West Ham co-chairman David Gold has admitted he has some regrets over the Hammers' move to London Stadium in 2016 in terms of promises made to fans to convince them leaving Upton Park was good for the club.
The Hammers are in their fourth season in Statford after upping sticks from the Boleyn Ground and it has not been without it's difficulties, from a lack of security and segregation to start with, to the monstrous green tarpaulin that covered the running track, to having to play the first three games of the 2018/18 away from home, to the March protests of 2018 and beyond.
Some of those issues have been increased, there is far more matchday stewarding, the "Claret Carpet" being installed and other pieces to make it feel like home and the proposed squaring off of the north and south stands to bring fans closer to the action - a huge bugbear of many since moving to E20.
Co-chairman Gold has admitted in a wide-ranging interview to December's edition of the Blowing Bubbles magazine that the stadium is far from perfect, which we know, but urged fans to come to terms with the fact that it is home and it will be for the next 95 years.
He also wants to see the annual athletics events ditched from the stadium. It costs £4m per summer to remove and re-install the seating at the stadium which has since increased to £8m owing to the Major League Baseball games being played last summer at the arena and another two next year.
Gold said: "‘Is the stadium perfect? No, it's not. Why? Because the people building the Olympic Stadium had a firm belief that football would never be played there and that it must always remain an athletics stadium.
"From where we sit, there's like 20 yards that the stadium could have been brought forward had the hop, skip and jump been placed on the other side. How many people really watch hop, skip and jump? Seriously?
"This left us with a legacy of that gap from the first row of seats to the pitch on that side.
"But that aside, we've got to come to the realisation – and I think many, many fans have – that this is our stadium, this is our future, and this is our opportunity. We are certainly not burdened with a billion pound debt either.
"What I hope we can do in the future is negotiate to ensure the stadium is only used for football and perhaps sports like baseball and American football but not athletics.
"We've got to be realistic, from a financial point of view, that it doesn't make sense to continue having athletics at this stadium."
On his regrets over the stadium, the issue of sight lines and the distance from the pitch were understandably one of them. Prior to the move to the stadium, fans were told there would be no such gap between the stand and the pitch.
That is because the athletics track needs to be covered, previously with a hideous green astroturf which was then deemed unsafe and the Hammers then took it upon themselves to get the claret carpet laid down instead.
"I wish I’d kept my mouth shut more," Gold added.
"I regret saying that the seats would be 'this' close to the pitch and then that didn't happen.
'‘It didn't happen because of the roof. We've got the largest free-supporting roof structure in Europe but to get it over another 30 rows of seats would have cost untold millions and they just couldn't do it.
"We understood this and we had to adjust our expectations accordingly and that meant we were going to be further away from the pitch on the west side.
"But we will be able to bring the seats in at the goal ends, that's going to happen and remember we are still only in our fourth season at our new home."
