Someone posted an old image of the West Ham supporters’ ‘Moyes Out’ banners on Tuesday night, as the team were sliding deeper into the relegation mire. It was a stark reminder of the preposterous fallacy that the manager afforded such extraordinary disrespect by the club and its fans was somehow not up to their standard.
David Moyes holds store in such football qualities as dependability, good value and a work ethic, you see. He does not allow agents to bring a player through his office door unless that individual passes his character test.
None of that was good enough for West Ham. Too dull. Too predictable.
Not in keeping with the notion of something they like to call ‘The West Ham Way’ – the utterly delusional notion that a football aesthetic matters more than results.
When the negativity towards Moyes was beginning to peak after the 6-0 home defeat to Arsenal in February 2024, I suggested here that West Ham fans, who’d voted with their feet that afternoon, should be careful what they wished for. Graham Potter’s name was being circulated. There was talk of the need for a new ‘Roberto de Zerbi.’
And here West Ham are nearly two years on – a directionless busted flush with yet another manager being buried alive in their vortex of chaos.
West Ham fans display their ‘Moyes Out’ banner just two years ago after an iffy run of results. But David Moyes delivered two top-seven finishes and a European trophy for the club
Moyes led the Hammers to their first trophy since 1980 when he won the Europa Conference League in 2023. But it was not enough for many people connected to the club
You would imagine that there might have been a reservoir of goodwill for Moyes at West Ham, given the class he has shown them in the face of the club twice tossing him away like an old rag.
He’d managed to keep them in the Premier League in 2018 when they showed him the door and hired Manuel Pellegrini, another supposedly more exotic option, whom they handed a £200million transfer kitty to boot. Pellegrini was as dismally grey at West Ham as he always was at Manchester City and when that act of genius had gone south, Moyes agreed to return and restore sense once more.
He delivered West Ham two top-seven finishes, that glorious night in Prague when they lifted a European trophy after beating Fiorentina in the final minute of the Conference League. The subsequent bus parade was a truly joyous occasion.
He also delivered more goals per game in that second spell than any other manager in the Premier League era – even the much-loved Slaven Bilic.
But this was still not enough. After a few poor results in 2024, the geniuses running the Hapless Hammers took away the contract they’d agreed with Moyes and plumped for Potter.
It’s a year next weekend since Moyes returned to Everton – a club where he is actually appreciated – and the club’s 12th place reflects the sense he has restored, having kept them up. Since Moyes went back to Goodison, only seven teams have more points than his 59 with the Toffees.
Many of a West Ham disposition will detest and ridicule the suggestion that Moyes, the manager their club have treated so crassly, would have steered them away from this cliff edge. I see laughable suggestions that he is even somehow responsible for the beginning of this demise, when the club actually finished ninth in his last season.
Shorn of Declan Rice, they did concede heavily in that campaign, yet still ended up above Brighton, Crystal Palace and Bournemouth. By the end of December 2023, they had 33 points from 19 games – their best Premier League points return at the half-way stage.
Empty seats litter the London Stadium as West Ham lose to Forest to leave them seven points from safety in the Premier League
West Ham seem to be heading for relegation under Nuno Espirito Santo
Konstantinos Mavropanos sums up the West Ham United mood after their defeat to Nottingham Forest on Tuesday night
The detested London Stadium has also played its part in the demise, we’re told. Well, I don’t recall that place being too much of a graveyard when I watched Moyes’ West Ham beat Chelsea 3-2 there in December 2021. The place was rocking.
I’ve interviewed Moyes several times in the past five or six years and there is never anything but deference for West Ham. Respect to Sullivan, he told me in 2021, for having been man enough to come back and admit the Pellegrini romance was a mistake. ‘No hard feelings. We parted friends,’ he said of Sullivan when we touched on the subject again last May.
When the club first hired him, the press conference took place under a cast-iron montage of words once used to describe the experience of watching Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters glide to victory – ‘wishing through bated breath, the scene set for folklore’ – 60 years earlier.
‘If style is more important than winning, then I’ll find out from the fans when I take to the job,’ Moyes said that sunlit afternoon. We all know now. The ‘West Ham Way’ reigns supreme and that delusion is killing the club.
