Football365’s early losers: West Ham fans

Imagine being two goals up by half-time against the worst team in the Premier League and emerging with only a point and the lasting image of your captain trying to start a fight in a rapidly emptying stadium.

Imagine watching one of your senior players come on the pitch as a substitute, proceed to not look the slightest bit arsed and then make a schoolboy error that gifts the opposition a 97th-minute equaliser.

Imagine watching your side gift the ball to bottom-of-the-table opposition time and time again and having no faith in your manager to make a single decision that could change the tide of the game.

Imagine knowing that unlikely victory at Tottenham on Wednesday night has already earned that manager what feels like his 426th stay of execution.

Imagine your team has taken just two points from your last three games against Burnley, Brighton and Crystal Palace and you have barely put together more than a half of watchable football in that run.

Imagine your last away win in the Premier League came in May.

Imagine you have a top-ten wage bill but the last time you were in the top ten was a few short weeks in February/March.

Imagine that your club had paid £20m for Marko Arnautovic and he spent the entirety of your latest Premier League game on the bench.

Imagine that you supported a club whose starting XI featured six players aged 29 or over while Reece Burke and Reece Oxford and other young players not called Reece are out on loan.

Imagine you are ten games into the season and the only player with two Premier League assists is Arthur Masuaku.

Imagine the striker your manager could not manage has scored nine goals for Valencia while your whole team has managed only ten goals all season.

Imagine you are constantly being told that your manager has two or three games to save his job and he always just does pretty much exactly enough to keep that job.

Imagine you don’t even feel at home in your own stadium.

Imagine knowing that your team has only lost one of their last five games so somebody will cite your ‘form’ as evidence of progress.

Imagine your club has become the butt of a thousand Twitter jokes because you lurch from one crisis to another with the stubbornness and hygiene of a friendless chain smoker.

We imagine that you would be pretty p***ed off.

Sarah Winterburn