It isn’t silence that gives the London Stadium its existential void.
No, there is a worse sound than nothingness and that is the low hum of idle conversation. Silence indicates melancholy, introspection. Murmured conversation suggests apathy.
The West Ham United fans are not to blame for that noise. There is always some inane chatter going on at football matches, the difference at the London Stadium is that the pitch is so far from the stands and the wide bowl has such abysmal acoustics you can hear people grumbling about Christmas even above strained attempts around the ground to cheer on a Jarrod Bowen counter-attack.
It is a catastrophic architectural failure. Even when things are going well at West Ham the ground is an eerie and deflating place to be.
All of which is to say it takes something truly special to make it feel like a home, therefore the club ought to be laser-focused on creating a culture of exciting attacking football to counteract its natural entropy. With the greatest of respect it just isn’t the place for the weary and haunted face of Nuno Espirito Santo.
Of course the usual silence, or its piercing cousin chitchat, was punctured long before the final whistle on Tuesday evening by loud boos that, like nothing else, do somehow make it across the running track and ring around the stadium, albeit in a muffled low tone that loses some of the intended venom.
It isn’t cacophonous enough to be a wake-up call, but then again the time for wake-up calls has long passed. West Ham are getting relegated. It is too late to make changes although they will of course try, one last time, in January.
Nuno reportedly wants to prioritise signing a striker, which rankles with West Ham supporters baffled by the manager’s reluctance to play Callum Wilson even after he started scoring goals in November. The decision to substitute Wilson in the 63rd minute against Brighton on Tuesday provoked a furious reaction from the stands, it being the latest in a series of strange tactical decisions that have left many West Ham fans feeling that Nuno was simply the wrong appointment.
Three months in, it’s hard not to reach the same conclusion. Nuno won a couple of games in early November but his record of 11 points from 14 matches is nowhere near good enough, confirming fears back in September that he had jumped too quickly back into work after the painful breakup at Nottingham Forest. Nuno rebounded so fast he couldn’t even secure his own backroom staff to join him, a serious red flag that West Ham’s owners ought to have considered.
Not that anyone expects owner David Sullivan or vice-chair Karren Brady to read the game as well as that. In the transfer market it has been one failure after another and the January window, which begins with Niklas Fullkrug departing for AC Milan, will be a stark reminder of the fact that not a single player signed in the last two seasons has been a success. That’s £250 million wasted.
Protests against the ownership have been ramping up for some time, with events taking place in each of the last three months, and while there is growing dissatisfaction with Nuno there is no doubt where the majority of the vitriol was directed at the final whistle on Tuesday.
But that is not why it appears almost certain West Ham will go down this year; the board have let the club down numerous times before without relegation following. The difference this season is the legacy of the disarray under Graham Potter and Nuno’s apparent inability to do anything about it. Potter spoke openly about how quiet the dressing room was during his time in charge and by the looks of things a leadership problem persists.
The players look defeated and indiscipline is increasingly common. The sight of academy player Ollie Scarles crying at full-time last weekend and no senior players moving to console him was damning.
But leading it all is Nuno, a quietly funereal figure who already looks like a beaten man solemnly going down with his ship.
Odds correct at 16:40 GMT (30/12/25)
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