn’t, and not merely because Callum Wilson’s apparent equaliser against Arsenal was rightly chalked off for at least one foul on David Raya, or because it would have only earned a point, and they finished two behind Tottenham.
But there were decisions that condemned West Ham to the drop. Their own. Far too many of them. Next month brings the third anniversary of the Conference League victory. It could have been the platform for greater success; three years of abject choices instead followed. The unlovely, unloved London Stadium played host to Leverkusen two years ago. Lincoln will visit next season.
Their Conference League-winning manager could not save them, David Moyes’ Everton losing at Tottenham on Sunday to render West Ham’s win over Leeds irrelevant. Moyes’ departure in 2024 came amid a sense his reign in east London had run its course, even though the Scot finished ninth; but Moyes stands alone. There have been three managerial appointments since him, all unsuccessful. West Ham’s strange addiction to appointing uncharismatic figures who were incapable of galvanising the fanbase brought Manuel Pellegrini in between Moyes’ stints, Julen Lopetegui, Graham Potter and Nuno Espirito Santo after him.
Moyes could be faulted for the way some of the windfall received for Declan Rice was squandered: his midfield replacements, Edson Alvarez and James Ward-Prowse, arrived for a combined £65m and are now both out on loan. Yet others are more culpable for wretched recruitment, the former director of football Tim Steidten in particular.
Niclas Fullkrug, a cult hero of German football, a regular scorer in the Bundesliga, only mustered three goals for West Ham and – spot the theme – was loaned out. Max Kilman, a £40m centre-back, was of such little appeal to Nuno he would change system to avoid picking a defender he managed at Wolves. The Brazilian winger Luis Guilherme came and went, scoring no goals, creating none. Another winger, Adama Traore, was bought and given one Premier League start. The goalkeeper Mads Hermansen, a Potter target, was dropped early in the season and ended it with one of the lowest save percentages in the Premier League.
There was the odd success – Mateus Fernandes, Wilson, the loanee Axel Disasi, arguably Taty Castellanos – but too few. West Ham could have afforded some missteps in the transfer market, but not so many. Not without a strategy: they could look at the top 10 and see clubs with more coherent thinking, more modern practices, more success in the market: Brighton, Brentford, Bournemouth, Sunderland. West Ham became an anachronism.
On the pitch, West Ham gave themselves a false start to the season. They should have sacked Potter last summer after early evidence he and they were a rather imperfect fit. They instead began the campaign losing 3-0 at Sunderland, in a hapless display, and 5-1 to Chelsea. Their fourth game was a 3-0 defeat to Spurs. At one stage, it looked like they might go down on goal difference; it was already awful after four games.
Defensively, West Ham have been too poor and too porous for too long. They have conceded 201 goals in their last three league campaigns. Their goalkeeping issues were a reason, but not the only one. Nuno had seemed an answer, and not just as a former goalkeeper. He arrived at the end of September having overseen three seasons where clubs outside the supposed big six had one of the six best defensive records.
Yet, for much of his time, he did not appear the Nuno of old. This could have been his misguided rebound relationship, jumping into West Ham’s arms after his sacking by Nottingham Forest. The Hammers did not keep a clean sheet in their first 19 games under the Portuguese. At his best, Nuno brings a clarity of thought; at West Ham he often felt confused.
There was, infamously, the experiment with inverted full-backs at Brentford, the left-footed Ollie Scarles on the right, the right-footed Kyle Walker-Peters on the right. There was, in the penultimate game, the mistake of playing five at the back at Newcastle, which Nuno had to correct with a 26th-minute substitution and change of shape. There was the experiment with Lucas Paqueta as a false nine; that the Brazilian, the most technically gifted player at the club, left a sinking ship in mid-season was scarcely to his credit.
West Ham ultimately paid for a terrible Christmas, with one point from six games either side of it, a 3-0 defeat to a previously winless Wolves perhaps the worst of some terrible results. Briefly, it seemed Nuno then found a formula with a 4-4-2 formation. West Ham won six of 13 games; only four teams took more points after the middle of January, but they were playing catch-up after being seven from safety.
And while Disasi and Castellanos were difference-makers, the Argentinian’s strike partner, Pablo, was a £22m signing who scored no goals. If, at one stage, the two forwards threatened to be the new Paul Kitson and John Hartson, a duo to keep them up, instead 2026 had similarities with 2003, when West Ham went down with a high points tally for a relegated team.
But the club at least got one thing right. In a statement after their fate was confirmed, they said: “The plain truth is that we have not been good enough.” With the ownership of David Sullivan, the management of Lopetegui, Potter and Nuno, the buying both of Steidten and after him, and a host of players, that rings true. When the West Ham of 2002-03, of Jermain Defoe and Paolo Di Canio, Joe Cole and Michael Carrick, were demoted, the cliché was that they were too good to go down. The side of 2025-26, however, were too bad to stay up.
