West Ham beat Leeds 3-0 on the final day, but still finished 18th on 39 points after Tottenham defeated Everton 1-0. It ends a Premier League run that stretched back to 2012-13 and follows a season of late managerial shakeups.
On the day West Ham needed two things—victory and permission to breathe—everything that could go right did. The Hammers beat Leeds 3-0 on Sunday, May 24. The problem was Tottenham.
Spurs won 1-0 over Everton. and that single result turned West Ham’s end-of-season triumph into the moment the club slipped out of England’s top flight for the first time in 15 years. West Ham entered the final day two points behind Tottenham. knowing that a win plus a Spurs loss would keep it alive. Instead, the scoreboard delivered a narrower outcome than it required.
West Ham finished in 18th place on 39 points. Tottenham finished 17th on 41 points—just two points separating survival from relegation, despite West Ham winning on the day it mattered most.
For West Ham, it was also a season-long collapse that never quite found its footing at the worst possible time. The club went into Sunday’s match having lost three games in a row. And even after the 3-0 win, the results elsewhere left the Hammers with no place to hide.
This relegation ends a pattern West Ham had managed to escape before. The Hammers were last relegated in the 2010-11 campaign, when they finished in last place. They bounced straight back up the next season, becoming a Premier League club again starting with the 2012-13 campaign.
The season itself carried its own instability. Graham Potter began as West Ham manager, but he was replaced by Nuno Espírito Santo in late September. Under Nuno, the team improved enough to suggest momentum—but it wasn’t enough to stop the drop to the Championship next season.
Tottenham avoided an outcome that would have been unthinkable for a club that has been in England’s top division since the 1978-79 campaign. It was an awful campaign by Spurs standards, but the margin was thin enough that survival came down to the final stretch.
After the season ended, Tottenham’s status was secured by a 3W-1D-1L finish under manager Roberto De Zerbi. The numbers didn’t erase the frustration of a difficult year, but they did deliver the only thing that mattered at the end: enough points to stay in the Premier League.
The sequence of results made the lesson simple and brutal. West Ham won on the final day, yet Tottenham’s win meant the final table didn’t care how hard the Hammers fought inside their own match. With two points deciding 17th from 18th, relegation arrived anyway.
West Ham relegated Tottenham Everton 1-0 Premier League final day May 24 Graham Potter sacked Nuno Espírito Santo Roberto De Zerbi Premier League survival points