West Ham Fan View: The season in review

Thirteenth. That is where West Ham United finished the 2017/18 Premier League season. It’s fair to say that the season was one to forget.

It was already a poor start to the campaign, given that we had to play our first three games away. Unsurprisingly, we lost all three and conceded 10 goals in the process. The poor form continued and whilst many fans thought that Slaven Bilic should have gone in the summer, he definitely had to go after the 4-1 defeat to Liverpool in November. David Moyes, to the anger of many, came in and his job was to keep us safe from relegation. And he achieved that.

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So, did we meet expectations in the 2017/18 season? We finished 11th the previous season and given our summer activity, a top-half finish was expected. We signed big names, but it was clear early in the season that, once again, our summer window had been a failure. Our poor defence was on show once again, and we continued to leak goals.

But Marko Arnautovic was the exception. He had a very difficult start, though his second half of the season was excellent, becoming one of the best performers in the Premier League. He ended up with 11 goals and whilst we thought he may have been on his way out in the summer, he is certainly going to play a big role in our future.

The season also showed us that we have not learnt from our mistakes. We saw the fans’ anger at the board culminate in the game against Burnley. The board made promises that were not kept. The football in the 2017/18 season, for the most part, was difficult to watch. We regressed as a team and the move to the London Stadium still hasn’t shown the positive change that we were promised.

David Moyes has now left his role as West Ham manager and the next appointment is crucial. The board cannot afford to get it wrong. But they cannot also continue with their poor transfer strategy, which has saw us go into the season with a squad that is not equipped to meet expectations.

The season was one to forget, and it would not be a surprise if we see similar next season.