David Gold and David Sullivan provide West Ham with no vision or philosophy for the future, nothing makes sense

Similar patterns emerge at West Ham and a happy ending is out of sight

West Ham United, as one football figure who knows the club well says, is “somewhere where very little ever makes sense”.

Take these seven days that will culminate in the likely chaos of a derby with Chelsea. If it’s difficult not to wonder how bad the atmosphere would have been around the London Stadium had they gone into this game with five opening defeats, and whether the furious protests of last season would have returned, it’s much more difficult figuring out how they ended that dismal run at four, beating Everton 3-1 at Goodison Park.

Manuel Pellegrini’s West Ham had previously been so poor that such a result – and spirited performance – was almost unimaginable. It almost came out of nowhere, just like Andriy Yarmolenko’s goal. There was little logic to it.

Then again, that at least conforms to some kind of pattern at West Ham. There aren’t too many decisions taken there with an overarching logic behind them, so it’s probably inevitable it extends to results from time to time.

Manuel Pellegrini left lucrative Chinese job to join West Ham (Getty)

That isn’t the most sustainable strategy, though, which is where the biggest questions about this regime remain.

Some in football have long wondered whether, pound for pound, they’re “the worst run club in the country”. A side of such resources, based in such an advantageous football location, really shouldn’t keep having these problems – and shouldn’t have started the season in this way, that have already led to furious dressing-room dressing-downs led by Mark Noble.

It does of course go way beyond there. There are by now copious anecdotes that portray the nature of the Sullivan-Gold ownership – with complaints about leaks and Jack Wilshere’s wholly predictable injury on wages like his just the latest elements of farce – but there is a serious point behind it all, that touches on how clubs should be run.

As that same figure who knows the club so well says, one of the major problems at West Ham is that there’s “no working template”, no defined view of what they are, and thereby no base to work from.

They should be a mid-table club now imposing a defined style of play that would ideally involve a few hallmarks from their history, but there’s no sense of that. It’s all so vague and undefined.

That’s always going to be the case if you’re effectively making key decisions from your house, as many say of David Sullivan.

“The clubs with a strong template run the smoothest… an awareness of the strengths of your current foundation, married to a strong understanding of the player profiles that will progress your club. Some clubs sign players but who are somewhat irrelevant for the situation they’re in. They just don’t know what they are.”

So much of this goes right to the heart of the issue with West Ham

West Ham fans confront the director's box (Getty Images)

There’s just no overall vision or philosophy for the club, nothing for all the other pieces to fit into.

Even the eventual appointment of a director of football was upside down since it was manager Pellegrini appointing Mario Husillos rather than the other way around. The tail wagged the dog.

His influence has yet to be seen, but the influence of everything that came before him still meant signing so many players “irrelevant to the situation they’re in”. A relatively exciting summer was supposed to be break from this, but arguably brought it to a peak. It was all so scattergun, a variety of purchases that might otherwise be good instead suited to drastically different situations.

Even Wilshere might have been a calculated and astute risk, for example, had the club not already employed two regularly injured key players in Andy Carroll and Winston Reid. Wilshere was instead seemingly signed on the basis of some vague connection to West Ham – despite becoming so identifiably Arsenal – and pretty much a gut feeling. Other clubs of similar status and resources to West Ham baulked at the midfielder's demands.

That is why so many feel little has changed from the March protests, that any changes have been surface-level.

The ownership have admittedly spent more, but still don’t seem to spend it with direction, with evidence of the kind of sophisticated recruitment processes now so prevalent everywhere else.

Pellegrini arguably personifies this, and that’s before you get to the shapelessness of his current team.

The Chilean fits the Sullivan model perfectly. At £7m a year, he was expensive and also well known, with and relatively recent major successes understandably enough to temporarily get the fans excited. When you go beyond that initial emotion, though, there’s not much rational thought to the decision. There appeared no consideration for whether Pellegrini is actually a good fit, as illustrated by how he represents such a departure from his predecessor David Moyes, who represented such a departure from his predecessor Slaven Bilic, who… and so forth.

Is Manuel Pellegrini a good fit at West Ham? (Getty)

There is no more insightful example of a club that doesn’t have an idea of what it is.

That is perhaps why you could forgive Pellegrini having little idea of what his best team is now, and much of what has come from that. It is, after all, a squad largely built for a variety of different approaches.

Pellegrini does at least attempt to play a passing attacking game that would fit with those historic hallmarks of the club, but it sums up the situation that this style doesn’t entirely fit with the players available right now. The feeling among many of the squad already is that there just isn’t the solidity to play a more expansive game, and particularly not the high line that has already so cost them dearly in an admittedly awkward start.

By the same token, others wonder whether his personality fits the situation. Many who have worked with Pellegrini – particularly at Manchester City – say his management isn’t the most electrically charged, and is more about facilitating attacking through a playmaker. West Ham haven’t got a playmaker but have got a set of circumstances that does require hunger and a hard edge. It is a big job. It is fair to wonder whether a manager coaxed back from China on a big wage has it.

And yet, for all that, West Ham are precisely the kind of club who can respond in such circumstances; who can lift themselves for a big game like Chelsea.

The logic would be that Maurizio Sarri’s side just gradually cuts through that soft centre on Sunday… but this isn’t a place where there’s much logic. There’s a lot of emotion, and that can still make a difference on a single day. It’s just there will still be multiple questions.