Football has never been a sport that bends neatly to logic. You can throw algorithms at it, drown it in statistics, and still end up with a result that makes absolutely no sense. Numbers might not decide matches, yet they give us the supporters something to chew over while waiting for the next ninety minutes of chaos.
Saturday’s point against Bournemouth was a perfect example. A repeat of last season’s fixture, although last year’s version at least had the decency to offer four goals, yet another clean sheet for Mads Hermansen is worth its weight in gold. That little déjà vu moment set something off in my mind. How did West Ham actually fare in the equivalent fixtures last season? Different squad, different managers in Julen Lopetegui and Graham Potter, but the same emotional rollercoaster.
So I dug in.
Liverpool away? Lost 2–1.
Fulham away? A respectable 1–1.
Manchester City at home? A 3–1 defeat.
Aston Villa away? Another 1–1.
Wolves at home? A comfortable 2–0 win.
Crystal Palace away? Same again, 2–0.
Everton at home? A goalless stalemate.
Brentford away? 1–1.
Arsenal at home? Best not dwell on the 5–2 loss!
Newcastle away? A remarkable 2–0 win.
Leeds at home wasn’t played, so Leicester, promoted champions like Leeds I used as the proxy. West Ham won that one 2–0.
West Ham 2-0 Leicester City
Last season’s victories – clutching at straws or useful when forecasting this season’s outcome?
Most Read on West Ham News
Add it all up and you get 16 points from the remaining eleven fixtures. Enough to land on 41 points. Surely enough to survive?
Naturally, that didn’t settle my nerves. So I did what any anxious fan does, I went further back. All the way through the Premier League archives, thanks to Transfermarket.co.uk looking for patterns, omens, anything to cling to. Spoiler: it didn’t help.
Liverpool away? One win in twenty‑nine attempts.
Fulham away? Surprisingly our happiest hunting ground, with a win rate over 50%.
Manchester City at home seven wins in 24 games.
Aston Villa away, 26 games played and history firmly points to either a draw, ten of them or a Villa win also ten.
Brentford away? Not a single victory.
Arsenal at home? Three wins in twenty‑nine.
Everton at home? A quarter of matches won.
Newcastle away? Roughly one in five.
Leeds at home is surprising just 3 wins for the Hammers in 13 fixtures.
Some fixtures look promising, Wolves at home, Palace away, but the overall picture is exactly what you’d expect from a club that has spent decades dancing between hope and heartache.
And yet, that’s the strange beauty of it. The longer term numbers paint a bleak picture, but football isn’t played on spreadsheets. It’s played in moments, scruffy goals, late tackles, deflected shots, and the kind of stubborn belief that makes us the supporters keep turning up even when the stats say they shouldn’t.
History says one thing. Last season says another. This season will write its own story, as it always does. And until it does, we’ll keep poring over the data, convincing ourselves it means something, even though deep down we know the truth. Football refuses to be predicted.
That hasn’t stopped the bookies with the Hammers odds of relegation being slashed to 54.05%, (three weeks ago that figure was over 80%)- Notts Forest to 25% and Tottenham 11.76%, Leeds United, are worth a vague mention at just 8.33%.
Nuno Espírito Santo will know full well that the match against Bournemouth was one he had earmarked as a very achievable three points. It didn’t materialise, and we will have to “respect the point.” Yet now his focus has to shift immediately to the next challenge. Football is like a fairytale, after all, it took West Ham until 2015 to finally win at Anfield for the first time since 1963. Eleven years on from that breakthrough, they know exactly what’s required. COYI!