West Ham's Fight Against Relegation: Finding Hope in Unity

"Your career seems to be heading downhill, and relegation is looming. It's challenging to cope with these feelings and emotions as a team and a club." Mads Hermansen reflects on the agony of being relegated from the Premier League last season with Leicester City, an experience he hopes to avoid with West Ham. The goalkeeper openly discusses the strain and pressure of being at the bottom of the Premier League table. However, he claims to have learned valuable lessons from last season, and following West Ham's 4-0 victory over Wolves, which put their survival in their own hands, there is cautious optimism that the team's unity can help them avoid the same fate as Leicester. "We've been struggling for months," Hermansen says about West Ham's difficulties this season. "The fear of what might happen is not easy to deal with, but credit to everyone at the club for keeping our spirits high and making us believe we can turn things around." West Ham moved out of the relegation zone for the first time in a month with the win over Wolves, but this battle for survival may go down to the wire, with London rivals Tottenham, Nottingham Forest, and Leeds United not yet safe. If West Ham is to stay up, Hermansen believes their unity will be crucial. "Our togetherness, our relationships with each other," he says when asked about the team's strengths. "Every person brings their personality to the team, and we have many great characters here who are willing to give everything for the club." It has been a season where Denmark international Hermansen has had to show personal resilience as well. The highly-rated 25-year-old was signed last summer to be West Ham's No 1 but was dropped for Alphonse Areola after just four Premier League games in which the team conceded 11 goals. He didn't play again until a FA Cup win over QPR in January and had to wait until February 7 at Burnley for a Premier League comeback. However, since his reinstatement, he has made more saves than any other Premier League goalkeeper and kept four clean sheets in eight matches. "I wanted to prove to my teammates, the club, and the fans that they made a good decision in signing me, and of course, the performances were not what I had hoped for," says Hermansen, reflecting on his difficult start. "I'm just happy I got another chance to show what I can do." Hermansen says he is "proud" of how he used his time out of the team to improve his game so he was ready to step up when needed. "It was a tough time, but I also got the chance to show what I'm made of and how disciplined and hard I can work for a longer period," he said. "I proved to myself what I really can do when things get tough." "I'm proud of the work I did during that period, and to be able to bring it to the pitch, and together with the team, have some great performances and results, has been really nice." What areas of his game did he focus on? "I'm quite an emotional guy, and when things get emotional, I try to ask myself how I can separate the emotional aspects from the football part of my life and just get my job done, so every night when I go to bed, I can say to myself, I did everything I could to improve and show myself the best way possible." "Those questions I had to ask myself during that period, I've really learned to bring that along now when I'm playing, which has helped me a lot." "It's easy to come out of a tough period saying it was really good for me, but I really learned a lot from it." Hermansen, like West Ham, has come back stronger for the run-in, but he and his teammates are well aware the job isn't done yet. "We believe a lot in ourselves," he said. "It's going to get tough, but we believe we have a lot to give."