The first 10 games of the season have bene nothing short of a complete anti-climax for West Ham.
After a summer of upheaval, including Julen Lopetegui‘s appointment and almost £150m spent on new players, fans were understandably excited for what might come next.
Having enjoyed four years of being competitive in both the Premier League and in Europe, the hope was that Lopetegui would come in and build on that success.
But it just hasn’t happened so far.
We’re 14th in the league with 11 points after 10 games having just lost 3-0 to Nottingham Forest, and there just doesn’t seem to be much improvement on the horizon. A home win over Manchester United over a week ago appears to have done nothing but paper of the very large cracks in Lopetegui and his players’ performances.
There was hope – in fact, something of an expectation – that we would at least be competing in the top half of the table this season, perhaps even mounting a challenge for the top seven and European qualification.
These were minimum expectations this season – compete in mid-table and see if we can keep up the pace with the club’s trying to qualify for Europe. That would’ve represented a good season and solid foundations to build on ahead of next year.
But any chance of us even competing in the top 10, let alone challenging for the top seven is dwindling by the week.
That’s reflected, too, by Opta’s supercomputer, which seeks to predict the likelihood of every club’s finishing position in the Premier League this season.
After 10 games, Opta has us down as most likely to finish 14th with a 15.6% chance. Followed by 13th at 14.4% and 12th at 12.2%. That means there’s a 42.2% chance of us finishing between 12th and 14th.
Our chances of finishing in the top 10 are just 19.9%, with only a 3.3% likelihood of finishing in the top seven and qualifying for Europe.
The good news is 2.2% chance of us finishing in the bottom three.
Regardless, it’s setting up to be a pretty below average season for us and after all the excitement of the summer, that will be one hell of an anti-climax.
