Of course, in the lower leagues of English football, you can sometimes get away with a lack of quality if you have good team spirit. I dont think that is really the case in the Premier League since quality really does count at this level. Although, teams can sometimes get away with it in their first season due to the euphoria of winning promotion the previous season. Second season syndrome exists because teams dont add quality to their squad. However, the Hammers have been able to establish a pretty strong squad with quality is the right areas. Players like Kevin Nolan, James Tomkins, Mark Noble, Stewart Downing and Winston Reid have been extremely important for them. Andy Carroll as mentioned earlier could still have a very important part to play as goalkeeping Adrian has already, proving that he is able to play with consistency with quality. Looking through the squad, one thing you have to concede is there is some real quality. Its this quality and the other factors mentioned here that should see West Ham comfortably survive for another season.
James Kent is a freelance writer published on Yahoo! Sports, Bleacher Report, FTBpro, Bloomberg Sports and many others. He has also been featured in the Daily Telegraph, Zoo Magazine, MSN Sport and the Manchester Evening News.
His role on What Culture is currently to produce compelling football articles that nearly always use of combination of stats and strong opinion. Feel free to connect with James via Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.