West Ham Have Not Fallen Below Their Levels – This Is Their Level

West Ham captain Jarrod Bowen has apologised following the Hammers’ 3-1 defeat against West Bromwich Albion, admitting the team have fallen well below their usual standards over the past fortnight. However, while I appreciate Jarrod’s honesty, I fundamentally disagree with his assessment of what has gone wrong.

My argument is that West Ham’s performances haven’t suddenly deteriorated over the last two weeks. If anything, the standards have remained remarkably consistent, and the defeats against Southampton and West Brom simply represent the results that many of our earlier performances deserved.

Nuno Espírito Santo’s team have slipped to eighth in the Championship, with their hopes of an immediate Premier League return beginning to look rather less straightforward. But rather than examining two disappointing weeks in isolation, I think we need to look at the warning signs that have been there for considerably longer.

Bowen’s West Ham Assessment Doesn’t Tell The Whole Story

Speaking to the official West Ham website following Saturday’s defeat, Bowen admitted the Hammers had been below their best but had previously found ways to win.

He also acknowledged that the team had fallen below their levels in recent weeks and apologised to supporters.

I appreciate Bowen taking responsibility, particularly after he was one of the few players to emerge from the West Brom defeat with a shred of credit. However, I completely disagree with the suggestion that this represents a sudden collapse in standards.

I think West Ham have simply started getting the results their performances deserve.

Take the 1-0 victory away at Swansea City. It was an excellent result against the league leaders, but West Ham were incredibly poor at the start of that match and hadn’t registered a shot on target after half an hour.

The 6-0 victory against Lincoln City looks fantastic on paper. However, Lincoln were reduced to nine men, and even when they had ten players on the pitch, I thought they were the better team.

It wasn’t until the second half that West Ham really began flexing their muscles against an exhausted side playing with two fewer men.

Queens Park Rangers outplayed us for large periods of our encounter, while everybody remembers quite how dreadful we were during the first half against Millwall.

These weren’t isolated incidents. They were the norm.

West Ham’s League Position Has Flattered Their Performances

To an extent, West Ham have got away with it.

Until a week ago, you could reasonably argue that our league position had been inflated by two 6-0 victories. Those scorelines certainly helped create the impression of a team considerably more dominant than the performances themselves suggested.

The truth is that we’ve already lost three times at home this season.

We might have beaten Wolverhampton Wanderers 4-2, but I thought there were large elements of that match where we were fortunate. Charlton Athletic didn’t find it particularly difficult to beat us either.

In terms of matches played eleven against eleven, I would only really consider the victories against Wrexham and Derby County to have been dominant performances.

That is hardly the form or consistency of a team expecting to secure automatic promotion.

And it is why I find Bowen’s suggestion that West Ham have recently fallen below their usual levels so difficult to accept.

For that to be true, the previous standards would presumably have been considerably higher.

They haven’t been.

The problems aren’t particularly new. The lack of confidence, cohesion and defensive organisation has been evident for some time.

The difference is that opponents are now making us pay.

Bowen’s Most Damning Admission Was About West Ham’s Talking

There was another part of Bowen’s interview which I found even more concerning.

Discussing West Ham’s habit of starting matches slowly, the captain acknowledged that the problem had been discussed repeatedly within the squad.

As he put it:

“We speak about it all the time”

He went on to explain that individual players must take responsibility for putting those discussions into practice on the pitch.

And this is where I think the situation becomes particularly worrying.

Because if the players have repeatedly discussed the problem, presumably identified what needs changing and agreed on a plan of action, why does the same thing keep happening?

In many respects, this is the most damning indictment of all.

The players have talked about it. They’ve discussed how to improve. They’ve presumably received instructions from the coaching staff.

And it hasn’t worked.

Which leaves us with two possibilities.

Either the plan itself is wrong, in which case serious questions must be asked of Nuno Espírito Santo and his coaching staff, or the plan is perfectly reasonable and the players are incapable of executing it.

Neither possibility is particularly reassuring.

West Ham Are Running Out Of Answers

Bowen concluded his interview by making another revealing admission:

“I think talk is very, very cheap.”

On that particular point, I couldn’t agree more.

But where does that leave West Ham?

The talking isn’t working. The tactics aren’t working. The plans aren’t working. And increasingly, the performances on the pitch aren’t working either.

There is only so much discussing, analysing and apologising that can be done before somebody has to produce an actual solution.

West Ham now face consecutive away fixtures against Cardiff City and Blackburn Rovers before the international break, and Bowen has made it clear that the players need to respond with victories.

I certainly wouldn’t question the captain’s commitment. He scored an excellent goal against West Brom and was one of the few players who genuinely looked capable of making something happen.

But his assessment that West Ham have only fallen below their levels during the past fortnight misses what I consider to be the bigger problem.

We’ve been playing like this for much of the season.

The results have simply stopped disguising it.

And if Nuno and his players have already talked through the problems, agreed on solutions and still cannot put them into practice, then I am not entirely sure what there is left to say.

Either the manager’s plan is wrong or the players cannot carry it out.

Whichever it is, West Ham are in a bit of trouble.