I get that, but as long as you don't finish in the top-four or relegate, which they won't imo, it's all a bit pointless, they are just making up the numbers. Yeah their league performances might be a bit better, but even without EL matches I very much doubt they will actually achieve something in the league. Instead of finishing in 8th place or so they might now finish 6th... is that really worth it to throw an entire tournament for? Or are they under the illusion they can actually get top-four? I just don't see it. In fact winning the EL is arguably their best chance to get into the CL imo, but they just threw that competition away for the League where they are extremely unlikely to finish any higher than places that get you EL; a competition they don't rate anyway, lol. At least when we didn't take the EL seriously we had a realistic chance of reaching top-four, making the decision to not care about the EL somewhat justified, I don't see that justification with West Ham to be honest. Reaching EL is about as good as it will get for them...