Is it okay to leave your team early? West Ham fans leave - do real fans stay?

AS the Sky Sports cameras panned to the hundreds of West Ham fans flooding out of the London Stadium, their team 4-0 down before the half-time whistle had blown, commentator Rob Hawthorne quipped: 'The train station in Stratford is going to be busy shortly.'

In years gone by, leaving a game early would provoke a tut and a shake of the head from those around you. If enough could be seen flocking to the exits, then chants of 'we can see you sneaking out' would arise from the opposition's fans. Nowadays, the drone of shame is there to capture your departure.

There is an unwritten rule in football that states: To be a 'true' fan, you must stay until the end - no matter what. Even if your team is being humiliated, even if it feels as if they are not trying and even if it is painful to watch. That's without taking into account how long your journey home is. There are a lot of things in football that do not make sense and this notion is one of them.

When you pay for a football ticket, you do not sign a contract which stipulates you must stay in your seat until the final whistle. The logical argument is that once you have paid your money, for some it will be hundreds of pounds, you can do what you like. If you want to beat the traffic, make sure you get your last train home or are simply fed up with what you are watching - there is no one forcing you to stay.

Yet football fans up and down the country have the same internal dialogue, weighing up 'Should I stay or should I go?' Their team is 4-0 down. There is no way back. It makes sense to leave early. But fans wrangle with a sense of guilt. It is not just players they are abandoning.

After a 2-1 defeat by Crystal Palace in 2015, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said he felt 'pretty