West Ham were by far the worst team in the Premier League last season, winning just seven games throughout the whole campaign. Avram Grant could not have done any more in helping the Hammers to relegation and should have been sacked in January when Martin O’Neill was lined up as his replacement before it was leaked to the press.
The football was terrible to watch each week and a lack of passion and commitment was obvious throughout the majority of the squad. Relegation however has been a positive learning curve for the remaining squad players, owners and fans. Lessons have thankfully been learnt at Upton Park and the club will only benefit from the changes that have been made.
Goals win games
The first lesson that has been rectified to a degree was the lack of goals. Carlton Cole has never been and will never be a prolific striker and Freddie Piquionne and Victor Obinna failed to make much of an impact at all. Robbie Keane seemed to forget what a goal looked like which left Demba Ba to be the only player that could put the ball away after his January arrival, but that was too little too late.
33 goals in 38 games is unacceptable and narrow defeats were a regular occurrence for the Irons who made sufficient chances throughout the season. Over the summer the owners and new manager, Sam Allardyce realised the obvious problem and signed John Carew and Sam Baldock to add fire power, as well as attacking midfielder Kevin Nolan. Astonishingly the Hammers have already scored more goals in the first third of this season than the whole of the last campaign and that has been the catalyst to their good form.
A lack of loyalty from some players
Another lesson learnt was probably more for the supporters than it was for the club and that was the lack of player loyalty. The East End club gave chances to players when other teams wouldn’t and perhaps assumed that the players would repay the faith shown in them. But that wasn’t the case; Thomas Hitzlsperger was out injured for the majority of the season and then jumped ship in the summer after relegation. Demba Ba was asked to stay on at Upton Park after the Hammers were the only club willing to give him a chance in January, but he turned it down. Other out of contract players such as Mathew Upson did not sign new deals and left the squad very thin on numbers when pre-season arrived.
Perhaps I was naive when I felt that maybe Ba and Hitzlsperger would stay until January at least to give something back to the club that gave them a chance, perhaps, but only in football would that lack of loyalty be accepted.
The fans will always stick with the team
One thing that the rest of the Premier League learnt about the Hammers was that no matter how bad it got, the fans would always follow them wherever they went. Home attendances were consistently competitive and the away following would sell out 90% of the time. The trip to the DW Stadium on the penultimate week of the season sums it up perfectly. Anything less than two wins from two games would see them relegated and for a club that had only won twice away from home in 18 months, not likely. But 5,000 travelling fans sold out the away end in the North West and sang and cheered throughout the whole 90 minutes and the following three hour train journey home, even after relegation was confirmed.
Yes Blackpool fans may have done the same, but it was a first for them, they hadn’t been to Old Trafford, the Emirates and Anfield all in the same season in the top flight, they hadn’t expected anything more than relegation back in August. West Ham did.