It is not easy to suddenly become good just because you bought some players. I am not saying that West Ham is a bad team, obviously as we can see they are a good team but it doesn't mean that they are going to be that much better suddenly, they are good but that's about it and we should move on with it.
I feel like the fact that they spent money means nothing, if that was the only thing that give you results, Chelsea would have been leading the whole league, but they are not, barely in top 4 right now, and not doing awesome, even though they are the ones that spent the most money. This is why it's clear to me that West Ham needs more seasons like this to get good.
of course a team will go through a long process to become stronger than what happened to them before. but additional players are the first option to improve the quality of the current team even we saw newcastle united also made a big improvement in the last summer window and it seems they are doing a better job now. West Ham will most likely be able to make improvements in the winter window because for now we see them to be in 16th place in the standings with a collection of points that are quite close to teams who are in the relegation zone.