This is the first of a series of articles reflecting back on our stuttering start to life in the Championship for the Hammers. I will be catching up on the matches I have not posted from the first part of the season, so hopefully the articles make some sense 🙂
Anyways, me and my family had spent a long weekend in a wonderful escape room lodge down in Bodmin, Cornwall. We are real escape room enthusiasts and have an excellent track record of escaping from even the hardest of rooms when we put our collective detective skills to the test to find the clues to solve the puzzles and escape within the usual 60mins.
The escape lodge was different, it was filled with various visual puzzles, letter and number locks and clues scattered throughout the lodge for us to solve. The story was that after a recent jewellery store heist, the robbers had hidden all the loot within the lodge along with £1m and all we had to do was solve the puzzles and dash away with the valuables!
As part of the story one of the robbers was living it up on beach in Costa del Sol and was available to answer any of our questions, but we only needed one hint, which impressed the team who designed the lodge as we completing two of their escape rooms during our stay there.
As we had time to spare we also enjoyed some kayaking, a Mad Hatter themed afternoon tea run by a married couple with whom I got to talking about all things West Ham as they were both big Hammers fans having move from Canning Town to set up their unique shop in Bodmin.
At West Ham, we are in essence, in a protracted escape game, where for the early part of the season before the Summer transfer window closed, there was a lot of uncertainty in terms of who will be at the club pulling on the claret and blue shirt to get us back into the Premier League at the first time of asking.
We also have live actors in the room who seem to be doing their best to put us off any chance of rebuilding for a successful campaign, from down tools players, who have a negative impact on the rest of the squad, through to the ongoing uncertainty with the clubs share ownership and the downright persistence of David Sullivan attending matches, which has also been a distraction from the club being able to move onto the next clue or puzzle to solve as we negotiate ourselves through the Championship campaign.
The weather for the Charlton game was wonderful – not too hot – but warm enough as I walked to the ground with our eldest boy and felt confident we would get the win against a Charlton team who are thin on quality and only just avoided relegation themselves last season. Our son was asking if we could get out of the league by the end of the season, and I felt confident we could. Oh how that confidence is lacking now (in November) after almost a third of the season gone.
It was certainly a busy match day and if felt like a full house for our first home game of the Championship and I was trying to get some shots with my FujiFilm X100T. I find that I take way less images with this camera, so I am a bit more selective about my shots, but I tried to use the camera in a similar way I used the Canon DSLR – holding it high above my head and down on my stomach to see if I could get some nice atmospheric photos of the gathering crowd.
As I walked around the outside of the stadium before the match I noticed that LAHAD DJs, loyal Hammers supporters who have entertained with their mix of disco, soul, groove, reggae, house, hip-hop, and funk sounds reverberating before and after the matches at the stadium, were absent. This is due to the clubs cost cutting measures that also meant regular in stadium announcer and DJ Russ Budden (DJ RussyB) was dismissed in July 2026 after 25 years at the club.
The growing ‘beer garden’ has a very different feel to it than the side of the stadium with LAHAD DJs, and the music is very different as well – not really my kind of vibe. I don’t drink alcohol myself, and I wonder if this area is worth it in terms of the beer and atmosphere, rather than the more mixed area around the other side of the ground where the food stalls are. The owners are intent on cutting anything that created a valuable link between the fans and the club.
Inside the ground, I grabbed my usual coffee and made our way to the stands, you could feel the atmosphere as we walked up the steps and saw the stadium open out in front of us.
The chants and the singing and music combined to generate a great welcome to the players as they line up for the start of the match. The FujiFilm is a lot slower to focus than the Canon, and I did not always get the image I want, but I managed to capture a sense of the atmosphere here.
The early stages of the match showed us what we will be up against in this league, Charlton were pressing hard and jumped out of the starting blocks with several runs down the left, exposing us defensively, so it was no surprise we went 0-1 down by 10mins.
It wasn’t going well, and any possession we did have was toothless with the usual passing sideways that gave the visitors time to organise at the back and push us out into wide areas, where Bowen and Solomon just kept trying to cut inside into a crowded defence.
Half time and the boos rang out as the teams made they way to the tunnel, and although I do not boo myself, but like Martin Allen (ex-West Ham Utd player) always says, fans buy their tickets and have a right to have a say on what they see as a bad performance, and the players have to accept it. Surely, this match was not going to plan.
At the start of the second half the fans got behind the team and although many fans had yet to return to their seats, the stands were ringing out with the chants and songs to try and rouse the players to up their game.
But it went from bad to worse as the visitors added to their lead, with the clinical Tyreece Campbell, who had been causing all sorts of problems down the wing, skips past Mavropanos to curl his shot into the net. Now I was seriously grumpy. We were awful, and hoped that Nuno could see what we were all seeing, but nothing changed.
There is little point in having the lions share of possession if you’re not going to do anything positive with it. I have heard and read across the InterWeb that some people felt we played ok, but that’s not what I was watching. It was flat, lacked any sense of urgency, there was no energy and too many silly errors with passing, lack of movement and failure to fight for the ball. Charlton had clearly done their homework, we looked like we had just turned up for training.
Then a goal, as Piroe scored after having a goal ruled out for off side to give us some hope that we could turn this around. My current camera of choice struggled with these shots but to be honest, I quite like the blurriness of them as I feel it adds to the emotion in the moment.
We had chances for sure, with Bowen going close, Taty sending a header just wide but then just when we thought the game was lost, we are awarded a penalty. And this is where us fans got kicked in the teeth. Questions were asked about Taty taking the penalty instead of Bowen, although he had missed his previous penalty against Leeds Utd, is that a reason to switch who takes the next penalty?
Taty fluffed his lines and our bubbles burst again as the visitors, whose fans had been loud throughout the match, celebrated a deserved win.
We were left bemused by how we struggled at the start of the this campaign. There are many clues that need to be gathered as to why we are, but if we think back to the last time we were in the Championship, when we lost our fist home game to Cardiff City and then went on to finish third and secure promotion through the play off final. The worry now is that it is only 1 point from the previous 9 home games, and on that sort of form you don’t win promotion.
Leaving the stadium I looked around for some shots, it’s a good kind of remedy for when we have played so badly, a distraction from what I’ve witnessed on the pitch. I’ve been trying to find new ways to take photos and the exits are a good capture for showing fans leaving the ground. Here a nice portrait frame instead of the landscape shots from previous matches.
I walked around with my brother dissecting the match and whether Nuno is the manager to get us out of this situation. It felt too early to panic, but worrying signs for sure.
It seemed the issues we are having only seem to happen to West Ham, other clubs don’t have the same issues around resigned directors, club ownership, a growing list of players refusing to play and a manager who seemed to be too defensive in his tactics to give us a fighting chance to win matches, even when we are 2-0 as we were against Burnley.
We seem to be forever so nearly, and maybe this is the West Ham way.
This fan was absolutely raging after the match, shouting that he could do better himself on the pitch than the half hearted performances we had witnessed on this day. The passion was there and the desire to support his team through the good and bad times clear, but fans were already concerned and rightly so.
Leaving the ground I reflected on what a long and hard season it is going to be for us and mulled over the many questions that needed to be answered before we find the next clue to solve the puzzle and move on towards escaping this league.
The Tuesday’s excellent Carabao Cup victory against and strong Saints team showed us the way forward, and it seems as if Nuno have found the code to unlock the next piece of the puzzle. But we know how that ended for us with another early exit from a cup competition.
A young team, and to be honest I had groaned when I saw the team sheet, plus a change in formation, still defensive, but with a wealth of academy players who were able to react positively after going 0-1 down early in the match. The academy players seemed to show the seniors how to do it and it left the gaffer with a quandary, but one should have been decided after the transfer window closed on the 1st September.
But the questions that needed answering, such as what happened regarding the change of penalty taker? Bowen for me would have buried that and secured a draw at least. We needed to get rid of the those players who were refusing to play as their influence in and around the team is toxic. We looked wholely unprepared against Charlton, why was that? New players were taking time to bed in, I get that, but we huffed and puffed and look flat most of the time. Why was Sullivan still attending the matches? He had been advised not to, but what kind of person does this known their presence is negatively affecting the club? He seemed to be acting as if nothing has happened recently, I cannot figure this out. The club needed to get some messaging out regarding the ownership of the club, it had gone quite, speculation was rife and the uncertainty does not attract quality new players.
So far after we had won just 2, drawn 1 and lost 1 – it was not form to panic over, but the performances, uncertainty and need to get a much better start to the season was something to worry about. Our worries have come home to roost.
For then, I was happy to be back taking photos of the home games, and a few people had been asking me “Where’s your proper camera?” Actually, I’m enjoying using my little FujiFilm and I have found that I am more involved in the matches because I am not taking the shots of the action on the pitch as before. That feels like a good thing this season.
Be safe everyone!
Dawud
