EXTRA TIME

Elsewhere it might be worse

November 2, 2025 at 11:47 am 1 comment

West Ham have lost all of their home games this season so far. Hence if you want to enjoy yourself at Stratford, you have to treat yourself to some sweets at Caffé Concerto on your way to the stadium, because after entering the much disputed “bowl” things usually turn sour soon after kick-off.

But if you look elsewhere you can find a home form which surprisingly seems to be even more bleak, and I don’t speak of Wolves and their 10-match winless start to the Premier League season. In fact the PL’s worst home record of the year can be found at the supposedly magnificent Tottenham Hotspur Stadium!

Saturday’s 1-0 home defeat by Chelsea meant that Thomas Frank‘s Spurs, albeit currently sitting fourth in the PL table, continue a trend that started under their former manager Ange Postecoglou last season: the north Londoners have won just three of their past 19 home Premier League games (four draws and 12 losses), with no current top-flight side winning fewer home matches since 9 November 2024.

According to the BBC, in England’s top four tiers only Southampton have won fewer home games than Spurs in this period. West Ham have also won only three of their home games since 9 November 2024 (3W 5D 9L), but after all, they gave their fans five draws to cheer about 😉 and today the Irons still have the chance to make amends to their record if they muster their first home win since 27 February 2025. A 2-0 win against Leicester was the Irons‘ last victory at Stratford.

Yesterday the Tottenham players were booed off the pitch after their defeat to Chelsea – a normal reaction of a disappointed home crowd. But what is going to happen after West Ham‘s match against Newcastle on Sunday afternoon, no matter what the result will be, will be very unusual: the supporters will remain in the stands for 90 minutes after the game to stage a sit-in protest against owner and chairman David Sullivan and vice-president Karren Brady and the way they run the club.

After a march before the match against Crystal Palace and the boycott of the last home game against Brentford this is another step following the fans‘ vote of no confidence against the Board due to the state the club currently is in. Owners can break a club’s spirit if they don’t care. And a lot of damage has already been done.

Many former regular match attendees and season ticket holders have decided to no longer go to the “bowl” in Stratford and prefer to watch the Irons’ games on television or only attend away games (and recently protest with black balloons there).

My friend Paul Turner (above left, with Barrie and me at Stamford Bridge) is one of the supporters who is in favour of watching our beloved Hammers only away from home – and has therefore witnessed the only win of this season so far, a 3-0 at Nottingham Forest.

Tim Crane, author of several West Ham books and editor of “The West Ham Years”, whom I had the pleasure to meet up with on my last trip to London at “The Cow” (a pub at Stratford, below) is another dedicated Hammer who doesn’t fancy going to Stratford. He told me that he now prefers to watch the games on TV rather than go to the London Stadium. In November his newest book, looking back at all West Ham squads that played at the Boleyn Ground, will be published (“West Ham United – The Upton Park Years 1904-2016”).

“World class football in a world class stadium”, that was promised by Karren Brady when West Ham moved from Upton Park to Stratford in 2016, the same year in which Rapid Vienna opened their newly built ground in Vienna Hütteldorf with a 1-0 win over Chelsea.

Contrary to the Hammers who won their first European trophy since 1965 with their triumph over Fiorentina in the Conference League final in Prague in 2023, Rapid has not been able to add silverware to their collection of titles from former years. Despite also being able to beat Fiorentina, Rapid‘s 1-0 was only the first leg of their European tie against the Italians in August 2023 and Rapid were eliminated by losing the second leg 0-2. Well, and recently, just two weeks ago, the Green-Whites didn’t stand a chance against the Italians in an other European match. On a cold and wet evening at the Weststadion they were deservedly defeated 0-3 by “La Viola” from Florence.

Albeit Rapid’s „Weststadion“ (aka as the Allianz Stadion) has been designed as a football-only-stadium and their “Block West“ are the loudest and most dedicated “Ultras” in Austria, the green-white fans now have been waiting for another win of the Austrian Cup or the championship since 2008 in vain.

So not everything has gone wrong at West Ham since their move away from Upton Park. There have been great European nights at a sold out London Stadium and with the crowd being behind the team a lot of noise can be generated even inside the bowl. But this electrifying atmosphere very much more depends on the performance of the team on the pitch than elsewhere, and things quickly can go very flat at a venue which has been designed for athletics.

Well, I had my doubts about the Olympic Stadium being fit for football from the beginning (as supposedly many others, too). When vice chairman Karren Brady in a meeting of the then Supporters Advisory Board informed us – after I and the other members had signed two NDAs – about the architecture of the stadium I feared that the atmosphere at the new ground could be underwhelming: the downtilt of the stands at the Olympic Stadium is extremely flat, which evidently results in the seats of the upper tier being very far away from the pitch.

Furthermore, the upper tier is separated from the still somewhat makeshift retractable seating in the lower tier by a gap under which the running track is hidden. The bridges which have been built to cross this gap and the broad empty space between lower and upper tier behind the goals (where the lower stands have been moved closer to the pitch in recent years) make a strange look and these things blatantly give evidence of the problems which are faced when converting a stadium meant to be a multi purpose venue into a proper football ground.

West Ham are unable to make significant changes to the stadium without owning it and London mayor Sadiq Khan recently said that the London Stadium is “a fantastic asset to our great city, in terms of not just the football that takes place there, but the things that take place in other periods, whether it’s athletics, whether it’s concerts, whether it’s baseball and so forth”.

But considering some successful European nights and impressive victories over Tottenham, Chelsea, Manchester United and others that took place at the London Stadium since the move away from Upton Park, there are pros too, and the mayor was not completely wrong when he said that “I know from speaking to friends who are West Ham fans, they’ve had a great experience at the London Stadium”.

And, apart from the fact that the atmosphere at London Stadium, due to its architecture and the design of the stands, much more depends on the performances on the pitch than in other venues, the spacious design also has its undeniable advantages, e.g. if you look at the concourse below the stands of the London Stadium where you’ve got enough space for drink and food facilities and queuing for the loo. On the weekend on which I boycotted West Ham I was at QPR‘s Loftus Road instead of going to the London Stadium: there it was impossible to get to the toilet during half-time because the access was completely blocked by the crowds queuing for food and there was absolutely no room to move in front of the Stan Bowles Stand (below).

Another pro of the London Stadium are the transport links, though this advantage is contrasted by the atmosphere outside of the Olympic Stadium which is underwhelming compared to the former walk from Upton Park station to the now lost ground. Ken’s Café in Green Street and the red West Ham Gates in front of the West Stand are gone forever. Albeit the red gates have been preserved, they now are almost invincible at their new place of installation inside the club shop at Stratford – testament to the fact that the tradition of the Club is in danger of getting lost!

Let‘s hope the players today feel their responsibility for the Club and for the supporters who will turn up again at a stadium they never have really taken to. Let’s be optimistic and blowing bubbles inside the bowl once more! Or is a first win under new manager Nuno Espírito Santo just a dream which will fade and die?

As West Ham midfielder Tomáš Souček put it before the game: This tough situation is “an opportunity for the players to show how much they care”. Everyone who wears the shirt this afternoon should say what Souček (who last time out in the defeat at Leeds United became only the ninth West Ham player to reach 200 Premier League appearances) said in an interview prior to the game: “I am the one who can really change it and help the team in this time.”

Come on you Irons!

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