West Ham United’s average attendance of 62,464 is the second highest in the Premier League behind Manchester United. It’s not that the team from East London are a bigger or better supported club than, say, Liverpool, but the London Stadium, which was built for the 2012 Olympics games, has the second highest capacity and London’s designation as a tourist destination means there’s usually a demand for tickets.
The crowd for the Hammers’ final home game of the season against Nottingham Forest was given as a full house of 62,466 on the club’s official website. The reality was that there were thousands of unoccupied seats in all areas of the stadium apart from the 3,000 given to the visitors from Nottingham.
There are several reasons why: West Ham are 15th in the table and out of form. Their win in the previous game away to Manchester United was their only one in the last 10 games and got them to 40 points in a forgettable campaign. No team outside the relegated bottom three has a worse goal difference than them.
Those long-relegated teams are also the only sides with inferior home records. The Hammers have lost at home to all eight of the league’s leading teams. Their previous four season’s finishes of 6th, 7th, 14th and 9th make this campaign a let down.
Thousands of fans who who paid for tickets (and were thus counted in the official attendance) stayed away, yet Sunday’s game was a hugely important one for Forest, who are chasing Champions League football.
After 117 minutes - finishing two hours and 11 minutes after it had started - because of multiple stoppages for injury and VAR decisions, Forest’s 2-1 win means that whatever happens next week this will be their best league finish since coming third in 1994-95.
Forest, the league’s surprise team after a 17th place finish last term, have enjoyed being in the Champions League positions for much of the season, but one win in their previous six games had put hopes of playing in the top competition in doubt.
Nuno Espirito Santo’s side needed a win at West Ham to keep their hopes alive – and they got one. They’re seventh with one game to play. Crucially, that is against Chelsea at home next week.
Beat Chelsea and Forest will move above them. They still need other results to go their way, but such a scenario would have been unimaginable back in August, so even Europa League qualification demonstrates vast progress.
For West Ham, it felt like the end of an era. Aaron Cresswell, Vladimir Coufal, Lukasz Fabianski and Danny Ings all tasted Europa Conference League success with the club but will leave imminently.
Unchanged from their win at Manchester Unted the previous week, Graham Potter’s side started well, with Forest goalkeeper Matz Sels diving to his left to stop a header from Tomas Soucek after three minutes. Two minutes later at the other end, Alphonse Areola made another world-class save from Morgan Gibbs-White who powered a shot towards the keeper from five yards.
Nico Williams set up Chris Wood to strike towards the West Ham goal after eight minutes. Forest’s pressure paid off after 10 minutes when Areola pushed the ball away to Gibbs-White, who pounced and saw an opening to shoot and score his seventh Premier League goal of an impressive season. The celebrating Forest players held up a shirt in support of teammate Taiwo Awoniyi, who was seriously injured after colliding with a goalpost last week.
Forest should have made it two on 40 minutes when Wood, who scored in the reverse fixture, a 3-0 win for Forest, had two chances.
Nikola Milenkovic’s 61st minute goal, the Serb getting a touch after being set up by an Anthony Elanga cross, was followed by a six-minute delay for VAR before it was given. The fans of both sides made their feelings about VAR clear.
Jarrod Bowen’s brilliant 86th minute left-foot volley for West Ham made it a tense end for Forest, but they held on. Bowen remains the Hammers’ central force.
“Until the West Ham goal we were in control,” said Nuno. “Then the anxiety comes when we allowed the goal and everything is difficult from there.
"Matz [Sels] did great again so we’re happy. We started really well. Previous games a lot of bad things happened to us but today that was not the case. Today we pressed good, got a good goal, started well in the second half, on the front foot. Generally a good performance. The players worked hard to put West Ham under pressure.”
Forest’s season will go to the wire. West Ham’s has been effectively and disappointingly over for some time.
