While I appreciate 'Second Season Syndrome' can affect many sides, we left ourselves woefully short this season and were it not for some even worse sides around us, we could and should have found ourselves further in the mire.

What’s starting to get me is these perceived "delusions of grandeur" which pundits now seem to be aiming at West Ham fans, because they are completely missing the point.

"What do they expect?" asked the ever-eloquent Alan Shearer on Match of the Day - despite seemingly contradicting himself by deeming Newcastle United fans' 69th minute walk-out protest against Mike Ashley and Alan Pardew "understandable" when they sit in ninth.

What do they expect?

I’ll tell you what we expect Alan: we expect a team which plays on the floor and aims to entertain the fans.

We know we’re not going to win the league and with that being the case, surely the need to enjoy your football becomes ever greater. Particularly at today’s prices, we want to go and enjoy ourselves.

Afterall, why are so many of us into football in the first pace? It’s an exciting, often unpredictable, enchanting and occasionally even magical sport and not just a business.

This acceptance of football becoming a business is a very worrying trend in itself. Allardyce champions the cause of it being "all about results" - despite not getting any - but particularly if you’re not one of the tiny percentage of teams that win everything, fans need to see some heart, passion and the odd bit of quality.

On top of that, prices need to be lowered, because Dads won’t take kids and diehards will become fly-by-nights.

Going to football will be like going to a concert or the cinema and when things get bad, people will stop going and simply do something else.

I wouldn’t go so far as echoing Bill Shankley's thoughts about football being more than a matter of life and death, but football needs to be more than just a business to remain sustainable. Messrs David Gold, Sullivan and Allardyce take note: if you remove the entertainment what have you got?