With West Ham’s new stadium recently opened, it was anticipated by many fans across the region, with many piling into what originally was built for athletics is it really meant to be a football ground?
Firstly, I’d just like to start by saying that this is based on my own personal experiences at the London Stadium and what I feel are positives and negatives.
One of the first times that I made the walk from Stratford station to the London Stadium was one of the best experiences I’ve had as a fan seeing so many West Ham fans all come together for this momentous occasion. For me, I had never been to the stadium during the Olympics so it made it mean that little bit more. The stewards were very good checking bags and making sure everyone had been checked.
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When I got into the stadium it was beautiful all new and fresh however I went to go buy something to drink and saw how expensive just a normal 500ml bottle of drink and it had risen from £1.50 to £2.80 which is stupid all because we moved stadiums shouldn’t mean that the prices go up. So I finally get up to my seat and the stadium looked beyond beautiful however one thing I noticed when I got to my seat was that I had been lied to as where my season ticket would be situated, I was told when I went for my meeting that the seats I chose would be behind the directors in the middle of the stand situated on the half way line brilliant seats… however, my seats are directly in line with the goal post. When I went for the meeting we wanted to sit in Bobby Moore lower however we were told the stand would be STANDING the whole game to try and recreate the atmosphere from Upton Park due to health conditions this wouldn’t have been possible.
Now leading onto the standing and sitting argument that has been argued a lot recently. I agree with both sides. They should have situated safe standing zones for people that would like to stand to buy, however, it isn’t possible to do this season, so we should wait until the end of the season to get the upgrade to 66,000 and then create a safe standing area. However, the places that would usually stand such as Bobby Moore Lower and Sir Trevor Brooking lower should be allowed to stand due to them explaining that these places would be recreated at the new stadium.
The stewards are the worst ones I have ever seen! The first game was a European game where no alcohol should be allowed in the stadium in front of me a few rows down there was a person that had sneaked in two bottles of beer by sticking them in his trouser pockets! No stewards were at the top of the stairs to help direct people to their seats like at Upton Park and most recently at the game against Watford it was reported that the stewards were recording fights between the fans and celebrating when the away team scored, at the Boleyn you wouldn’t get that, they were as many fans as the rest of the stadium and yet the current stewards have probably only known about West Ham for 2 weeks when they applied for the job.
What disgusts me is that the away fans and home fans are not more separated out by a full row or two rows of seats like at Upton Park instead there are only 2 or 3 chairs separating the fans with a few stewards in between, when really they should have police instead. It has been reported that police are not actually allowed in the stadium under Newham Councils rules. That is completely disgusting if that is true, police are there for safety precautions and not to just chuck fans out who stand.
Bringing me to my next point I can’t see why fans are getting chucked out by stewards for standing up it’s completely out of order, If somebody behind the person standing asks them to sit down and they don’t fair enough they could get a steward to ask them to sit down and not chuck them out straight away.
The club is getting such a bad name for some of these things, the fans shouldn’t be turning on each other, that isn’t what West Ham are meant to be we are a family club where anyone of the family should be able to go and enjoy them self. I took my little cousin the other day his only 6 the first game he had been to and it had been soured on by two idiots arguing in the crowd and using foul language when everyone around the area was children.
The team started to play bad around the 38th minute when somebody was getting ejected from the stadium for standing, they had a mob of about 10 stewards for little old person there was no need for it, the crowd started booing and the team may have felt the negative energy and started to play bad get me wrong that is no excuse we play appalling once we conceded but until that had happened we had so much going forward we were unlucky to not be 3 or 4 up by the time they scored.
What the board and club need to do is stop telling people whether they can stand or not from what I was told when I was getting my season ticket is that some places were going to be known as standing areas. The stewards need to be replaced by people that actually support the club and who are actually going to stop fights if they happen and also stop racism as the club’s owner’s son even noticed. I don’t care what the board has to do they will have to get the police to be allowed in the stadium, we have been lucky that we haven’t played big London rivals at home because no way could we of dealt with it, police will need to be in attendance for them games alone. The weekend showed just how easy it was for both sets of fans to get to each other that needs to be tended to as soon as possible before somebody actually gets physically hurt.
If the standing, stewards, the security and the seating were better placed we would have one of the most dominant stadiums in recent times, to add about the seating is I recall the club saying there would be seats on the running track where the green covers are and again that was falsely presented to us.
So for those who are reading this and do stand in other areas of the stadium that are not Bobby Moore or Trevor Brooking I strongly urge you to sit down there really isn’t need to get a life ban for five minutes of standing.
