Last week was not a good one for what is now called the London Stadium. There was a hefty dollop of 1970s-style football hooliganism there on Wednesday evening when West Ham knocked Chelsea out of the EFL Cup. Trouble was predicted and, sure enough, it happened. Apparently the stadium breeds poor behaviour, therefore it is the stadium’s fault. Nonsense.

Let’s clear one thing up. A stadium never started a fight, threw a coin or taunted a group of supporters. It’s not the stadium’s fault, it is people that are to blame, football people. A lot has been written recently about how football crowds operate outside the bounds of normal behaviour. They can be racist, sexist, homophobic and idiotic and that is sadly accepted as the norm. It is a problem with people in football.

Not every football supporter becomes a halfwit the second he – and it does tend to be blokes – puts on his replica shirt and heads for the match, but a significant number do. It is how they are and how they are portrayed. Going to football gets people pumped up. Be a fan, be in with the crowd, the mob.

In the summer of 2012 the then Olympic Stadium was a splendid place to be. It was perfect for what it was built for: hosting the Olympic Games. What has happened since has been messy. There were arguments over who should have the use of it down the line. It played host to more athletics and will do again next year when the IAAF World Championships are held there. There have been Rugby World Cup matches and talk of Major League Baseball making an appearance. Also on the table is the suggestion it could host a London franchise in the proposed city-based Twenty20 competition due to start in 2018. After an expensive overhaul it now has West Ham United as a tenant. A stadium needs to keep busy if it is not to become a white elephant.

London is a stadium-heavy city because it is a sport-hungry place. But the stadiums are specific to the sports they hold in them. Twickenham is a rugby ground, Wembley does football, as do the Emirates, Stamford Bridge, White Hart Lane and many others. Lord’s and The Oval are designed for watching cricket.

The London Stadium is now neither one thing nor the other. It is a multi-sports arena, the kind that sprang up all over America in the 1970s and are now defunct. The concrete ashtray that could play host to anything is a redundant idea.

So, West Ham have a bad stadium for football, something the club should have seen coming when they pushed so hard to have use of the place. But let’s not blame the stadium for the behaviour of those who go and watch football there. Some football people behave like idiots because they are idiots, not because they are encouraged to do so by the design of a stadium.