There once was a period when West Ham United were considered too talented to face relegation.

Occasionally, articles resurface, often featuring interviews with former players, attempting to dissect the enigma of the Hammers’ 2003 relegation. How could a team boasting talents like Paolo Di Canio and Jermain Defoe have failed to survive in the league?

However, such analyses are unlikely to appear in today’s context. No one is making those claims anymore. The situation now lacks mystery. In its current condition, this club is too dysfunctional and frail to avoid a similar downfall.

Nuno Espirito Santo, who marks the fourth managerial appointment in just 16 months for the club, has come to realize the gravity of the situation. Following their defeat to Brentford, he confessed, “We are all concerned.” He acknowledged that his team is “very far” from cultivating a clear identity, admitting candidly, “We have a problem.”

Indeed, it is a glaring issue. Without significant changes, West Ham appears destined for relegation.

New West Ham boss Nuno Espirito Santo knows full well his side are not too good to go down 

Lucas Paqueta shows his frustration during the defeat by Brentford on Monday night

The team suffers from an unbalanced and aging squad, lacking in both leadership and determination. Their performance in London derbies this season highlights their struggles, with five matches yielding losses and a cumulative score of 14-2.

If they cannot fire themselves up for games like that, and for a new manager’s first home match in charge, what chance do they have inside the Elland Road furnace against relegation rivals Leeds on Friday night? What fight will they show against Burnley in a fortnight?

Last season, however poor West Ham were under Julen Lopetegui and then Graham Potter, there was never much chance of relegation. The promoted sides were just too bad. West Ham do not have the same luxury this time around.

Let’s just get the numbers out the way first. Four points from eight games, West Ham’s worst start to a top-flight season since 1988-89, when they were relegated. Twelve goals conceded in their first four home league games for the first time since the 1960s. No wins at home since February. Five successive home defeats in the top flight for only the second time in their history, and four in a row to start a season for the first time ever.

This season: most goals conceded, worst goal difference and, in news that will come as a surprise to absolutely no one who has watched West Ham, the worst pressing numbers and some of the worst for distance run and sprints combined.

Only Chelsea have run less, but they have sprinted far more. Only Everton have sprinted marginally less frequently, but they have covered more ground. West Ham do neither.

All of this leaves the Hammers facing the bleak and realistic prospect of going from European champions to relegation in the space of three years.

Coming away from the game on Monday night, it was impossible not to feel the similarities with Leicester’s demise, a side that went from FA Cup winners to the Championship in just a few years, and from title holders to relegation in seven.

Andy Irving (right) played in midfield for West Ham against Brentford in his first home league start, 780 days after joining the club

While pay-as-you-play striker Callum Wilson was left on the bench even though the Hammers had no recognisable centre forward on the pitch 

That was another club whose fans could smell something was wrong. They could feel its soul being ripped out as bad decision after bad decision left a toxic divide from the grass, to the stands and to the boardroom.

West Ham didn’t put an attendance on the bottom of their in-house match report as they usually do following the Brentford game, and a figure wasn’t announced at the London Stadium either. Hammers United, the supporters group leading the protests, say that more 20,000 season-ticket holders boycotted the game and intend to submit a Freedom of Information request to prove it.

Eventually, as West Ham are now finding out, the rot becomes impossible to stop.

What the Hammers served up in Nuno’s first home game was as bad as anything under Lopetegui or Potter. West Ham created nothing and every Brentford cross, corner or free-kick was met by a free header.

It did not help that for Nuno’s first game at the London Stadium, he picked a strange team that included second-choice full backs playing on the wrong sides, selected Andy Irving in midfield for his first home league start 780 days after joining the club instead of £17.3m summer signing Soungoutou Magassa, and left pay-as-you-play striker Callum Wilson on the bench while spending most of the game without a centre forward on the pitch.

‘We need to improve their fitness, tactical awareness — everything,’ Nuno said on Wednesday ahead of the Leeds game, in a similarly blunt assessment of current affairs as when Manchester United sent their viral social media post from 2013 that read: ‘David Moyes says #mufc must improve in a number of areas, including passing, creating chances and defending.’

This is, perhaps, what happens when a club keeps hiring new managers with new styles to fix problems not of their making with players not of their choosing, signed by technical directors or heads of recruitment no longer at the club.

This is what happens when you allow Potter to sign three of his top targets in the summer in El Hadji Malick Diouf (left out against Brentford), Matheus Fernandes (subbed at half-time) and Mads Hermansen (dropped after two games) then sack him less than a month later. This is what happens when the manager wants to lower the age of one of the oldest squads in the Premier League but you sign 33-year-old Wilson on a free.

Captain Jarrod Bowen is West Ham’s sole shining light, but even he may be unable to arrest this slide 

Declan Rice was sold for £105m to Arsenal but the Hammers have squandered that money

This is what happens when you sell Declan Rice for £105m and then spend £300m not replacing him via a transfer strategy with little discernible vision and still have a squad without a proven striker who’s not both injury prone and in his 30s.

This was supposed to be the summer of rebuild at West Ham but they now crawl towards January needing to find a few more round pegs. Nuno wants to sign a striker for one thing.

Nuno could still find some joy with the players at his disposal. Jarrod Bowen remains a match-winner and winger Crysencio Summerville should be able to provide a direct route to goal in a style akin to the one with which Nuno had such success at Nottingham Forest. 

Diouf, though left out against Brentford, has been an impressive addition and adds pace and a threat from full back. 

Nuno needs to find a way to get the best out of Lucas Paqueta and to teach his defenders how to head clear crosses. That includes Max Kilman, a £40m centre back whose former Wolves boss, Gary O’Neil, accused him of regularly switching off during matches, on Sky’s Monday Night Football.

Nuno needs a forward to build it all around with Niclas Fullkrug injured yet again. Youngster Callum Marshall got the nod off the bench on Monday ahead of Wilson. Will he get his wish in January?

While the likes of Brentford, Bournemouth and Brighton keep motoring along with their tried-and-trusted models, unearthing gem after gem, buying, selling and improving, West Ham are now having to restructure their recruitment department for the second time this year.

Fans show their disgust at how the club is being run by Karren Brady and David Sullivan

Chairman Sullivan with his fiance Ampika Pickston in the stands at the Emirates Stadium, where West Ham were beaten 2-0 by Arsenal this season

Out went former technical director Tim Steidten, in came Kyle Macaulay as Potter’s trusted man, only to leave once Potter was sacked, with the Hammers now said to be interviewing for a new head of recruitment.

Highly-rated analysts Maximilian Hahn and Dylan Curnell will continue to search for targets but, as ever, it remains Sullivan who signs the cheques. The club will find it difficult to attract top talent in January if the club remain in the relegation places.

But what if the worst should happen and West Ham return to the Championship for the first time since 2012? Just how disastrous would it be?

‘Relegation would be a pretty big hit for West Ham,’ football finance expert Kieran Maguire tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘They made £270m in 2024, over half of that was television money. That would drop by something in the region of £120m. 

‘They would struggle to sell 60,000 tickets each week, especially if they don’t have a great season. They’d have substantial reductions in commercial revenue as well.’

Most of West Ham’s players are on contracts that include hefty wage reductions in the event of relegation. The club would cash in on its saleable assets like Bowen and Paqueta. They are already expected to announce big losses for last season.

Brady is unpopular with West Ham supporters who blame her and Sullivan for a lack of investment and planning  

Graham Potter’s short reign at West Ham was an unmitigated disaster 

The late David Gold’s family own 25 per cent of the club and want to sell some of their shares. Relegation would have an impact on how much they would fetch from any future investor.

‘My concern would be, while they don’t have any borrowings, the elephant in the room is that West Ham owe £191m in instalments for players they have already signed,’ adds Maguire. ‘That has got to come out of future cash. That would put the pressure on to the owners, who presumably would have to go down the borrowing route.’

There’s more pressure anyway, because the fans have no plans to stop piling it on to those at the top they want gone. If the club do not fix this mess soon, they will be gone from the top table too. 

They are certainly not too good for that anymore.