West Ham sit just one point above the relegation zone ahead of Bournemouth’s visit
(Picture: Getty Images)The Premier League table this morning made ominous reading for West Ham. Good results yesterday for strugglers Southampton, Leicester and Aston Villa suddenly sees the Hammers hovering just a place above the relegation zone ahead of tonight’s meeting with Bournemouth.
But more troubling, in the long-term at least, is what is going on at the top end. Following West Ham’s defeat to Liverpool last midweek, the League’s top seven comprised, for the first time this season, of the traditional ‘big six’ and, one year on from their Saudi takeover, Newcastle. Liverpool’s shock defeat at Nottingham Forest on Saturday means the order did not last long, but Newcastle’s statement win at Tottenham now has the inevitable gatecrashers into fourth.
David Moyes has prided himself on turning a team of relegation candidates into what he regularly calls the “best of the rest” in each of the past two seasons (the Hammers actually finished sixth in 2021, above both Arsenal and Spurs) and the club’s record window of spending this summer was a statement of ambition designed to bridge what, last season, had seemed only the smallest of gaps.
Now though, the game is changing, and if there is to be a ‘big six’ disruptor this term, they look far more likely to be playing in black and white than claret and blue.
Newcastle’s rise is a factor beyond West Ham’s control, and such is the limitless wealth involved that nothing is likely to hold off the Toon charge for long. Even so, the Hammers are not exactly keeping up their end of the bargain.
The mood around the London Stadium compared with the six clubs either side of them in the table, all of whom have at some point already this term been riddled by crisis, rightly suggests West Ham’s League position is not quite reflective of performances, nor does it tell the full story.
11 games have delivered just three wins, the other eight matches littered with hard-luck stories and close calls: Jarrod Bowen’s penalty miss at Anfield, some unwanted referee intervention at St Mary’s and, going back further, a terrible VAR call at Stamford Bridge.
Injuries have played a significant part, first in a sluggish start to the season, and then in checking the momentum built post-international break, forcing Moyes away from a winning formula upon which he had only just settled.
Then there has been Europe, a first-world problem reserved for the elite, though the Hammers have been particularly challenged, playing more matches than any other Premier League side.
These are all excuses, each of them valid, but none of them will do. West Ham wanted to kick on again this season, but in the Premier League, at least, the reality of what it will take just to tread water has well and truly set in.
