The Upton Park atmopshere

Up until the Spurs game, it’s safe to say it had been a pretty depressing season for West Ham—and one of the worst parts has been the negativity that’s swept out from the pitch and into the stands at the ground—negativity which has resulted in a surprisingly subdued and downcast home support for many of our matches.

Fans have been exceptionally frustrated this season by the negative and unattractive football seen on the pitch – and a series of uninspiring home losses have done nothing to improve anyone’s mood – but the Spurs game was a massive turnaround for both the team and the fans.

It’s since the Spurs game that I’ve become hyperaware of the weight of the cloud of doom we’ve been living under for most of this season. That game was an interesting one because, on paper, Sam didn’t do anything drastically different from our previous atrocious home loss to fellow London team Crystal Palace. Guy Demel started instead of Pablo Armero, and Matt Taylor (who was brilliant against Spurs) started in place of Matt Jarvis.

From kick-off, it shouldn’t have been so different – but the positivity and support echoing around the ground couldn’t have been a more intense turnaround from the Palace game. From minute one, the atmosphere in the ground was electric. The fans turned up ready to sing, to taunt, and to antagonize their London rivals, irrespective of what Allardyce did on the day.

The result was that we got to hear Upton Park restored to its former intimidating glory—and our team was buoyed to win a brilliant game. For once, we got to be supporters again. We got to cheer, to yell, to sing, and we even got a hell of a result out of it.

It was the complete and utter opposite of our game against Palace and I wonder—did we, as supporters, let our frustrations and the negativity surrounding our results get in the way of supporting our team? Have we been so dismayed by the performances on the pitch that we stopped singing so loudly and so often, and as a result, lost our impressive and intimidating atmosphere?

Did we play better against Spurs because of something Allardyce said to the team, or because the players knew that on that day we were 100% behind them?

Lord knows we need to start seeing some real football again, and regularly, but on Saturday last we actually saw it. We enjoyed a football match—and yet, enjoyable as it was, it also highlighted how miserable the rest of the year was both on the pitch and in the stands.

Of course there are some sections of the ground who never stopped singing during some of the poorer matches, but it must be said that the noise level overall against Spurs was drastically improved from those poorer matches.

We’ll need to see improvement over the summer so that we can start off the season with a noisy Boleyn again – not just noisy from the sound of our boos—and hopefully next year the team can give us something to sing about for the whole season.

What have you made of the atmosphere in the ground this year? Has the depression from the pitch sunk into the crowd, and does this vicious cycle then affect the players? Yell at me below, or have a go at me on Twitter @makingthemarrow.