West Ham United must challenge Premier League elite as attendance facts emerge
West Ham United may be in the relegation zone currently but they should still have ambitions of challenging the country’s elite soon.
As a club, they have always had the potential to break the mould of the traditional top six in England along with perhaps three or four other Premier League sides but it wasn’t until the Irons left the Boleyn Ground for the London stadium that things accelerated.
Two back-to-back top seven finishes has put the Hammers firmly as the next best club outside of those big six in England on pure reputation but when you look at the attendance figures, maybe they are still under-achieving.
As shared by SPORTBible on Twitter, the Hammers have an average attendance so far this season of 62,447 which puts them second in the entire country, only behind Manchester United at Old Trafford on 74,674.
Other London clubs Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur both surpass 60,000 but neither are able to overhaul West Ham and Chelsea languish well down the order with just 39,941.
You would think that those kinds of numbers would be enough to entice some top-quality talent to join the club and that has started to come true with Gianluca Scamacca rejecting Paris Saint-Germain for the Irons and Lucas Paqueta also making the move.
But having so many people turn up to every game and not make some kind of breakthrough can only last so long and it won’t be long before those supporters get restless.
Especially if the poor form that has them in the bottom three continues after the international break is over at the start of October.
The potential is there to be unlocked and it is not far from reach right now. It might only take one or two things to happen for the dominoes to fall into place but they can’t remain mid-table fodder for too much longer without change.