I think without getting an Oil-baron Owner, it's all a bit much of a muchness really.

There won't really be such a thing as the 'best of the rest', whether that's London in general or the whole League whilst those top 3 or 4 you mentioned have billions to spend.

It will ebb and flow. One year, West Ham will have the more experienced Manager with a settled Team and a consistent injury-free starting 11 playing to a game-plan. That will mean they finish top 6 and everyone will praise them in the Media as the next big thing and they will definitely make top 4 next season.

Then, their best players like Rice will go to City/United/Chelsea and coupled with European fixtures they aren't prepared for, they'll have a mare of a start to the Season and will be tipped for relegation before getting knocked out of Europe and eventually settling mid-table.

During that time, a different Club, may as well be Palace, will have a run where their new Manager Vieira has got his ideas in place, playing electric football, have a top player like Connor Gallagher injury free and we push for top 6. Everyone says we'll qualify for top 4 the following season but guess what. Someone buys Gallagher, we get into a relegation battle because of European games we aren't prepared for and don't have a big enough squad and 2 or 3 of our starting 11 get injured and then we finish lower than West Ham.

And so it is written.

Exactly this. Every season one of the midfield overachieve, but then return back to their natural home the next season!

You've lost it.

They have won quite a lot down the years.

WH have spent 25 years in the PL. We have spent 12 seasons and almost all of that has been during this last run. Essentially they have been close to ever present in the PL with short stays in the Champo.

They fill a 50K seater stadium and have recently been valued higher than Newcastle prior to the Czech takeover.

I can tell you 100 per cent that Palace should be the 4th biggest club in London.
Arsenal, Chelski and Spurs are all bigger and unreachable unfortunately. However, West Ham are a 'paper tiger' and although bigger than us they are most certainly not better than the Palace.
We have better fans, better stadium and a better lore than the Spammers.
West Ham could collapse when Rice and Soucek leave. They are just a bloated version of Millwall with global recognition. The Covid fiasco really helped them settle otherwise I reckon they would have been set for another relegation battle last two seasons. If we ever sought ourselves fully at the top to the bottom we could easily surpass Wet Spam. London's real 4th best the Red and Blue. X

Big up the Palace!!!!

Perhaps someone could set me str8 here - my thoughts were that WH sold the Boleyn ground to property developers, pocketed the cash until they got custody / tenants rights at the ground now affectionately known as the tax payers stadium -

They then injected some of the money from the sale of the previous stadium into new players which on the back of having David Moyes as a seasoned manager is why we see them in their current form & league position -

Am I wrong ?

Not entirely correct, they sacked Moyes, when they had some cash out of the stadium deal. They decided to bring in Pellegrini, who wasted most of it, they then went crawling back to Moyes. The now have a Czech billionaire on board bankrolling them.