Protests against the West Ham board have become such a familiar sight at the London Stadium most neutrals won’t even have noticed them happen last weekend.
West Ham are the Premier League’s static club, forever stuck in the liminal space between the two interesting ends of the table, so much so that even when they did have a period of success it felt no less stodgy and uninspiring.
David Moyes took West Ham to consecutive top-seven finishes and then won a European trophy, but it’s a period that few English football fans really remember even though it happened only two seasons ago.
The drudgery of the Julen Lopetegui and Graham Potter eras seems to have wiped the Moyes years from memory.
Only West Ham could lurch towards the summit, achieve something historic, and almost immediately fall back into cold mediocrity as if the silverware never happened.
The biggest block is indeed the board.
West Ham were gifted a stadium that’s even bigger than the one that cost Tottenham a billion pounds, yet despite being a London club with 12 years of stability in the top flight those in charge have failed to take advantage.
The stadium itself is a huge part of the problem.
Moyes broke the mould by making the London Stadium feel like a home for West Ham supporters but the feeling was never going to last beyond a period of good form.
It is without doubt the worst stadium in European football, a venue woefully unfit to host any kind of sport.
The pitch is too far away, and the stands too flat, to create an atmosphere that intimidates opponents or allows the players to feel connected with supporters. It encourages apathy, encourages idle chitchat as soon as the football loses its urgency.
And urgency is a word never associated with Graham Potter.
His appointment was doomed from the start. When Lopetegui was hired it was pointed out that his goals-per-game rate across a career that included a stint at Real Madrid was worse than Moyes’s, proving that the West Ham board had conflated possession football with attacking football.
Then they made the exact same error with Potter, whose Brighton and Chelsea teams created pretty patterns but could not create enough chances.
Potter’s and Lopetegui’s tactical ideas are outdated and would be ill-suited to any Premier League club but especially one fighting against the vacuum between pitch and fans at the London Stadium.
If there is any hope of West Ham expanding to fill the space, to live up to perfectly reasonable expectations from supporters, then they need to embrace the modern.
But to do that requires a board that understands football at a level that has so far eluded this club for coming up a decade.
Reports this week suggest they are looking at a short-term deal for Slaven Bilic, a disastrous idea unless there is an obvious plan for what to do next summer. Nothing encourages failure like pointlessly treading water.
The other option being mooted is Nuno Espirito Santo: the polar opposite of modern attacking football.
Nuno did a superb job at Wolves and Nottingham Forest but crucially both clubs were happy to cast themselves as underdogs. West Ham’s traditions are more aligned with Tottenham’s, where Nuno’s conservatism was immediately rejected.
To hire Nuno would be to accept that the Moyesian way was the right way; would be to admit defeat in attempting to move the club forward.
It would do nothing to relieve pressure on the board, to let the supporters feel like there is momentum or even a plan.
West Ham are stuck, have been stuck for a long time, and are doing nothing to suggest they will become unstuck any time soon.
More from Sporting Life
Safer gambling
We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.
If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.
Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.
