West Ham effectively forfeited their involvement in the Europa League this season.
The team Slaven Bilic selected to face Astra Giurgiu in the second leg of their third qualifying round clash was so poor he must have known it had very little chance of progressing in the competition.
It was felt, with the Premier League opener against Arsenal just three days later, the Hammers should prioritise their resources into ensuring league success at the expense of the cups.
This divided the fans.
There were romantics. Those who said that European football comes so infrequently we should seize it with both hands and ride the wave of adventure for as long as possible.
Then there were the pragmatists. This group insisted that ensuring West Ham were a Premier League outfit when they move into the Olympic Stadium was all that mattered this season and nothing should be allowed to jeopardise that.
It will therefore be interesting to see what side that Hammers pick against Leicester City when their Capital One Cup campaign begins, and quite possibly ends, tonight.
On the one hand you’d expect the league, and specifically West Ham’s home clash with Norwich on Saturday, to again take priority. After all, why would you give up on a competition as prestigious as the Europa League only to throw everything at the League Cup?
However, it is not as simple as this.
While the League Cup is less prestigious it is also far easier to win, and crucially takes far less games to win.
The Hammers enter this season in the third round stage and are just five games from Wembley. When you compare that to the 21 games the Hammers would have had to have played in Europe it is clear the competition would take far less out of the West Ham squad.
Furthermore the squad is far stronger now than it was at the start of the summer. This should allow Bilic to rest and rotate in the midweek matches while not waving the white flag at the opposition.
Finally West Ham have also enjoyed an excellent start to the season. They sit third in the Premier League with 12 points on the board from their first six games and have won at Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City this season.
They don’t look like a relegation team and the time might have come to stop worrying about it.
Over to you Slav.
