Relegation

Considering the state of the club at the moment and the position we find ourselves in the league with a tough run of fixtures remaining.Relegation looks almost certain now - Question is if we go down do people think that could be the start of freefall into the lower leagues similar to Leeds and Portsmouth to name two clubs or do you think we would be able to bounce straight up again at the first time of the asking.?

Me personally think that going down could be the start of us doing a Leeds and dropping down the leagues before things get better again.The whole club is just an mess on and off the field with seemly no direction or ambitions etc.

We just need the board to put us up for Sale, New owners come in and interact with the fans and explain there visions and ambitions for the Club,invest carefully into the Squad and bring in a Manager who wants to be at the club,Is young and most importantly ambitious and wants to win things etc.

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: if we drop we'll find ourselves in the position of having essentially no money. There'll be a parachute payment from the Prem, but beyond that... our financial stability and strength is solely tied to the performance of the team (prize money, TV appearances, etc) and the generosity of the owners.
As we all know... our performances aren't wining us any prize money... and seeing the way even when we're safe that we drop a bunch of places in the last couple of weeks of the season, it doesn't seem like anyone at the club either knows or care about this.
TV money will disappear overnight when we're relegated.
any money generated from the combination of the above two factors - neither of which are doing us any good in recent years.
So there's one other option which you will be familiar with if you are lucky enough to own your own home...
the re-mortgage.
now the problem here is... we sold our home and don't own any property except possibly the training ground at Chadwell Heath (please correct me if I'm wrong).

All of which means, any real money to do the things a football club needs to do, such as buy players capable of winning games... is down to the generosity of the owner(s).

SO once we drop into the Championship... there'll be substantially less money coming in to suggest to the owners that they should dig deeper into their pockets... and what benefit is there to do that?

Which means they are then likely to decide to sell up... but first order of business would be ensuring they get repaid for all the loans they gave us (because they ain't walking away without getting solidly reimbursed)... meaning any potential new owner has to agree to bail out G&S, then agree to basically do what they've been doing and fund the club form top to bottom - because unless we clear out pretty much everything there's no chance of us going forward at all.

SO a new owner needs to basically buy a team that can compete in the Championship (figuring out how long they can sustain that investment if it takes more than a season to get back to the Premiership)
and THEN when that happens... buy a new team to compete in the Premiership.

While all the time understanding that the club has a zero asset base form which any funds can be generated other than the success of the team.
Which means there's a goo place to argue that anyone willing and able to do that might just as well start somewhere else or even from scratch with a completely new venture because the only things the club has going for it are...

The Fans: and we all know how argumentative, fickle and shortsighted a lot of those can be (and I doubt the lure of hangin out with Iron Maiden, Russell whatever his name is and Keira Kneightly is really enough to bring them in) and a lot will not turn up to see this level of 'quality' in the Championship.

The "Name": and ally, whether they are true fans at heart or a bunch of SPIVS, the current owners have seen to it that the name of West Ham really means bugger all any more. We can beat anyone. We play godawful football. We don't win anything. We have a bad rep for the whole Olympic Stadium debacle, etc...

So, honestly (and this is from the perspective of a lifelong fan descended from other lifelong fans) - who the fupp would want to buy into that?

My reaction when we left the Boleyn Ground was that unless we had substantial and sustainable growth in terms of the performances (taking us to regular top 6 or so in the Premiership, possible Euro competition, etc) we were putting ourselves on a very shaky financial foundation.
This isn't to say "I told you so" - it's just the sad reality of where we are.

Everything is in the hands of the owners. They have shown themselves woefully incapable of understanding how to run a football club in terms of the in-the-pitch success. We can argue both sides of how they run it behind the scenes... but on the pitch, there's honestly no debate. They suck. They've fucked up at nearly every turn.
They got rid of Sam Allardyce when they should have kept him - that was most likely down to pressure from the fans... so a lot of you can go fupp off in terms of where we find ourselves now.
to explain: Sam - having done what no other manager in our history had done ... get us back in the Premiership on a straight bounce - would have then kept us in the Premiership and built a solid team that while maybe not word beaters, would at least have been competitive and stuck around mid table. So I'd have given him at least one, probably two more seasons to get us solid - not least just as thank-you for essentially saving the club from the precipice we find ourselves currently staring into.

Slaven wasn't a bad choice - we all remember fondly how good that first season was. But again, as soon as things stopped being great, the fans got on the board's back and they caved to fan pressure. I agree we wren't playing well but you los at Slaven's record before coming here and after leaving and the consistent thing is that shit doesn't go well at West Ham.

Pellgrini is the kinda blip that on paper you didn't see coming but perhaps if there'd been a little more research done or maybe had a little more understanding of how many (not so) star names are doing well at the smaller clubs, instead of thinking that a history of success was going to repeat itself at 97 years old or however old he is... again... it can easily be chalked up to failure at the board level.

Al of which leaves the single biggest factor in understanding that this board do not have a fupping clue and that is... M*yes.

He was a fupping disaster first time around. I know... you're all gonna parrot his self-praise with the 'he saved us, etc, etc. He didn't. We'd have escaped relegation just as 'easily' with a caretaker manager or the tea lady running training sessions. The M*yes appointment lead us to the 2nd worst managerial success record in the club's history.
To then decide to re-appoint him in a moment of absolute crisis just shows how divorced form reality they all are.
M*yes is Not a winner... h's won 2 things in his career and one of those was the Charity Chield which a: no one gives a shit about and b: the team qualified for it under the success of the previous manager.
so he's won less silverware than West Ham. Has the worst win percentage as a manager (he certainly does now) and the football we played under him was even more bland, boring and backwards thinking than it ever was under Curbishley, Grant or Sam.
Thinking he's going to anything other than fupp this club is the height of delusion... but the board thought it was the way to save our footballing skins and they should pay the ultimate price for their stupidity.

But this is the real world and they will be the only people to escape from this with anything.
Worst case scenario everything comes together, we avoid the drop, pick up some cheap young players who magically find a way to play together under M*yes retarded leadership and we start winning games and creep up to 'Everton in the 80s' level of mid table nothingness.
or...
they get bought out, have all their loans repaid in full and get a nice little bonus on top of the for all of their trouble.

But the bottom line is... West Ham as a club, philosophy or a way of life... is pretty much dead and gone.
The Fans will bear the emotional cost of watching what they love die in front of their eyes.
Even the players will ultimately suffer... because trust me, no one is going to pay 45m for Haller after watching his continually shit the bed for us. No one is going to pay Carlos Sanchez 65,000 quid a week off the back of a half dozen piss poor performances.
Who'd pay good money for either Anderson or Lanzini off the back of their performances for us?
Jack Wilshire has no starry-eyed Geordies waiting to bring him 'home'.
Noble's career is over - he'd struggle to get into a Championship team at this point.
The only saleable assets we have are Rice and Fabianski and it looks like Rice might be halfway out the door already.


None of which paints any kind picture that any of us really want to see... but this is where we are.

And the worse thing about all of this is that the Board has created a situation where I, and many others from their posts and comments on various social media platforms, honestly just don't gives a shit any more.
That to me is the worst part of this whole affair... an awful lo of people, those with a heart and soul invested in the club, honestly don't care if we go down, go out of business or disappear up our own arse... we're not even going to go out with bang or go down fighting.. it's just a sad, slow, souls slide into nothingness.

But like I said, short answer: Yes.

Ain't that just the most fupping depressing thing.

Was going to see Crystal Palace, but they moved it back later in the day and we went to Hampton Court Palace instead. No regrets.

I`ve never wanted a season to end as much as I do now - I used to enjoy the weekends when we were playing but now I just get depressed just thinking about are games as I really can`t see where our next win is going to come from at the moment. We just don`t seem to be showing any fight at all and like us fans it seems the players too are just counting down to when our relegation from the premier league has been comfirmed.

In my 29 years as a Hammer - this season has been by far the tougest yet.The board have completely distroyed this club and it shows when even the most loyal fan is started to question the point of going to the games etc as it`s that bad.