Why West Ham relegation would rival Tottenham as greatest failure in Premier League history

Submitted by daniel on Wed, 29/04/2026 - 21:00

No, this is not another article about Tottenham Hotspur, although you probably wish it was. We cannot get enough Spurs content at the moment. The schadenfreude is through the roof, the miracle-event so tantalisingly close a majority of Premier League fans appear to be as invested in the hubristic failures of a supposed Super League contender as their own team’s – by comparison – rather boring preoccupation with European qualification.

But we have been scrutinising Spurs a little too close, and if you can tear your eyes away for a second there is another story developing that any other season would have drawn the full tractor beam of our collective fascination.

West Ham United are far too big to go down. In fact, if it wasn’t for the flashbang of Tottenham’s Premier League title challenge a full decade ago under Mauricio Pochettino, and for the long afterglow that culminated in a Champions League final appearance in 2019, West Ham and Spurs would be considered more or less the same size.

Premier League relegation (odds via Sky Bet)

Tottenham - 4/6

West Ham - 5/4

Nottm Forest - 14/1

Leeds - 28/1

Correct at 17:40 BST (29/04/26)

Tottenham won the First Division in 1951 and 1961 while West Ham have never lifted the title, and Spurs’ eight FA Cups speaks to their historic superiority against West Ham’s three. But in the 21st century, and certainly since West Ham moved into the third-biggest football ground in England (OK, fourth-biggest now that Tottenham have a stadium with 350 more seats) nothing should separate them.

West Ham’s relegation is a disaster, an apocalyptic event not far off what could happen in north London. Three years ago they won the Europa Conference League. The year before that they reached the semi-finals of the Europa League, while as recently as April 2024 they were facing Bayer Leverkusen in the quarter-finals of Europe’s second tier competition.

At the beginning of the summer just gone, West Ham’s squad contained Jarrod Bowen, Mohamed Kudus, and Lucas Paqueta. Two of those star players have left, but over the course of the campaign they have spent £178 million on new players, the majority signed by Graham Potter, the manager they hoped would lead them back into Europe this season.

This simply should not be happening, and might still not. Again, there are notable comparisons between Spurs and the present-tense West Ham, as well as their medium-term futures should disaster be averted. Like Roberto De Zerbi at Tottenham, the Hammers now have the right manager in charge to stabilise the ship and even push for Europe in 2026/27. The only question is whether they have left it too late.

Since January 16, West Ham are sixth in the form table with 22 points from 13 matches. That isn’t over-performance, it’s simply the natural level for a club of their stature, wealth, and experience.

The heat would very much be on West Ham this campaign if it wasn’t for the fact that the sun appears to be crashing directly into Tottenham. But as the race is whittled down to two it’s time we give West Ham the (dis)credit they deserve for years of shambolic mismanagement that has spiralled the club into an unprecedented situation. It is a fall from grace as stunning as Tottenham’s, characterised similarly by a boardroom consistently making choices that have upset supporters, from the move to a soulless athletics stadium to increasingly inept transfer business.

And yet, like Spurs, it is wrong to microscopically analyse West Ham’s historic failures or to claim, as so many have done, that this has been a slow-moving disaster. The recency of the club’s European adventures, and Nuno’s revival, tell us this really is a one-off; an inverse Leicester City, and as much a consequence of the Premier League’s unusual strength this season as the dreadful decision to hand a progressive coach like Potter an ageing squad sculpted in the image of David Moyes.

It is a miracle event, and, more miraculous still, there are two of them. In age where hate-watching has become as pleasurable as vicarious joy there is only good news for the neutral. Whichever team goes down next month we will witness the greatest failure in Premier League history.