The West Ham fans were still dancing and David Moyes was about to join in when an ecstatic Declan Rice floated the suggestion that the Scot could well be the most successful manager in the club’s history.
That was June 8, in those heady moments in Prague just after Jarrod Bowen’s late winner against Fiorentina had won the Europa Conference League.
Two months on and the East End euphoria which greeted West Ham’s first European crown in 57 years has been replaced by uncertainty and trepidation.
Managers, so we’ve heard a million times, should be judged by their achievements, their record.
In that case, how on earth can Moyes be the 4/1 favourite to be the first manager to be sacked this season?
How can a manager be under that much pressure when he has twice kept the club clear of imminent relegation, then guided his team to sixth and seventh in the Premier League as well as reaching the semi-final of the Europa League and then winning the Europa Conference League in successive seasons?
West Ham go again in the Europa League this season, the first time in their history they have been involved in European competition for three successive years – and clubs such as Brighton and Aston Villa will discover for themselves how difficult the Thursday/Sunday treadmill can be.
To try and unravel West Ham’s summer cause for concern, you have to return once again to that triumphant night in Prague.
Rice, who collected the trophy that night, has departed, as every realistic Hammers fan expected. As he left for Arsenal, he was fulsome in his praise for the club who had nurtured him through his formative years.
Since then though, his comments, which included “seeing football in a different way”, have not gone down universally well with some of his former admirers as well as, I suspect, Moyes himself.
The £105million Arsenal paid for the England midfield player has since been burning a hole in David Sullivan’s pocket but the West Ham chairman drives a hard bargain.
It is why, after frustration has built during the summer at the lack of inward activity, three players like London buses - Edson Alvarez, James Ward-Prowse and Harry Maguire - are expected to have arrived by the end of the week, with more to follow.
The arrival of new technical director, Tim Steidten, quickly led to apparent player recruitment differences with the manager while the departure of two coaches, Paul Nevin and Mark Warburton, only added to the feeling that the club, far from capitalising on the European success of last season, were moving chaotically in the opposite direction.
The departure of Gianluca Scamacca, after just one season at West Ham, posed further questions about the club’s past recruitment while Moyes could also lose Lucas Paqueta to Manchester City before the end of the month if the price is right.
West Ham fans, while revelling in their European trips over the past two seasons, want an improvement on last season’s 14th place in the Premier League as well as a more expansive style.
Meanwhile, off the pitch, Vanessa Gold, has succeeded her late father David as club joint chair, while the main they call the Czech Sphinx, Daniel Kretinsky, with a 27 per cent shareholding in the club remains, for the moment, inscrutable.
It’s certainly rarely dull at West Ham but Moyes, in the final year of his contract, has surely earned the right to navigate his way through another testing season in east London.
