The West Ham Way is now the Southampton Way, and the Hammers have to make it work

The West Ham Way? Remember that? It’s changed so much. But one laughable aspect of the way the Hammers do things remains steadfastly in place.

That’s their weak-minded capability to roll over and capitulate against the big teams (and some smaller ones) in a feeble style un-matched with such regularity anywhere else in the Premier League.

Already, the 4-0 humiliation they suffered at Manchester United last Sunday has made this weekend’s trip to Southampton more fraught than it needs to have been.

There will be added scrutiny of the result and performance on the South Coast because of the way in which Slaven Bilic’s side surrendered at Old Trafford.

For that immediate reason, it is welcome news that the robust pair of Michail Antonio and Cheikhou Kouyate may be available for the game after recovering from injury.

The team needs to toughen up. Quickly.

In fact, it makes this a good time to set aside all those fallacies about the Hammers’ unquenchable penchant for elegant, lovely football and about their much-marketed Academy, too. It all happened decades ago.

Those ideas are actually practised with more conviction these days by Saturday’s opponents, who have a well-defined philosophy which produces young players and attempts to create a technical style of play whoever is manager.

Funnily enough, they call it The Southampton Way. And it put them in eighth place in the final table last season.

West Ham, meanwhile, have chosen a different path in their awkward new home at the London Stadium.

For example, it’s been made clear by the board that there will be little room for young players to break into the side regularly in future.

The demands of the modern Premier League mean they have to buy in ready-made seasoning and experience, they say – with much justification, in fact, given that West Ham see themselves as a bigger club than the Saints.

It certainly made good sense when Bilic signed the physically powerful pair of Marko Arnautovic and Pablo Zabaleta during the summer

It was recognition that the team was seriously lacking strength as well as pace last season.

The pursuit of Sporting Lisbon’s defensive midfielder William Carvalho - once described as a new Patrick Vieira - underlines this idea, even if it should temper the excitement which greeted the appearance of 18-year-old Declan Rice amid the carnage in midfield in Manchester last Sunday.

But having chosen this path – and added to the disgruntlement of many supporters who despair at the changes in the nature of the club - they now have to make it work.

That’s the trade-off required for the abandonment of much-cherished Upton Park. So far, there is little sign of it.

To get things straight, the so-called West Ham Way was represented by the tough, physical and honest attitudes of Billy Bonds as much as it was by the deft magic of Sir Trevor Brooking and Alan Devonshire.

It is Bonzo who is the all-time greatest hero of the fans – even more so than Bobby Moore – which is why the club, with all its PR troubles, should heed the campaign to get a stand named after him in Stratford.

True enough, all of those players had more bad times than good. That’s the West Ham way, too. They were often seen as a soft touch. Especially Up North.

So even now, it will be welcome progress if Bilic makes his side more combative and muscular.

Yet last Sunday’s performance at Old Trafford contained too many echoes of the thrashings suffered against Manchester City (twice), Arsenal and Liverpool last season .

It means that many fans already fear nothing has changed on the pitch, even if so much has been altered off it.

True enough, Jose Mourinho’s side were bursting with power and purpose following the arrival of Romelu Lukaku and Nemanja Matic. It just made West Ham’s collapse all the more inevitable in what is supposed to be the world’s most competitive league.

The Hammers’ long injury list was irrelevant, too. This is a squad game nowadays.

Southampton are not from the newly-minted Big Seven. And West Ham won 3-1 there last February.

But they are a club with a detailed sense of structure, mission, identity and talent production similar to the ideas cherished by supporters in east London.

West Ham won’t play at home for more than three weeks - until September 11 - in the aftermath of the world athletics championship.

Even that is somehow typical of the club’s haphazard ways.

So they urgently need to change the mood around them at Southampton. Or the West Ham Way so embarrassingly on display last weekend could become a bad habit this season.