It’s been a struggle, recently. Personally. These last few weeks feel like an eternal slog, a rut that I am constantly stuck in, my wheels churning in a mud hole. You keep plugging away, but there doesn’t seem to be a noticeable difference. You keep putting yourself out there and no one seems to be listening. You try to take a break then get angry at yourself for doing nothing.

So, you end up doing what everyone does. You think back to a more enjoyable time.

17^th August, a Saturday. The first Saturday of the new season. And I’m down in London. My sister and I had managed to get tickets to one of the Wembley Taylor Swift shows, and with it being so close to the first match, I decided to make a trip out of it.

Out the door and down the back streets, away from the main roads as we snake our way through the sprawling East London roads. Sometimes I try and stop and think: what did this place look like a hundred years ago? Before the tenement buildings and massive apartment blocks, before the old Victorian and Edwardian era slums and homes were caught up in bombs and progress. Not this shiny. Not this glassy. Not this smooth and mathematical. But the streets still curve.

Going to a football match isn’t just about the ninety minutes on the pitch. It’s everything around it. We were the 17:30 kick-off, so we talked about the results from earlier that day. We looked at the starting line-ups, how many of our new signings were there, how similar it looked to last season. We mulled over how they would do, what style the new manager would play. We had hope and optimism.

Closer and closer to the ground t-shirts begin to funnel into two colours: claret and blue. A phenomenon doubly so due to West Ham playing against Aston Villa, the only two claret and blue sides in the league. I’m wearing my home shirt, as are my dad and sister. Shirts from different eras – the 1970s FA Cup winning shirts, the 1990s Dr Marten’s classic, our centenary shirts, those from the last season at the Boleyn Ground – are mixed in with more modern numbers. Some have even managed to get their hands on this season’s shirt.

Through the security checks and around the concourse to file into the slow, methodical trudge through the turnstile. Standing still for a moment, you get hit with all the smells that remind you that this is what football’s about: vinegar from the chips, so potent that it shouldn’t be classed as fit for human consumption; alcohol and hops rising from plastic pint glasses; tobacco mixed in with vape smoke. Old smells, grizzled smells. Smells that only converge on nights out and terraces. You get so lost in remembering the first time you were hit with such a concoction that you almost miss your turn to go in.

Ten minutes to go. People take their seats – or stand where they will sit. A quick flick through the programme. Your friends that you only see every few months that circumstances allow you to get down to London smile when they see you. You grasp them by the hand and try to catch them up on everything that’s happened since you last saw them that you can remember in the dwindling seconds before kick-off.

Then, the drum roll. Would all please rise for the anthem of the East End. 60,000 belt out “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”, as the machines do their work. Everyone’s missed this. The whole ground almost screams itself hoarse before a ball is kicked. The excitement is here, the nerves are here. Here we go again. New season, new hopes.

Four minutes gone, 1-0 down. Conceded from a corner. Same old West Ham.

But it’s not over yet. There’s still 85 minutes to go. And anyway, this match won’t define our season. So why won’t my stomach settle?

We build, more and more. Balls over the top, runs in behind, smart passes at the back. We’re playing a new style of football, but it’s not one the fans have seen or wanted yet. Whistles start. “Get it up there!” people yell. I think I’m one of them.

A through ball into the box. Soucek brought down. “FOUL!” The whole ground screams, leaping to its feet. The ref agrees. He points to the spot. Another cheer a few minutes later when VAR confirms it. Paqueta places the ball on the spot. He strolls up to it and my heart almost chokes me. He’s too casual. I’ve seen this before: easy, slow walk up, caresses the ball onto the post or into the yawning maw of the goalkeeper. But not this time. 1-1. The coolest man in the East End.

Halftime. We try to recover. I get back to asking my friends about how they are, but I keep getting an annoying tick. There are more tourists at this match. And they’re in with the season ticket holders. West Ham, like other clubs in the Premier League, have raised their season ticket prices because those holders are the worst for them. They would rather have a whole bunch of tourists fork out hundreds of pounds, buy popcorn and hotdogs, and tell their friends back home how much of a good time they had at the London Stadium and that they should try and go when they’re next in town, instead of letting people who have been going to West Ham year after year be able to keep going. You talk about how great an atmosphere it is? That’s because we make it so. The experience is like this because we make it like this. We are not actors in your Instagram story.

The second half restarts. It always seems slower than the first. No one’s got quite the same burst of energy, but each side has figured out the other’s tactics. There’s much more block and counter going on. We’re two fairly equal sides.

The ref’s winding us up. He’s always winding us up. Every decision goes against us. Every little bite from one of the Villa players he lets go. I don’t care if the pundits later will say that they actually weren’t fouls, or we were doing it just as much as they were.

And just when it looks like we’re going to hold on for a draw there comes the sucker punch. 2-1 to Villa. That tiny Brummy corner explodes. Shoulder’s slump forward. A few start to make their way to the exits. But there are still 10 minutes to go. And we have equalised already in this match.

Now we’ve got nothing left to lose. The attack and the pressure is all concentrated on the Villa box. Looping balls in, needle threaded balls, barging shoulder to shoulder challenges. They’re all so close and yet not quite. A brilliant fingertip save. The resonating thunk of the woodwork. Each near hit ratchets the noise up and up. It’s a cauldron. One last chance. A looping ball. A West Ham player gets some part of his body onto it. It’s going in, it’s going in! Already we’re rising, going to hug each other, going to taunt the Villa contingent. And then our certainty turns to disbelief. He’s missed. He’s somehow missed. And the ref blows his whistle.

The stands empty quickly. There’s not much to stick around for. But we do. It’s been over four months since I last saw West Ham live. It’s one of the downsides to living on the other side of the country. And who knows when I’ll next see them in person again. I clap them. Some have stayed on the pitch and applauded us too. We all know this won’t define us. But defeat still stings, even if it was that close.

We know the direction we have to go, so the three of us head that way. The lead in front looks back every so often to make sure the other two are following, but now isn’t the time for chat. Too many people, too many people who have seemingly never walked in a crowd before. Once we’re back together, we’re silent for the moment. Processing our thoughts, trying to piece together a semblance of objective reality from the passion that’s animated us for the last two-odd hours.

As I’m collecting myself, an American couple walk by. They’re wearing their 2024/25 season shirts and they’ve got a bag of goodies with them. As they passed by, I only catch a snippet of their conversation: “And they didn’t stop singing for the whole match.”

I smile at my laptop screen. No, we didn’t.