Blind Hammer looking at the reasons to be cheerful for next season.
Looking ahead to next season – whilst a lot depends on Rice replacement, there are reasons to be cheerful that this season’s travails may not be repeated.
Firstly, at least in the middle and bottom half of the table, last season’s Premiership was, in my view, the most competitive ever.
The first fly in the ointment was that Brentford and Brighton confounded expectations and managed to achieve the best footballing performance in their respective histories. Neither had pressures from European competition.
This placed enormous pressure on the upper middle competition of the league, with not just one but two teams punching far, far, above their normal weight. However Brighton at least will next season have to fight on the European front as well.
Whether Brentford have the resources to sustain such levels season after season will be interesting to see.
Arguably even more significant in the lower part of the league was the over performance of all the promoted clubs. I cannot remember a season before last when none of the relegated clubs had not included a team promoted the previous season. At the beginning of last season you would have had long odds on all of Leicester Leeds and even Southampton being below Bournemouth in the table.
Not just Bournemouth but Fulham performed well above expectations and the enormous investment at Forest achieved safety. Forest in the end did not even need the inflated wages paid to Lingard. Additionally like West Ham they benefitted by not panicking in sacking their manager, as all the relegated teams did.
Arguably one of the key reasons for West Ham’s survival was the panicked managerial threshings at Leeds and Leicester. The goings on at Elland Road in particular was bizarre to behold. Leeds retaining Marsh, and especially Leicester retaining Rodgers would have provided far greater threat to West Ham’s eventual survival.
Reasons to be cheerful
We benefited from their Board’s short sightedness and panic, Sullivan deserves huge credit from a judgement born out of years of experience of times, good and bad.
Next season, however, I think it will be harder for Gary O’Neil to achieve a similar miracle with a Bournemouth team attracting only an 11,000 ground capacity with resources to match. Similarly Luton have already made it clear that they will rightly use Premiership money to invest in their stadium infrastructure to provide a longer term benefit for their club.
Luton also have currently a ground capacity of 10,000 approx. with equivalent resources to match. I suspect that both Luton and Bournemouth will struggle to attract the players they need to challenge properly next season. Sheffield United and Burnley will provide stiffer tests with Sheffield, in particular, likely to receive significant Summer player investment.
Still there should be significantly reduce pressures on the lower part of the Premiership compared to last season.
Most importantly though is that the “catch up” pressures of playing Thursday /Sunday will be reduced. The unprecedented competitive tightness at the bottom half of the table last season, with up to 8 teams facing relegation pressures meant that any team playing on a Sunday or Monday will be under pressure to match results from competitors playing earlier on Friday or Saturday.
Moyes admitted this placed psychological pressure on West Ham, especially when they dipped briefly into the relegation places because of this catch up.
Next season however, until Christmas at least, there will be a far more level playing field with, on at least some weekends, the majority of fixtures occurring on Sundays rather than Saturday. There will be more clubs having to follow the Thursday/Sunday model than ever before. Not just West Ham , but Liverpool, Brighton and Aston Villa will all be having their fixtures on Sundays or Monday.
Sky and BT Sport will continue their love affair with Man United, Man City Chelsea Spurs and Arsenal so it is likely that these teams as well will have fixtures broadcast on Sundays and Mondays to boot.
I think next season there may be some weekends when only 1 or 2 fixtures will be set to the traditional Saturday 3pm time.
Whether this all enables West Ham to compete for another league or Cup based European Challenge is not clear yet, it depends on recruitment, injuries and whether there are really gems to emerge from the Academy, but I do think relegation pressures should be easier to resist.
This should enable them to play with more freedom and less tension. Playing free from tension normally provides confidence, and competitive advantage.
Certainly West Ham will now have far more experience of juggling with European football pressures than either Villa or Brighton.
David Griffith
I am cautiously optimistic.
