LONDON -- The two game mark of a Premier League season should feel far too premature a moment for doom mongering, and yet it is a real challenge to watch this West Ham team in action and not expect the worst. After all, there were plenty in the London Stadium who were ready for the deluge long before Michael Oliver blew the whistle. The home opener is supposed to be replete with new possibilities, even when you've just been tonked on the road by Sunderland. And yet, as the camera paned around the crowd in the minutes before kick off all it could find was the glum faces of those who knew there were so many better options in east London on a Friday night.

Such pessimism proved to be well founded. It was not so long ago that West Ham would have fought like hell in defense of the lead earned for them through Lucas Paqueta's thunderous sixth minute strike. Better teams than this iteration of Chelsea were drawn into bar scraps where they could not land the knockout blow. Instead Enzo Maresca's side, seemingly robbed of their creative spark when Cole Palmer suffered an injury in the warmup, coasted their way to the ascendancy in a 5-1 win that should have alarm bells ringing across West Ham.

A club that knows what it is to be too good to go down and slip out of the Premier League anyway should be under no illusions that this is a team that is perfectly capable of plumbing dangerous depths in the top flight. Whether in a back five or four, their defense seemed to be populated entirely by strangers. With the running track around it, the London Stadium pitch looks bigger than most but you've never seen it seem quite as cavernous as it was when Estevao was running into it, the Brazilian given the ideal circumstances to dazzle on his debut.

Everywhere you looked there was space for Chelsea shirts to operate in. It reached its parodic peak when Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez, five yards apart, exchanged 10 passes between themselves without so much as a gesture from a West Ham player towards pressuring the ball. A stand-off approach is fine if you are going to defend your box with discipline, and yet the passivity extended all the way to the most dangerous areas of the pitch. West Ham lacked aggression and they lacked organization to counterbalance it. There is plenty about their current malaise that is the responsibility of ownership and a sporting hierarchy who have resolutely frittered away the Declan Rice millions, but Graham Potter must bear the blame for these failings of spirit and structure.

Nowhere were they more apparent than from corners. Again, it is not so long ago that a set piece was an opportunity for West Ham to leave a very literal mark on their opposition. Fifteen minutes through, with a lead to defend, and Marc Cucurella was able to get to a near post delivery before a claret and blue shirt. His flick on was well judged and Joao Pedro headed home his first Premier League goal for a club with whom he is starting brightly. Niclas Fullkrug's fine volley offered a glimmer of hope before VAR's intervention for an offside in the build up, but it was snuffed out as Aaron Wan-Bissaka allowed first Pedro Neto and then Enzo Fernandez to get ahead of him and turn in low crosses. A bad night for one of the league's best defensive right backs? Perhaps, but too much else tonight felt redolent of deeper difficulties for this to be so swiftly dismissed.

Players simply were not executing the basics, runners gliding off their men, second and third balls allowed to drop to black shirts as Moises Caicedo and Trevoh Chalobah added to the damage from corners. Having hurried in early for what little half time relief the $10 Brewdogs offered, most of the crowd concluded enough was enough. A few of those that did not make their way up the stairs found themselves leaving the ground by other means, a clash between stewards and a small group of irate fans setting a worrying tone for the months ahead. In April Fullkrug bemoaned a team that "just sink" when they take the lead. This was neck and neck with the Mary Rose for embarrassing capitulations.

"You're going down," cried the Chelsea fans as the goals rolled into the second half. It felt more prophetic than belligerent. Two years ago this team blended iron will with flair on its way to European silverware. Tonight its best idea for ball progression seemed to be Paqueta dropping deep and landing a ball on Fullkrug's head.

The warning signs were there last season when West Ham had by far the worst non-penalty expected goal difference of those teams who avoided relegation. A team light on creativity has so far failed to replace Mohamed Kudus. A decade of difficulty at No.9 hardly looks like being addressed by Callum Wilson. When Potter spoke in the week of past business creating problems for him you could be forgiven for thinking of Jean Clair-Todibo, who West Ham were obliged to pay nearly $50 million for after loaning him last summer. About all you can say positively of the summer's business is that El Hadji Malick Diouf did not lack for energy down the left and that Hermansen had few games in a Leicester shirt as rickety as his London Stadium debut.

On the touchline, Potter stood bereft. A man who had been so cautious in plotting his return to management post Chelsea may have gone from the frying pan to the fire. Some worrying truths seemed to be dawning on him. West Ham supporters had been a fair way ahead of him.