West Ham: Where it did it all go wrong after Hammers' relegation to the Championship confirmed

West Ham United have been relegated to the Championship after 14 seasons in the Premier League - so what went wrong for the Hammers this season?

Poor start under Potter

Any optimism for the season evaporated with a humbling 3-0 opening-day defeat at Sunderland. In truth, all the evidence to predict this was there from the end of last season.

Graham Potter lasted only five games of the 2025/26 season. His team had played five and lost four, ironically beating only Nuno Espirito Santo's Nottingham Forest.

When Potter was sacked on September 27, the writing was well and truly already on the wall. The club were 19th and their goal difference was minus eight.

Potter's winless run at home had reached eight games following a 2-1 defeat to Crystal Palace at the London Stadium that would be his last in charge.

He had just six victories to shout about in a total of 23 Premier League matches stretching back to his appointment in January - statistically this was the club's lower points-per-game average in its history.

No new manager bounce

Nuno was quickly appointed by West Ham, but there was no real upturn in form. The next five games brought only one more win and a draw. West Ham reached the 10-game mark still in the bottom three, while their goal difference had dropped to -11.

Among those games was a 2-0 home defeat to Brentford in which Nuno selected a side that still baffles West Ham fans. Left-back Oliver Scarles was played at right-back, while natural right-back Kyle Walker-Peters was played as a left-back.

Lucas Paqueta was employed as a lone striker, with Mateus Fernandes on the left. The midfield engine room was occupied by Andy Irving, making his first full start, alongside Tomas Soucek. This despite Freddie Potts and Soungoutou Magassa's impressive displays in a battling draw with Everton in their previous match.

The midfield was overrun and the visitors dominated. West Ham managed just one shot on target from seven attempts in the whole game in comparison to the Bees' 22, seven of which tested Alfonse Areola.

Poor form continues and points dropped from winning positions

By the halfway stage of the season and on the first day of 2026, West Ham had added only one more win, against one of the only teams below them, Burnley, on November 8.

Meanwhile, a disastrous festive period saw the Hammers winless throughout December, until a last-gasp victory at Tottenham on January 17 gave them a first win in 10 league games, although in truth they never recovered from that run.

Another frailty had emerged that would play a sizeable role in West Ham's plight. In Potter's last game, West Ham surrendered a 1-0 lead to lose to 2-1 to Palace. The inability to close out wins became a consistent theme under Nuno.

In his first 16 games, from a possible 48 points available, West Ham took only 11. However, they had been in winning positions in five of those matches but failed to convert, meaning a total tally of 22 was available and 11 spurned. A 2-2 draw at Bournemouth, when leading 2-0, was particularly damaging as Nuno tactically changed his side to protect a lead but failed.

Heading into the Leeds game at the weekend, West Ham had lost 20 points from winning positions. How much would even half of those points be worth now?

Were West Ham complacent heading into the season?

The probabilities around promoted teams staying up have tended to work in favour of established Premier League clubs. If the underlying trend shows that, on average, one or two of the promoted teams are expected to struggle, then survival becomes less about raising your own level and more about outperforming those newcomers.

That can create a sense of security among mid-table sides and would have been further enforced by the previous three seasons in which every promoted side had been relegated.

On paper, West Ham looked light. Over the course of the previous few seasons they had lost the creative talents of Said Benrahma, Manuel Lanzini, Pablo Fornals and Mohamed Kudus, as well as Michail Antonio's attacking threat. They had replaced them with Crysencio Summerville and retained Jarrod Bowen.

They also let the experience of Aaron Cresswell, Emerson Palmieri and the much-loved Vladimir Coufal, replacing only with less Premier League experience in Scarles from the club's academy as well as 21-year-old El Hadji Malick Diouf for £19m from Slavia Prague and Walker-Peters from Southampton.

West Ham conceded 65 goals in the 2025/26 Premier League season and ended it with a goal difference of -19, the fourth worst in the league. A failure to bring in a defender in the summer now looks an odd decision. It took until transfer deadline day in January to address it by adding Axel Disasi to the squad and he's been largely impressive and contributed to an upturn in defensive form; West Ham had kept one clean sheet before he arrived and have registered five in the Premier League since.

Sunderland and Leeds - the two promoted sides many might have tipped to go down - showed their ambition. Sunderland had a net spend in the summer transfer window of £141m, adding 14 signings, rebuilding almost half their squad. Leeds added 11, with a net spend of £95m.

West Ham, by contrast, had a net spend of £60m, adding eight players, but saw Kudus leave and one of those signings, Jean Clair Todibo, was a £24m conversion from loan to permanent. Their biggest signing was Fernandes from Southampton for £38.5m and by the time he turned up on August 29, West Ham had played two, lost two and had a goal difference of minus seven.

Sunderland's 3-0 win on the opening weekend should have been a warning shot. West Ham entered the final match week on 36 points, which the Black Cats had reached on February 2.

What is at the heart of West Ham's decline?

Some fans will point to the move away from Upton Park to the London Stadium, a decision that has fractured relations with the fanbase. Those supporters would argue that the club lost its identity in moving to a stadium described as "soulless". It was a move that traded connection and culture for scale.

The club would point out that the move was needed to take West Ham to the next level, to be more competitive in the Premier League and achieve European football. And Premier League finishes of sixth, seventh, ninth and tenth, as well as three seasons in Europe and Conference League success in Prague in 2023, are argued as successful proof of delivering on that ambition.

A lot of that success came under David Moyes, and so others would argue the beginning of this decline came with his departure from the club. Whether that was down to fan sentiment, Moyes' reluctance to sign the new deal offered when his contract was up, or disagreement over the direction of the club [in truth, it was probably a combination of all three], that's in the past now.

Since he left, though, West Ham have finished 14th and have now been relegated.

Off the pitch, this season has seen a constant undercurrent of protests, from red cards waved by the fans on the 16th minute of every game (representing 16 years of the David Sullivan, David Gold, Karren Bray ownership), to marches and protests earlier in the season and now fears of dire financial consequences of relegation and outgoing of the unpopular Brady.

On the pitch, West Ham and Nuno suffered the disruption of Paqueta's messy exit from the club. Following his unique red card against Liverpool for two yellow cards within a single minute for dissent, the midfielder talked of emotional exhaustion and lack of support from the FA following their investigation in betting irregularities.

That match was in late November but it soon became clear that he was keen to leave the club and move back to Brazil. It took until January 30 for that move to finally materialise.

The Brazilian playmaker, a player who polarised Hammers fans this season, had been central to much of West Ham's creativity. Since his departure on January 28, Bowen - who tucked home the late winner from Paqueta's through ball in Prague to seal European glory - has scored only once in the Premier League.

Those signed to score the goals in the January window have failed to deliver. Taty Casetellanos, who arrived from Lazio, has scored four in the Premier League, while Pablo and Adama Traore are goalless in the league.

West Ham's form has improved since January, and the energy from Taty has played a big part in that upturn, alongside defensive stability increasing with the Chelsea loanee, Disasi.

What next?

Time will tell how the financial implications of relegation will hit West Ham. The current squad would almost certainly have been preseason favourites for promotion.

High-profile departures are likely, though and fans will be concerned that the new campaign will start without Fernandes, Summerville, Bowen, Konstantinos Mavropanos and others.

And supporters will have mixed views about whether Nuno still being at the helm is a good or bad thing for the club.