- WHU have taken a realistic view of their position, and it wiill keep them in the League. Just.
- Arsenal v West Ham: What do the stats show that the referee likely to do?
- Arsenal v West Ham: recent games, performanecs and a naff away record
By Bulldog Drummond
With five injuries at present Arsenal have slipped down the injury league table with only Palace, Fulhm Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Forest having fewer players out. Top of the injury tree are Manchester United with 11 players missing and then Chelsea, Everton, Ipswich, Tottenham and Wolverhampton on nine. At the other end of the scale, Palace, Leicester, Liverpool and Newcastle each have three men out.
The first return date we have is Saka for 15 March. We don’t know yet about Martinelli, but the other players won’t be back until next season, meaning that Jesus, Tomiyasu and Havertz will all miss the rest of the season.
Back with West Ham, so wretched has been their season, that they only had one tiny period in which they could be said to be even half way decent. This was in December when they beat Wolverhampton and Southampton, and also drew with Bournemouth and Brighton. And the point about Wolverhampton and Southampton is that each of those teams were beaten by only one goal, while they were both lingering very near the foot of the table.
West Ham’s defence is particularly poor – the fifth worst in the league with only Wolverhampton, Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton performing worse this season.
But there is another issue besetting West Ham and that was revealed in a piece in the Daily Express – not a paper that we normally take into account but we are always willing to make an exception. In this story the newspaper (I use the word lightly) ran the headline “Premier League side loses 29,000 season ticket holders as fans refuse to return”.
The story is, as ever with an Express headline, not quite what you might think, but it does suggest that WHAM have lost that many season ticket holders since the early years after moving from Upton Park. The piece then goes on to say that “fans have since complained about a lack of atmosphere inside the stadium,” which is a bit odd, since the atmosphere is by and large created by the fans.
Now this is also rather strange since the capacity of Upon Park was 35,000, but the story appears to work like this. 50,000 of the tickets for the first season at the “London” stadium were sold as season tickets. But since then 29,000 of that group (ie 58%) have not renewed.
They go on to tell us that in 2018 only 87% of their fans renewed, and in 2021 only 88% of those remaining renewed. This meant that in 2024, West Ham had 48,500 season ticket holders as opposed to 55,000 when they first moved. Which means by that calculation they have actually only lost 12%. Apparently, the removal of concessions was one of the factors to blame.55,000 to turn up week on week to watch a poorly performing club is pushing one’s luck.
But it is possible that an even bigger cause of their problems however is not that hard to spot. West Ham have never had a mass appeal, and thus expecting vast numbers of new fans to turn up was pushing it a bit. From 2019/20 onwards they have ended up 16th, 6th, 7th, 14th, 9th – which is erratic to say the best, and certainly not growth. They made the quarter-finals of the FA Cup once, but have otherwise gone out in earlier rounds in both of the domestic cup series.
Their goal scoring has also been something that can best be described as “modest” ranging from 41 up to 62, and most of the seasons have ended with a negative goal difference. True Jarrod Bowen did get 20 goals last campaign but overall it is 49 goals in 180 games and he has only got six goals in the league this season.
The Standard give us a team of
Raya;
Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly;
Odegaard, Partey, Rice;
Nwaneri, Trossard, Sterling
Raya;
Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly;
Odegaard, Partey, Rice;
Nwaneri, Merino, Trossard.
And that really covers most of the variations. We’re off to watch the game later, so there will be more tomorrow..
