Football: West Ham “plumb new depths”

For a fleeting moment last Saturday, “West Ham stood together as one”, said Adam Crafton in The Mail on Sunday. Before their 3-0 loss to Burnley at the London Stadium began, every supporter rose to mark the 25th anniversary of former player Bobby Moore’s death. But after 66 minutes, that unity was shattered. When Burnley took the lead, anger at the club’s board came to a boil: there were four pitch invasions; in one, a fan was thrown to the ground by West Ham captain Mark Noble. Hundreds of supporters then gathered in front of the directors’ box to “hurl abuse” at owners David Sullivan and David Gold, who were escorted from the stadium; Sullivan was hit by a coin. And with some supporters enraged by the protesters, the fans even fought among themselves. West Ham now face a heavy fine; they are in 16th place, only three points above the relegation zone. A oncegreat club has “plumbed new depths”. When West Ham left Upton Park for the London Stadium in 2016, most supporters were “cautiously optimistic”, said Jacob Steinberg in The Guardian. The move was billed as a chance to “compete with the elite”. Since then, however, a chronic lack of investment in the transfer market has left the club with an “unbalanced” squad and they have twice had to battle relegation. It’s not just the team that is “substandard”, said West Ham fan Jim Kearns in The Guardian. The stadium is utterly soulless – a “testament to the hubris” of the club’s owners. The problem is that the ground wasn’t designed for football, said Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail. It was originally an athletics track, built for the 2012 Olympics. The club could improve the atmosphere – by moving seats closer to the pitch, for instance. But the stadium is only one of the club’s problems; there are “too many fires to put out at once”. For West Ham, “this is an existential crisis”.