Claret and Hugh’s article earlier today concerning the ‘silver lining’ of Leeds United winning at Manchester United last night has certainly got some traction with readers today.
The possibility of Leeds being ‘safe’ come their last-day visit to London Stadium could have significant advantages for a West Ham side looking to pull off their Premier League Great Escape 2.0 – which of course could well be decided on the last day.
Leeds also are still in the FA Cup and so – in the unlikely event that they make it to the final, will have full focus on Wembley rather than having ‘skin in the game’ at London Stadium. The Hammers have five tough fixtures, most against sides in the upper half of the Premier League, before that Leeds game and may well get to May 24th in need of a win to stay up.
Guest post – fan opinion from C and H reader ‘Bob”:
Thinking back to the fixtures we played before the FA cup final in 2006, literally every player was scared to have the ball for fear of getting clattered. Also thinking of some of the hard slog relegation battles and then being safe on the final game, literally nobody is in anyway interested in that final match.
Dear Ashton celebrates an FA Cup final goal in 2006
The perfect case in point is actually us in that terrible 22/23 season. The penultimate game we were theoretically still catchable by our opponents that day (ironically Leeds) so if they beat us by a large margin it acted as the ultimate 6++pointer. However, we went on to win that and secured our premier league status. The following week we got beaten by an absolutely woeful Leicester city team who still had a sniff of survival. It was on the eve of our uefa conference final.
Nobody was interested in that match.
Anyway, to think that we actually have this within our own hands was even unthinkable in the first weeks of January. The rate at which we’ve collected points since then is the equivalent of a 60+ point season. 14 pts after 21 and then 18 pts collected in the next 11 can’t be sniffed at from where we were.
We haven’t been that good since 20/21 and coincidentally, this was about the same points haul earned by a certain Nottingham Forrest with Nuno as manager.
Let’s just hope and pray we can survive this and give this manager a chance to carry on at the same rate. One things for sure, his style of football is a marked improvement on Moyes and appears also to have a better plan B.
Fingers crossed, there’s much at stake.
With any luck, Spurs won’t get their first (domestic) win of the calendar year of 2026 until August so if that’s the case, they’ll be doing that in the Championship.
That (should) mean that it won’t be a must-win game for ourselves or Leeds so there’ll be even less pressure on both sides.
(And yeah, it’s highly unlikely Spurs will end the season winless domestically this year but it’s too amusing not to consider the possibility…)
If Leeds make it to the FA Cup final they will more likely take it easy when they play Spurs 5 days before the final than after it in the last game of the season against us. Particularly if, helped by last night’s win, they are safe from relegation by then.
No way on earth is it good for us that Leeds won last night. We need them in the relegation battle as long as possible.
I hope we can then play out a draw that saves us both and relegates Spurs.
‘Unlikely event that Leeds reach the final’?
I can see them easily turning over Chelski and their work experience manager.
Good luck to them, and hopefully they can’t be bothered come the last league game against us.
I think most of the league want Sp*rs to be relegated.
West ham will be okay.Proper club and fans.See you next season.from a Leeds fan.