West Ham have dropped 20 points from winning positions this season. It is the single most damning statistic of a damning campaign, and it tells you something about this club that the league table alone cannot.
The examples are not one-offs. Lucas Paqueta put West Ham ahead against Chelsea inside six minutes on the opening day at the London Stadium, only for Chelsea to score five without reply.
Callum Wilson had West Ham 2-0 up at Bournemouth by half-time, but two second-half goals meant they left with just a point instead of three.
Different opponents, different managers, different moments in the season and the same outcome every time: lead, wobble, concede. The pattern is too consistent to be attributed to bad luck and too recurring to be tactical.
That is the part that should worry West Ham most. This is not a squad that cannot compete; it is a squad that cannot complete the job, and there is a meaningful difference between the two.
Closing out matches requires game management, defensive organisation, and the collective nerve to maintain a result when an opponent raises the tempo.
It requires players who can read the moment and respond with intelligence rather than anxiety. West Ham have repeatedly demonstrated that they do not have enough of those players.
What makes this statistic so damaging is that it accumulated under two different managers. Graham Potter could not stop the rot, and while Nuno Espirito Santo steadied the ship in other respects, he could not solve this issue.
The problem is not the system, the shape, or the coaching. It is culturally embedded within the squad itself, which is precisely why it is so difficult to fix.
Twenty points is the difference between a relegation fight and a comfortable mid-table finish. It is the difference between a squad that wins when it should and one that consistently lets points slip away.
West Ham have the second kind, and that could ultimately prove to be the difference between Premier League and Championship football next season.