It doesn’t follow that you come straight back; or even that you come back at all. Consolidating, regrouping, relaunching in the league below is a myth. The problem for West Ham United is that not only are they a bad Premier League team, they don’t look capable of being a good Championship one, either. It’s Queens Park Rangers in the FA Cup on Sunday. Let’s see if they give them a game.
With the exception of Wrexham, every club presently in the Championship has played in England’s top division. Not the Premier League necessarily, although 19 of the 23 have been there. And while Preston North End (relegated in 1961), Bristol City (1980), Oxford United (1988) and Millwall (1990) skew the numbers, the average time the present Championship clubs have spent outside tier one is 16.4 years.
Even removing the four clubs that were relegated from the old Division One, the current Championship sides have spent an average of 10.2 years outside the Premier League. And that includes Leicester City and Southampton, who are at present only down for one year but are surely destined for more.
West Ham have not won a league game since November 8 and their squad seems incapable of much improvement
GARETH EVANS/SPORTIMAGE
So any West Ham supporter contemplating events at Molineux on Saturday and worrying about the rest of this season is underplaying the crisis. Think of the next decade, or more. If West Ham go down in this state, when do they get back? Who joins a failing team, at a stadium that is bitterly resented, full of angry locals harking back to a golden age that never was. These are most of the ingredients that produced the modern Sheffield Wednesday, relegated from the Premier League 26 years ago and very much counting.
When a big, well-supported club goes down, anything other than an immediate return becomes problematic. Wednesday fans have never turned on Hillsborough, but there are enough of them to make it inhospitable when times are tough. The Championship is littered with clubs that thought they were major league players: Derby County, West Bromwich Albion, Stoke City.
If a club of that size stays too long in the league below, once the parachute money runs out, recruitment targets change. Value is sought in lesser leagues or from smaller clubs abroad. Youth products become increasingly important. And suddenly players that are unused to the exposure have a crowd of 30,000 or more breathing down their necks. The Championship is in the top five leagues in Europe for attendance. The noise that greets a misplaced pass can be very unnerving to the new left back from Port Vale.
Paquetá and Bowen are among a handful of players that would be sought by other clubs if West Ham were relegated
JORDAN PETTITT/PA
So big is not necessarily better. The top ten clubs in the Championship by attendance include this season’s top three — Coventry City, Middlesbrough and Ipswich Town — but also the clubs in 8th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th and 22nd place, where it won’t be as much fun. West Ham have a 60,000-capacity arena. If it’s half-empty in the Championship that’s no good, but nor is 50,000, all furious. This was always the danger of the move to the London Stadium. Relegation carried enormous jeopardy.
So, sack the board? It’s not as easy as that. David Sullivan cannot be sacked. He owns the club. He can be bought out, but who wants to buy West Ham? Not Daniel Kretinsky, the Czech billionaire who owns 27 per cent of it. If he wanted West Ham, he could have had it long ago, certainly when Sullivan’s co-owner and ally David Gold died three years ago. The Gold family still own 25.1 per cent, which would give Kretinsky the holding to mount a full takeover and oust Sullivan completely. So what is he waiting for? Somebody else, it would seem.
Fan dissatisfaction has been clear to see and a large stadium may not be a help in the event of relegation
KATIE CHAN/EVERY SECOND
In the meantime, supporter anger focuses on Sullivan and his vice-chair, Baroness Brady, whose financial interest in the club is as part of the group of Other Investors, who hold 1.1 per cent. Nobody gets much say for 1.1 per cent but Brady was the face of the stadium move and the supporters dare not associate Kretinsky with the current mess, being so desperate for him to be their saviour. Yet why would he take West Ham on in their present state? It would be like buying Windsor Castle when it was in flames.
So this is Sullivan’s crisis? Yes. West Ham are paying the price for a succession of incoherent actions since June 7, 2023, when the club won the Conference League final against Fiorentina. Within 24 hours Sullivan announced Declan Rice was to be sold and it was all downhill from there. And smaller clubs lose their best players all the time. It happened to Crystal Palace, Brighton & Hove Albion, Brentford and Bournemouth in the summer; it is happening to Bournemouth again right now.
West Ham’s recruitment, however, is at nowhere near the level of those clubs. If this squad was assembled on the cheap, it would be understandable, but Mateus Fernandes, Jean-Clair Todibo and Max Kilman each cost more than Arsenal paid for Jurrien Timber. Edson Álvarez and Gianluca Scamacca, both now departed (the former on loan), came in at more than Manchester City’s purchase of Rayan Cherki; and Crysencio Summerville, Niclas Fullkrüg and James Ward-Prowse were more expensive than Carlos Baleba at Brighton.
Supporters have made their feelings known about the ownership, with the club’s strategy having failed since their Conference League triumph
MICHAEL REGAN/GETTY IMAGES
Since Rice left, worse money has been thrown after bad money at West Ham. If they go down — and that really is the world’s smallest if after Saturday — no more than three signings would be sought by other clubs. Jarrod Bowen, obviously, Lucas Paquetá, cheaply, because he is inconsistent and flawed temperamentally, and El Hadji Malick Diouf, because what he brings to the team going forward outweighs his defensive frailties and he is only 21 and can learn. Given the turnover of talent at West Ham, that is a desperately poor return.
With recruitment this weak, it is hardly a surprise West Ham turned to Nuno Espírito Santo with his links to the agent Jorge Mendes, in their present plight. It has echoes of the time Avram Grant was appointed, no doubt in the hope of claiming some of his friend Roman Abramovich’s discards. Yet when Mendes also has significant clients at Aston Villa and Fulham, are West Ham going to be offered the top of the shop? Would Mendes steer one of his protégés towards a club that looked doomed? Those Abramovich rebounds never materialised either, and West Ham went down under Grant.
Nuno’s thunder face at Molineux told its own story. He rushed into the job, appointed on Saturday, in charge at Everton on Monday, because he thought he could make an impact and knew a fix. Yet West Ham’s last win was on November 8 against Burnley and Saturday’s performance suggested the worst team in the league. “I don’t think this team deserve to be in this situation,” the defender Konstantinos Mavropanos said, and he’s right. They are flattered by 18th place, when so comprehensively outplayed and outfought by bottom club Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Nuno’s desired improvements after joining in September have not come to fruition
ROB NEWELL – CAMERASPORT VIA GETTY IMAGES
West Ham were lazy and uncommitted given the greatest opportunity with clubs defeated around them. Nuno spoke of a lack of effort, which is unforgivable in the circumstances. How he ever imagined he had the tools with this squad is the biggest mystery. He inherited a group that was not fit for purpose, lethargic, toothless and arguably the most poorly assembled in the club’s history given its cost. That he hasn’t done anything with it is not the surprise, more that he thought he could.
West Ham are a team assembled without strategy, and a flaw of that magnitude will be as ruinous in the Championship as in the Premier League. This cannot just be muddled through. The club threw a further £47million at the squad on Friday on two players without Premier League experience, then turned in a performance that makes it almost certain the Championship is their destination. As a metaphor for the disconnection that has placed them in this predicament it could hardly be bettered.
Regroup in the league below? Without smart, strategic change, without coherent direction, without a plan, they’re Preston.