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11 hours ago
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West Ham jumped on the relegation train in 2022. Bereft of vision at the top of the club, they failed to realise where they were heading. One internal figure was worried but his voice did not carry enough weight. There were three consecutive years of European football and there was no impending sense of doom when West Ham beat Fiorentina in the Conference League final in June 2023.
Yet that glorious night in Prague is a distant memory. The Championship now awaits and, much like when the West Ham went down in 2003, this is a failure that could have been avoided with better planning.
West Ham have finally received the punishment they deserve, 10 years after promising that leaving Upton Park for the London Stadium would take the club to the next level. This is David Sullivan’s mess. West Ham’s largest shareholder has listened to the wrong people, made the wrong calls and will be making the wrong choice if he clings on to power.
Nothing will change until Sullivan sells up. Those who say West Ham fans were wrong to want David Moyes to step down as manager at the end of the 2023-24 season miss the point. Momentum was fading. The league form under Moyes began to slide in January 2022. An ageing squad needed rejuvenation but recruitment was mixed and cracks were starting to appear.
The unknown is whether West Ham should have kept the offer of a new deal for Moyes on the table at the start of 2024. In retrospect one of the Scot’s great gifts was having the resilience to shield West Ham from the dysfunction of Sullivanism. The problem, it seems, was less wanting someone a little more exciting than Moyes, more trusting Sullivan with what came next. Julen Lopetegui joined but clashed with senior players, identified poor targets and was fired after six months.
West Ham tumbled into chaos. Moyes and Lopetegui fell out with Tim Steidten, who had joined as technical director shortly after the Conference League final. Bringing in Steidten was one of Sullivan’s biggest mistakes. West Ham wasted the £105m received from Arsenal for Declan Rice during the German’s first window. They have not recovered. Sources feel Steidten, who departed in February 2025, must shoulder much of the blame. Spending £91.8m on Konstantinos Mavropanos, Jean-Clair Todibo and Maximilian Kilman left West Ham with some of the worst central-defensive options in the league. Edson Álvarez, the £35m Mexico midfielder, has spent the season on loan at Fenerbahce. Steidten, who departed in February 2025, was determined to push through the signing of the injury-prone Germany striker Niclas Füllkrug, who scored three goals in 26 league appearances before joining Milan on loan last January.
Füllkrug, 33, has two years left on his deal. The money spent on players with no resale value is baffling. Concerns over meeting the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability regulations grew and Mohammed Kudus was sold to Tottenham. Graham Potter, Lopetegui’s replacement, worried about a quiet dressing room. Yet leaders left and were not replaced. Jarrod Bowen never stopped trying but sources feel the winger has been weighed down by the captaincy.
Potter and his recruitment chief, Kyle Macaulay, who is now at Manchester United, had their priorities wrong last summer. They directed much of the budget on a ball-playing goalkeeper, Mads Hermansen, and an inexperienced left-back, El Hadji Malick Diouf. They felt West Ham could survive with Callum Wilson and Füllkrug as their strikers. The hunt for midfield reinforcements dragged on. There was frustration that only after a poor start did moves for Soungoutou Magassa and Mateus Fernandes progress.
The lack of urgency was damning. Concessions from set pieces mounted. Desperate overtures to one of the Premier League’s best sporting directors were politely declined. With some on the board opposed to the idea of replacing Potter with Slaven Bilic, a pursuit of Nuno Espírito Santo played out in public.
The hope was that Nuno could revive an ailing team. It was slow going. He seemed bruised after his messy exit from Nottingham Forest. Nuno could not bring his own backroom staff, so he relied on West Ham’s youth coaches. Eventually he added Rui Barbosa, his goalkeeping coach. Paco Jémez brought attacking intent after joining as a coach in January. A source puts West Ham’s attacking improvement down to Jémez’s influence rather than any big change from Nuno.
But a lot of the damage was already done. Nuno’s penchant for weird team selections flared when he played inverted full-backs during dismal defeats by Brentford and Leeds in October. The mood plummeted. Some staff members found Nuno distant and hard to please. There were departures from the analysis department and a second sacking of the season was on the cards after West Ham lost 3-0 to Wolves on 3 January. Preparations for a crucial home against Forest three days later were not encouraging. Everyone but the 11 starters were sent out of the room by Nuno, who told those present he did not trust anyone else in the building.
The situation looked irretrievable. West Ham went 10 games without a win and dropped seven points off 17th after losing from 1-0 up against Forest. Squandered leads were a recurring theme. Nuno often invited pressure by making negative substitutions when West Ham were in front.
Some players found Nuno uncommunicative and felt unable to force their way into his plans. One was left none the wiser after asking Nuno why he was not playing. Others found his tactics and training methods confusing. Wilson looked poised to leave before giving West Ham hope with a last-minute winner at Tottenham in January.
There was a brief surge. Lucas Paquetá had been cleared of betting breaches after a Football Association investigation but the Brazil midfielder’s mind was elsewhere and selling him to Flamengo brought clarity. Nuno hit upon a 4-4-2 system and found balance. Fernandes grew in stature, Mavropanos improved and Crysencio Summerville burst into life on the left wing. Still, though, there was disquiet over West Ham’s business during the winter transfer window.
Nuno spoke about rebalancing the squad. West Ham needed a new centre-back but did not sign Axel Disasi on loan from Chelsea until deadline day. Nuno had considered Tottenham’s Radu Dragusin and Sunderland’s Lutsharel Geertruida before settling on Disasi, who made an immediate impact. The manager also looked at his goalkeepers. He wanted Tottenham’s Antonin Kinsky. Hermansen had lost his place after an awful start but Nuno was unsure about Alphonse Areola. He lost patience with Areola after West Ham blew a 2-0 lead at Chelsea on 31 January. Hermansen, though, has not been convincing since returning to the starting lineup. West Ham turned down a deal for Rayan before he joined Bournemouth.
West Ham have continued to toil at the back, five clean sheets in the league a meagre return, Aaron Wan-Bissaka unfocused at right-back. The attack has not been good enough to bail out the defence. Adama Traoré has not started a league game since joining from Fulham for £7m in January. Sullivan took a bizarre punt on a random Venezuelan winger, Keiber Lamadrid. Taty Castellanos, the Argentinian striker, has scored six goals but feels overpriced at £26m. Could the funds have been better directed? A loan deal for Newcastle’s William Osula was not pursued. There was surprise in Portugal at West Ham instead spending £18.3m plus £2.6m in add-ons for Gil Vicente’s Pablo Felipe. The 22-year-old striker has not scored for his new club. Pablo was partly at fault when Osula scored his second goal in Newcastle’s 3-1 win over West Ham last Sunday.
Nuno got it badly wrong by using a back three and starting Wilson over Castellanos against Newcastle. Victory would have lifted West Ham out of the bottom three and heaped pressure on Tottenham before their game against Chelsea.
It was another missed opportunity. West Ham have been slow to react and amateurish all season. An interim chief executive is in place after last month’s departure of Karren Brady, who never lived down her promise of a “world-class team in a world-class stadium”. Another major shareholder, the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, remains silent and mysterious. Protest groups celebrated Brady’s exit and want Sullivan to follow suit. There is deep opposition to the idea of Sullivan passing power to his sons, Jack and Dave Jr. Insiders have noted the pair taking more of an active role this season. “They think they’re Txiki Begiristain,” one source says dismissively.
West Ham play in a rented athletics stadium. They lost £104.2m last year and their recent accounts forecast “a liquidity shortfall” this summer. Bowen, Fernandes and Summerville will surely leave. Nuno, who has done a poor job, may walk away and does not deserve to stay. West Ham need to raise more than £100m through sales this summer and it is unclear whether they run the risk of breaching the English Football League’s financial rules.
Whatever comes next will be grim. Trying to fill 62,000 seats when the London Stadium hosts Championship football will be quite the experience. Apathy and anger are a toxic combination. Look at Leicester’s relegation to League One. It would require staggering complacency for West Ham not to realise they could be next.
