Soccer
West Ham captain Jarrod Bowen describes pain of relegation: 'Hurt is the only thing'
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West Ham United won on the day, but they ultimately lost as they could not avoid relegation from the Premier League.
The Hammers did what they needed to do on Sunday by besting visitors Leeds United 3-0 at the London Stadium, but they also needed Tottenham Hotspur to lose to Everton at the same time. Unfortunately for West Ham, Spurs were also victorious, delivering the final nail in the coffin for the Hammers' status as a Premier League club.
It was a slow, brutal descent for the club, who looked to be in a good positon to stay up just a few short weeks ago. Instead, they now prepare for next season in the EFL Championship after 15 years in the top flight.
For Hammers captain Bowen, who scored the team's second goal in Sunday's futile victory, there is only one way to describe the feeling of being relegated.
"Just hurt," he told the BBC. "I've been here six-and-a-half years now. Had a lot of good moments and this outweighs all of it. Getting this club relegated... it hurts.
"We shouldn't be in the position we're in but we've found ourselves in it and we've not done enough to stay up. Hurt is the only thing."
Bowen lamented the short runs of good form his club put together, which were not enough to outdo long stretches of subpar performances. Even matches like Sunday's showed that West Ham were capable of performing at a higher level than what they showed for the season, which makes the drop even tougher for Bowen to swallow.
"We've had so many games when we could have got different results," he said. "You can look at it and say 'these, these, these, these' but, ultimately, we didn't pick the points up and in this league, the quality is so high and we didn't give ourselves enough of a chance.
"You can individualise every single game. You can't look back at every game but in some games we didn't show the levels consistently enough."
With West Ham confirmed for at least a season in the Championship, Bowen doesn't want to think about his own future with the club and whether he'll be on the field when the Hammers kick off their campaign in the second tier in the fall.
The emotions are still too raw, he said.
"It's disrespectful to everyone to start talking about that," Bowen said. "I want this club to be in the Premier League.
"It's a club that means so much to me and has given me so much so my vision is to get this club back in the Premier League."
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