In the bitter cold of an aast London night, the walk from Stratford tube station through the sleet across the winter wasteland of the Olympic Park, to the unloved bowl of the London Stadium, had rarely felt bleaker than it did on Tuesday night.
There were rumours that 15,000 tickets had been sent to resale sites by disillusioned West Ham United fans and inside the arena that once hosted Super Saturday, the swathes of empty seats suggested the home supporters were treating this as a Terrible Tuesday. And so it came to pass.
The home side, after all, had not won since they beat Burnley on November 8. Since then, they have been sinking like a stone and they knew that last night, against fellow-strugglers Nottingham Forest, was the night they had to start rising again before it was too late and they were cut loose with the rest of the bottom three.
They tried and they tried and for a while it seemed as if their manager Nuno Espirito Santo was to gain sweet revenge over Evangelos Marinakis, the Forest owner who had sacked him three games into this season.
West Ham took the lead and then thought they had gone two up but the second was disallowed. And because football is cruel, a minute later Forest equalised and the game changed and Forest grabbed a winner five minutes from time.
The defeat leaves West Ham seven points adrift of safety and it is hard to see Nuno surviving here for much longer. They have not won now in ten games and they fell to a catastrophic 3-0 defeat at bottom club Wolves at the weekend. They are sinking like a stone.
‘You’re getting sacked in the morning,’ the Forest fans sang at the West Ham boss, which seemed a little harsh given the heights he led them to last season. Football is a fickle, fickle partner. Nuno may be about to be fired for the second time in a few months.
When Nuno was asked before the game about its magnitude, he left little room for doubt. ‘It is a big one,’ he said. ‘It is huge. It is very important.’ To emphasise the message, Taty Castellanos, the Argentine forward signed for £26m from Lazio on Monday, was thrown straight into the team.
This was no time for procrastination. No time for indecision. Nuno knew West Ham were sliding and he knew the slide had to be arrested fast before the gap between the club and safety started to become too cavernous.
It didn’t start well for the home side. They were grateful for an acrobatic save from Alphonse Areola, who flung himself to his left to claw away a shot from Neco Williams that was spearing its way towards the top corner.
But Castellanos and Crysencio Summerville started brightly in attack and when West Ham won a corner after 13 minutes, they made it pay. Summerville bent the corner in from the left, Tomas Soucek flicked it on at the near post, and as he tried to head it clear, Murillo diverted it inadvertently past Matz Sels from close range.
The game, predictably, settled into rather an attritional, low-rent affair after that but Forest were so poor that they managed to make West Ham look actually rather competent. When the visitors did get forward, their delivery from wide was appalling. Most of their attacks foundered there.
For West Ham, Castellanos and Summerville looked sharp in attack, Mateus Fernandes was quickest to the ball in midfield and Jarrod Bowen looked too good for both teams, a fine talent marooned in a sea of mediocrity.
But four minutes from the interval, Forest came within inches of an equaliser. Callum Hudson-Odoi, who had been as quiet as a mouse, suddenly burst into life. He cut inside Kyle Walker-Peters, on to his right foot, and curled a right-foot shot out of the reach of Areola and crashing against the face of the bar.
It was a rare moment of hope for Forest, though, amidst their drudgery and five minutes after half time West Ham thought they had doubled their lead when Summerville rifled home from the edge of the area. Forest were reprieved by VAR, which found a Forest player had strayed offside in the build-up.
West Ham deserved a second but games can turn on such moments of fortune and a minute later, Forest were level. Elliot Anderson swung in a corner from the Forest left, Nicolas Dominguez flicked it on and the ball looped in a long, lazy arc towards to the far corner.
Walker-Peters was on the post but he seemed to mistime his jump and the ball bounced over the line. On the touchline, poor Nuno shook his head in despair at the cruelty of football life.
The mood of the game changed now. The stadium was even quieter than it had been before. Forest sensed a fear in West Ham that had not been before and pressed for a second goal. Their play was more confident and purposeful.
West Ham roused themselves in the closing stages and Sels saved in quick succession from Castellanos and Walker-Peters but then five minutes from the end Areola tried to punch clear a free-kick and flattened Morgan Gibbs-White instead. After consulting VAR, the referee awarded a penalty.
Gibbs-White took it. He hammered it down the middle, Areola dived to his right and the ball bulged the net. West Ham fans booed and groaned and got up to leave the stadium in their droves. It felt like the prophecy of a death foretold. It is going to be a long hard winter for West Ham and for Nuno, if he is allowed to oversee any more of it.
