West Ham opened the 2026-27 season with a 3-1 Carabao Cup win over Portsmouth at the London Stadium — but the afternoon's most striking sight was in the stands, not on the pitch.

David Sullivan, the club's major shareholder, took his seat despite being asked by the stadium's operators to stay away from home matches. The request followed allegations of sexual misconduct, which Sullivan has categorically denied, according to ESPN and Goal. He watched the game in a black bomber jacket, arms crossed, security alongside him (The Guardian).

There was no wave of protest to greet him. Few visible signs of anger surfaced inside the ground, and nothing to match the barracking that marked the previous campaign. That previous campaign, of course, ended in relegation from the Premier League in May — a collapse that has left the club starting this season in the Championship, English football's second tier, for the first time in years.

On the pitch, the match was the first competitive fixture of the new era under head coach Nuno Espírito Santo, who had taken his squad to Germany for a pre-season training camp (whufc.com). The cup tie, a 3pm kick-off on Saturday 8 August, doubled as a chance to find some rhythm before the real business begins. West Ham's Championship season opens the following day with an away trip to Burnley.

The team Nuno sent out carried the marks of a summer of upheaval. West Ham banked £151m from player sales, with Mateus Fernandes, Crysencio Summerville and Freddie Potts among those moved on. Coming in the other direction, the only new face as of this match was Joël Veltman, who got three minutes off the bench as a substitute.

In midfield, Edson Álvarez returned from a season-long loan at Fenerbahce and lined up alongside Lewis Orford, a 20-year-old academy product mentored by club legend Mark Noble. Orford's presence offered a flicker of the old West Ham identity — homegrown talent given a chance when the squad around him has been stripped for parts.

Around 9,000 Portsmouth fans made the trip to east London, a remarkable travelling contingent for a cup first round, and they had a goal to cheer in a 3-1 defeat. For them, a day out at a 60,000-seat stadium is the kind of shared memory the cup used to trade in before the big clubs rotated their squads and the romance thinned.

West Ham progress to the second round. Whether the peace inside the stadium holds when the Championship begins at Burnley is a different question. The Sullivan situation is unresolved. The squad is thin. And the supporters who stayed quiet on Saturday will expect answers — on the pitch, at least — soon enough.