Do we really have to relive this season? Oh, good. Another season has wheezed to an end. Hurrah, I’d say. The more generous might describe 2024–25 as a rollercoaster for West Ham United; personally, I’d call it a joyless trudge through a hedge of mediocrity. We finished 14th in the Premier League. No cup runs. Plenty of goals conceded, significantly less scored. Two managerial changes. Several existential crises. Let the post-mortem commence.
August: The £40m Transfer Window and Lopetegui’s False Dawn
August: Welcome Julen Lopetegui! Once I’d learned how to pronounce his surname, I felt cautiously optimistic – his curtailed stint at Wolves notwithstanding. Spoiler alert: that didn’t last long. Still, we won the transfer window. Kilman £40m, Guilherme £25m, Summerville £25m, Füllkrug £27m, Wan-Bissaka £15m, Todibo on loan. Pundits whispering about Champions League football. One even said fourth. Even then, I allowed myself a wry smile. When I revisit that prediction, I now burst out laughing. Comedy. Day one – Aston Villa at home. We conceded after four minutes. That’s literally all the time it took for the proverbial balloon of hope to be punctured. We rallied. Then Duran – yes, the striker we tried to sign – scored their winner. That was our 16th opening day defeat. Naturally, that’s now a Premier League record. Trophy for the cabinet. A 2-0 win away at Crystal Palace in our second match gave us false hope. Bowen and Soucek with the goals – yes, still dragging us through games years later and not the first time they’d perform a rescue act. A limp EFL Cup win over Bournemouth followed, before City casually beat us 3-1 at home without breaking much of a sweat. One league win in August. But still, that transfer window.
September: Record Home Defeats and the Cracks Appearing
September: Zero wins, the cracks appearing. Danny Ings scored a last-minute equaliser against Fulham and that was a high point. Yes, that Danny Ings, who sadly won’t be around to make those stellar contributions next season. Chelsea strolled to a 3-0 win at our place – and I mean, literally strolled. That made it three home games, three defeats, eight goals conceded. The worst home start in our 129-year history – another proud record that we can all cherish. The fanbase was already split. The ‘Give Him Time’ brigade versus ‘Lopetegui Out Now’. Guess which side I was on. Clue: my patience-ometer wasn’t really working very well. Next came a 5-1 spanking by Liverpool in the EFL Cup. We led after 20 minutes. Then conceded five. We also upped the comedy value by having Álvarez sent off. An utter shambles was my polite way of summing up the match. The following week, Brentford scored with their first attack. We kindly allowed that. Soucek rescued a draw, but the mood? Despair, seasoned with resignation.
October: The Brief Resemblance to a Functioning Team
October: Finally! A win! Against Ipswich – who, of course, would end up in the bottom three and Championship-bound – but still, four goals, one by Antonio in the first minute. For a moment there, we resembled a functioning team – briefly anyway. That feeling lasted about a week. Spurs away. We led via Kudus, then collapsed faster than a deck of cards you’ve spent three days trying to build one of those towers out of. Three goals conceded in eight minutes, plus a VAR red for Kudus. A footballing farce, but very West Ham. Then, against Manchester United, we somehow won 2-1. Ings won a penalty so soft it practically apologised. We scored it in stoppage time. Ten Hag got sacked – and Manchester United got worse. Meanwhile, two wins in October for us. We were on the up! We dared to dream. Fools.
November: From ‘Perfect’ Glitch to Christmas Market Humiliation
November: Forest battered us 3-0. No fight. No shape. Álvarez sent off again. Nineteen goals conceded in 10 matches. We were getting so good at conceding goals, we practically made it an artform. A soul-sapping 0-0 draw with Everton felt oddly comforting. I urge you to read that sentence again and marvel at this. Then came a genuinely excellent performance: a 2-0 win at Newcastle. Described by pundits as ‘perfect’. At the time, I genuinely thought we were turning a corner, but with the benefit of hindsight, I prefer to describe it as a glitch in the matrix. I was at Rochester Christmas Market during our home game with Arsenal. Full of the Christmas spirit, mulled wine in one hand, a bratwurst in the other. Then I checked the score: 0-4 after 35 minutes. I actually laughed out loud to the extent that people gave me funny looks. We eventually lost 2-5, but honestly, it could’ve been double figures. Genuinely. The mulled wine took the edge off.
December: El Sackico, Tragedy, and Festive Thrashings
December: We dominated Leicester and somehow lost 3-1, making Ruud Van Nistelrooy look like an inspired managerial appointment. Füllkrug scored a debut goal that mattered to precisely no one, and history would later show just how dreadful that Leicester team actually were. Then came news of Antonio’s horrific car crash. Thankfully, he survived. Football suddenly felt unimportant, at least for a couple of days until it was clear he was on the road to some form of recovery, although his playing career remains in some doubt. I hope he returns to the pitch, but if he can’t, life is more important. The so-called ‘El Sackico’ v Wolves was next: we won 2-1. Bowen the hero. Two huge VAR calls helped. Gary O’Neill got sacked, the second manager to lose his position after a match against us. Lopetegui lived another day… for now. Draws with Brighton and Bournemouth offered a little stability. Then Bowen’s 100th league goal nicked us a win at Southampton, even if the performance was worse than my attempts at charades at Christmas. Any festive cheer that remained, vanished after yet another 5-0 thrashing by Liverpool. Our Blowing Bubbles WhatsApp group? Silent. Defeated. Full of apathy.
January: The Sack and the Arrival of Graham Potter
January: Manchester City beat us 4-1. Not awful, but a Coufal own goal and poor defending, combined with no obvious sign that things were getting better, sealed Lopetegui’s fate, who was sacked days later. Collectively, I think that most of us breathed a sigh of relief. Enter Graham Potter. Two-and-a-half years. Calm. Sensible. Some fans underwhelmed. I welcomed it. Steady hands needed; the boat was rocking. First match: unlucky 2-1 FA Cup defeat to Villa. This was not fun by any stretch: any immediate momentum from our early goal was lost, Fullkrug went off with a hamstring injury, and the corner from which Villa scored their equaliser should never have been given. A chaotic 3-2 win over Fulham followed, and it felt good. Then another limp home defeat, 2-0 to Palace. And that did not feel good. More like, business as usual. We closed the month with a decent 1-1 away draw at Villa to exact at least a little revenge for the cup defeat. Progress? Maybe.
February: A Season High Point Against Arsenal
February: Chelsea at home. Bowen scored. Then we lost 2-1. Then Brentford beat us too. Miserable. But then back-to-back wins. First against Arsenal – and oh, how sweet it was. Bowen scored his 50th league goal. Declan Rice? Still waiting to lift silverware and forced to enviously eye our ever-bulging trophy cabinet from afar. Then Leicester away. Another win. This was our high point. Which, given we were comfortably in the lower reaches of the table, says a lot.
March: Bonkers Draw and Business as Usual
March: Only two games. A dull 1-0 home loss to Newcastle. Then a bonkers draw at Everton, now managed by Moyes. We led via Soucek heading into the 90th minute but, being West Ham, naturally conceded in stoppage time. We also nearly lost it immediately after that, and had we done so, this would have come as absolutely no surprise to anyone whatsoever.
April: Winless Runs and The ‘S**t’ Rant
April: Let’s face it, we were always going to survive. The bottom three were dreadful. But an increasing number of winless games didn’t help Potter’s cause, and already further dissent and murmurings were taking place among the fans. Wolves beat us 1-0 in what I would regard as a spineless performance. Bournemouth drew 2-2 with us after we led. Liverpool needed an injury-time winner to beat us 2-1. Our defending finally didn’t disgrace us, but a win continued to prove elusive. Then, Southampton. Surely a gimme? Easy win, I had it down as. How wrong I was. A dreadful 1-1 draw, memorable only for Füllkrug’s post-match rant: ‘After the goal, we were s**t.’ King. Then Brighton. We led 2-1 into injury time. My girlfriend declared: ‘There’s no way you lose this now.’ We lost. Obviously.
May: Final Victory and The End of an Era
May: The final stretch. The end was in sight. The season mercifully gasping its last. We drew 1-1 with Spurs. I’d normally write more about that, given that it is our biggest London derby. That probably sums up my overall feeling for the season by this point – I mean, who cared? Then, miraculously, we won two away games against Manchester United and Ipswich – incidentally, of those two teams, I’d much rather be the East Anglian outfit. I think Manchester United are in a world of pain. Forest beat us in between. I hoped we’d beat them, given the pressure they were under in their quest for Champions League football. We didn’t come close. Shrug. Our 3-1 victory at Ipswich marked the end of what was an utterly joyless season. It also meant that we were saying goodbye to the likes of Fabianski, Cresswell, Coufal and Ings. In many ways, it feels like the end of an era and a team very definitely in transition – many of the wise old heads are departing, with those four likely not to be the last out of the London Stadium this summer. This makes me sad, and I don’t mind admitting that reading their farewell pieces on the web made me a little emotional. In their own ways, they will all be missed – yes, even Danny Ings, who gave his all when getting game time.
Final Tally and A Plea for Next Season
So, the final tally for the season: 11 wins, 10 draws, 17 defeats. 46 scored. 62 conceded. The defence improved under Potter but it had to – at one point I was worried that the league table wouldn’t be wide enough to accommodate the number of goals conceded. But the attack was blunt, to say the least. The midfield lacked dynamism. The defence still liked to perform interpretive dance routines under pressure. But there is hope. Honestly, there is. A sensible summer. A good start. A manager with a plan. Whisper it quietly, but next season could and should be better. Although it could be worse too – I don’t want to hedge my bets. Either way, we’ll be there, pint in hand, forever blowing bubbles, sharing the good times and the bad – celebrating the victories, commiserating the defeats, and probably moaning about VAR. Just one plea – next season, can we have something that we can actually get excited about please? Enjoy the summer!
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