48433.jpeg 2025 Marc Atkins
The London Stadium was never full on Friday evening, but it began noticeably emptying after 35 minutes, around the time of Chelsea’s third goal. The visiting horde sang “There’s only one Graham Potter”, and the home crowd wallowed in potent apathy, envisioning a million ways this season could unfurl, none good. The advertising hoardings asked: “Got a leak?” It should be impossible to strip the soul from an already soulless stadium, yet West Ham are somehow managing it.
Potter now has the worst home record of any West Ham manager in the Premier League, having not won at the London Stadium since February. At Upton Park in the 21st century, they conceded five goals or more at home just once, yet it has happened eight times here in nine years. Eight goals is the most they have ever conceded across their opening two games of a top-flight season.
And yet none of this is particularly surprising. There are no obvious strengths to Potter’s mismatched agglomeration of ageing and aged talent. Aside from the relegated teams, since his appointment, West Ham have taken the fewest shots, created the fewest chances and made the fewest passes in their opponents’ box. Their defensive numbers are similarly abject. They struggle to multitask. Their press is non-committal and uncoordinated. They’re not particularly quick or skilful, yet are also not physical or well organised enough to avoid conceding from three corners in the same match.
Why play a back five when it has little benefit, when your midfield is being repeatedly overrun? Why provide a limited if clinical striker like Niclas Füllkrug no discernible creative support? Why select midfield pairings who struggle to outrun their own shadows?
This is where assigning blame becomes complex. Potter is not doing his job well, but has also been provided with the most confused and poorly constructed squad in the Premier League. They have sold one of the most dangerous and enthralling players in the league in Mohammed Kudus, and decided against replacing him.
Given West Ham paid £1m to poach long-time Potter ally Kyle Macaulay from Chelsea as head of recruitment, the squad will increasingly become Potter’s problem the longer he remains at the club. And yet it appears somewhere between unlikely and unfathomable that he lasts until the next January transfer window.
Somewhere in the middle of this, David Sullivan largely seems to avoid the consequences of his actions, but this is his mess far more than anyone else’s. The pint-sized ex-porn lord is chair , largest shareholder (39%), de facto director of football and chief negotiator once more, despite the overwhelming suspicion that he thinks analytics is a new-fangled kink. He was responsible for hiring ex-technical director Tim Steidten, for hiring former manager Julen Lopetegui, for hiring Potter. Nothing at the club happens without his explicit sign-off. Their extraordinary failures in squad-building can be attributed to both his agonising negotiation tactics and failure to understand adequately the value of both delegation and modernising recruitment.
Sullivan’s ability to spurn goodwill appears almost unparalleled in elite football
Since June 2020, West Ham have spent the 11th-most of any team in the league (£605m), have the 11th-highest net spend (£309m) and have sold an academy product (Declan Rice) for a £100m initial fee. In the same period, they have permanently signed 32 senior players and, charitably, seven have been moderate to significant successes. Their record in signing strikers alone since Sullivan bought the club in 2010 should be enough to inspire outright mutiny. Callum Wilson, an archetypal Sullivan signing, is the next victim.
Some suggest the current fiasco is the inevitable consequence of wanting more, of sacking David Moyes, of aiming higher and higher when you have already peaked, yet that simply isn’t true. This is the result of running a club badly, investing badly, buying and selling badly. The issue is not ambition, it’s execution. Any competent owner or recruitment structure would have been able to build from a European trophy, from three top-10 finishes in four seasons, especially with the eighth-highest annual revenue (£269.7m) in the Premier League and 17th-highest in the world (per the Deloitte Football Money League), the second-biggest stadium in the division and a significant and engaged fanbase. Sullivan’s ability to spurn goodwill and good opportunity appears almost unparalleled in elite football.
West Ham’s erratic progression under Sullivan’s ownership exposes a lack of sustainable operation and vision. Good decisions are almost always balanced out by bad, which makes you question whether his biggest successes were anything other than the product of good fortune. It is incredibly difficult to discern whether there has ever been a coherent plan here. After finishing seventh under Slaven Bilic in 2015-16, they had slipped to 13th two seasons later. Having reached sixth under Moyes in 2020-21, they have now finished 14th in two of the past three years. Even if they somehow rebuild from here, would you trust them to maintain it? At 76, Sullivan will still be making the decisions. Until that changes, you sense little else at West Ham will, except perhaps their Premier League status.
Where are this team aiming? What unifies them? Ultimately, what is the point of West Ham in 2025? They are in an almost unique situation in the Premier League, lacking an obvious target or purpose. Europe is an unrealistic aspiration, yet relegation has not seemed a serious threat until now. They have seemed content to aim between 14th and 17th, simply to survive. But in a league, a sport, obsessed with growth, to stand still is to regress.
Leicester were relegated three seasons ago by the belief they were too big to fail. Apathy devours everything it touches, the mid-table football club’s plague. It could already be too late.
_Photograph by Marc Atkins/Getty Images_