West Ham may miss home comforts in new stadium

It may be fewer than 6km from Upton Park, but West Ham’s brand new London Stadium feels a long way from home.

While the club’s fans used to pour out of the tube station from which their old ground took its name, and make their way past well-worn pubs, pie-and-mash shops, and East End market stalls, it is a rather different welcome on disembarking at Stratford.

The station sits adjacent to the bustling Westfield shopping centre through which they must traipse to reach the perimeter of the vast Olympic Park. From there, far in the distance and beyond the futuristic Aquatics Centre, the London Stadium looms. And there is not a real boozer in sight.