David Gold has said many people at West Ham believe they can finish in the top six next season.
This is a bold claim from the co-owner given West Ham finished 10th in the Premier League last season and only achieved that thanks to victories in their final three games.
But for many fans much of the rest of the season was filled with inconsistency and under-par performances compared to what was expected at the start of the campaign.
Manuel Pellegrini spent nearly £90million in the 2018 summer transfer window and as a result the goal was to solidify the Hammers as the best Premier League side outside of the top six.
But a troubling start saw West Ham open the season with four successive defeats and after 13 games the East London club was sat in mid-table obscurity with just 12 points.
It is true that Pellegrini’s side really turned things around towards the back half of the season and recaptured some of the feel-good factor which has been missing from the London Stadium since the move from Upton Park in 2016.
So, in a way you can see where Gold is coming from when he says those within the club have high expectations of where they will finish next season.
However, the scale of the task for any of the sides outside the top six to mount a challenge to break into that bracket is as steep as it gets.
For example, it’s safe to say the wheels came off of Manchester United’s season in April and May – they won just two of their final nine Premier League games.
Yet they still finished nine points clear of seventh-placed Wolves, despite having one of the most difficult seasons in their recent history.
What was lost among the praise of how incredible Liverpool and Manchester City were last season was that the rest of the top six were relatively poor but were still a cut above those below.
The truth is Gold, Sullivan, Pellegrini and the players have to be seen to be aiming for higher than is realistically possible.
West Ham fans would be happy with seventh but in essence that’s where they would have finished had they picked up just five more points last season.
Gold is aware they need to set their sights higher than that, but the difficulty with doing that is it will almost certainly leave West Ham fans underwhelmed at the end of the campaign.
