Nick Woltemade opened the scoring on 15 minutes before Danish striker William Osula doubled the lead four minutes later, with both goals stemming from defensive errors by the visitors. Osula added a second in the 65th minute after more poor positioning from West Ham's defence. Substitute Taty Castellanos pulled one back and hit the crossbar as West Ham tried to mount a late comeback, but it was never enough.
West Ham United captain Jarrod Bowen, in his post-match interview with BBC Sport, accepted that the performance reflected two seasons of standards that have fallen well below the club's recent history.
"We've been involved in a relegation battle for two seasons now, and we can't expect anything else because we haven't had enough good moments this season. There are a lot of different things that can contribute to that, but ultimately we've been way, way below the standards we've set over the last few years. You think of the European campaigns, finishing high up in the Premier League and things like that. To find ourselves in this situation now is obviously hard to accept."
The captain was direct about what went wrong in the opening twenty minutes.
"It's really difficult, but we've got no-one to blame apart from ourselves, especially for conceding the two goals in the first 20 minutes. The press that we did was all wrong, we were late jumping up to them and we were making mistakes. We knew what we wanted to do, we'd worked on it in the week, had meetings and knew what we wanted to do, but when the time came we just didn't do it well enough."
The Hammers' fate now rests almost entirely on Chelsea beating Tottenham Hotspur at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday. Even then, West Ham would need to win their final home game against Leeds United and hope Everton beat Spurs at the London Stadium a week later. Tottenham currently sit two points above the relegation zone with a goal difference thirteen better than West Ham's.
Bowen, characteristically, did not look for excuses.
"We are holding on by a small thread but we are still holding on. We have to see how the result goes on Tuesday, there's a chance that we are relegated then and we can't hide from it. The only thing we can do is wait and see what happens. We never want to be relying on teams but we have put ourselves in this position. We have created this mess."