Whilst I’m only 24 years old, I have always grown up with West Ham being a mid table team all my life – other than the past few years – Champions of Europe! I got used to the idea of us constantly fighting to finish higher than we did last season and equally finishing the same or give or take a few positions.
So when I think back to the relegation battles we’ve been in that I’ve been alive, the first that springs to mind is the 2003 relegation. Even though I was three years old, I always look back on that as we were the only team to get relegated with more than 40 points.
This always reminds me of West Ham Clips on Twitter when he says how many points remaining to stay up at the end of every video. I would highly recommend giving them a watch, they’re brilliant. With the players we had that season like Di Canio, Jermaine Defoe, Joe Cole etc, it was baffling to read back on how we got relegated. We were too good to go down with a squad like that.
But thinking more recently, more than 10 years ago, when we got relegated in 2011, it was the first time I actually understood relegation at 11 years old. I remember actually being really sad about it, thinking we’re rubbish and we aren’t going to be able to go back to the Premier League.
But my Dad reminded me that it’s part and parcel of supporting West Ham and that we will make a return to the Premier League in the future. The last game at Upton Park that season, I remember fans in the Chicken Run doing the conga making fun out of getting relegated as our fate had already been decided at that point and it made me see the funny side of it.
Since then we haven’t been relegated but we came close to it back in the 2019/2020 season where we finished 16th on 39 points. Luckily there were teams worse than us that season which kept us up. We were close to being relegated but thankfully results went our way and we managed to escape it.
Then strangely it’s been on the up since then, qualifying for Europa League the following season and then the season after qualifying for Conference League. In true West Ham fashion we won the Conference League in 2022/23 season but finished 14th in the league on 39 points.
When I look back on that season, although it was quite literally the best season of my life, it was actually funny. I remember being in Larnaca getting ready to watch us play AEK Larnaca and in the pub we were singing that we were going down with a European Cup – absolutely brilliant.
I think we ultimately knew we weren’t playing well in the Premier League but something came over us in the Conference League and we turned into a completely different team. I do think it comes down to the players knowing that they physically have to win every game to progress through to the next rounds so that helped us massively.
Thinking of this season and how it compares to the last time we were in a relegation scrap, I don’t think we’re far off from being dragged into it and I wouldn’t rule us out of it just yet. I just don’t think the players we have are performing, and I think some of the ways we have lined up against certain teams weren’t the right ones.
For starters we need to use Füllkrug more. He wins headers and we need to utilise the likes of Summerville, Bowen and Kudus to run onto them. We just go back to the old ways of hoofing the ball up top rather than playing out from the back.
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