West Ham nearing lowest ebb

THERE is a perception of West Ham as a yo-yo club. It isn’t quite true. Consider Crystal Palace. They started the 1960s in Division Four, by 1969 had worked their way up to Division One. Went down in 1973. Went down again in 1974. Came back to the top division in 1979. Relegated in 1981. Promoted in 1989. Relegated 1993. Back up in 1994. Back down in 1995. Promoted 1997. Relegated 1998. Back to the Premier League in 2004; back to the Championship in 2005. They have been a Premier League club since 2013-14, with a couple of scares, and are currently bottom of the league. They’re a yo-yo club. No insult in that. They can’t all be Arsenal. Many will go up and down and even if they hang on, as Palace have for four seasons now, nothing is guaranteed. West Ham have been relegated, too, but not regularly. The club were promoted in 1958 and didn’t fall out of the top division until 1978. There was one relegation in 1989, none in the 1990s, another in 2003. West Ham have spent just eight of the last 60 years outside the top division. The present administration took over in 2010 and the club were relegated the following season, 2010-11. Meaning, if West Ham go down again at the end of this campaign — and looking at their fixtures it is hard to imagine they will not be bottom by Christmas — it will be the first time the club have ever been relegated twice in a decade in their history. That is why the atmosphere around the place is increasingly fractious. Far from making the great leap forward, West Ham are in great danger of becoming a yo-yo club. And that bit where it spins back up: that’s far from guaranteed, either.