West Ham have been relegated from the Premier League - what comes next? | OneFootball

Hammers succumbed to relegation after a miserable campaign

On a surreal day that confirmed their relegation to the Championship, West Ham had goalscoring fun in the sun at the London Stadium and were still left distraught, as every last bubble finally burst.

Theirs is a relegation grimly foretold, one that plenty of supporters feared was inevitable, following years of the club being run on the cheap with short-termist signings centred around getting by, not thriving.

Consider Brentford or Brighton — clubs of a smaller size — and their sophisticated scouting and recruitment processes. West Ham’s recent business has included signing Adama Traore, spending £40million on Max Kilman, and buying Pablo after a hot half-streak in Portugal to cure their goals shortage. Truly, it is night-and-day comparison. They pay for it now.

Sunday's 3-0 win over Leeds United was a bleak and perplexing reality to compute. The temptation was to wonder where these 3-0 wins had been for the past nine months. For whatever reason, they weren’t forthcoming; a season (at least) in the Championship now is.

It was a day when too much of West Ham’s destiny was left to uncontrollables 12 miles away, making fans’ full support and the team’s full-throttle victory all the more agonising.

Mobile phones were at the ready, as Tottenham’s result was monitored with obsession. Some fans streamed it live, paying more attention to Spurs than the game playing out in front of them. A solitary Joao Palhinha goal secured them safety and ensured the likeliest outcome of this relegation battle final day did materialise.

Dejected: West Ham fans come to terms with relegation

Getty

While West Ham supporters may have spent weeks coming to terms psychologically with 46 league games next season and trips to Sincil Bank and The Den, the club will be dreading what the drop brings.

Will Nuno Espirito Santo stick it out? The head coach was responsible this season for their best FA Cup run in a decade and would give them a decent shot at an instant return to the Premier League, but, from his perspective, is it a gamble worth taking?

On the face of it, Spurs looked far better prepared for the drop than the Hammers, who don’t own their stadium and cannot earn valuable revenue by renting it for music tours or to American sports teams. A bowl arena of vacuously wide proportions has never properly felt like home for many. With the risk of attendances waning even further in the Championship, it is sure to become even less homely in this next chapter.

Mass player sales are imperative to balance the books and would have happened this summer even if they’d staved off relegation. Confirmation of suffering the drop means even more players sold, more money needing to be raised, more upheaval to a squad already desperately light on match-winners.

Mateus Fernandes was the best player on the pitch for either side on this final day and his sale will account for much of the recoup needed. Manchester United are keen. Crysencio Summerville already showed in 2023-24 with Leeds that he is too good for the Championship. He’ll surely be off. ‘Reigning Hammer of the Year’ is surely worth an extra £5m on Konstantinos Mavropanos. Axel Disasi will return to Chelsea, never to be seen or heard from again. The captain?

In demand: Mateus Fernandes could leave the club after just one season

Getty

What must Jarrod Bowen have been thinking when he stared, barely blinking, into the abyss in the tunnel before leading the home side out? He was told this week by Thomas Tuchel that he was a victim of his club’s situation, when the German explained why he’d missed out on England’s World Cup squad. As if that’s going to make him feel any better. This is Bowen’s club. But some things aren’t forever, as this east London afternoon cruelly reminded its hosts.

Gutsy decisions are needed from the co-owners David Sullivan and Czech contrarian investor Daniel Kretinsky this summer. After Baroness Karren Brady stepped down last month after 16 years as vice-chair following protests against the board, top-level chief executives and directors of football will be wanted. Championship status loses plenty of the club’s pull when advertising for those roles, though — just one of a number of unwelcome knock-on effects of relegation.

The financial losses posted last month were the worst in the club’s history. Again, relegation will hardly help. TV revenue, commercial revenue and matchday revenue will all take meaningful and damaging hits.

Castellanos’s header, Bowen’s low drive and Callum Wilson’s belter were fine goals and the London Stadium erupted after each, but it was all the more painful that they had no real meaning besides obvious pride.

And so to a new and unwanted existence that could have been avoided if decision-making right across the club had been better. Pablo and El Hadji Malick Diouf are not players of Premier League quality. Yet, as is often the way, it may well be these individuals the Championship rebuild is founded on, following a mass exodus of those they'd ideally have preferred to keep.

Relegation confirmed: West Ham will play in the Championship next term

Getty

Through the presence of Tomas Soucek and Bowen, there was a reminder of what West Ham used to be, UEFA Conference League winners only three years ago. Flags that read ‘ACADEMY OF FOOTBALL’ served the same purpose.

Mid-table mediocrity became a grey and grating experience under David Moyes, but to have ended up having to hire Nuno to regain some stability after the Julen Lopetegui and Graham Potter missteps and still end up in the Championship anyway, perhaps football’s harsh lesson is to be careful what you wish for. Too late now.

West Ham have been a Premier League club in every season except one since 2005. Wilson’s stunner was the last kick of their last game in the top flight for a while, but they’ll be back. It will take an awful lot of work, though, and change at every level from boardroom to dressing room are nonnegotiable.

As the regular tunes were broadcast round the stadium before kick-off with the atmosphere as yet unpunctured, Freddie Mercury’s voice perforated. “We’re just waiting for the hammer to fall”. Eventually, it did.