West Ham Till I Die
Comments
Guest Post

Bringing the Ball Out From the Back (aka "The West Ham Way")

Guest Post by Neil Clack

For me, a fundamental part of the hallowed ‘West Ham Way’ is central defenders bringing the ball out from the back.

That started with Bobby Moore, and continued through Tommy Taylor, Alvin Martin, Tony Gale, Bilic and Rieper, Rio Ferdinand… even Steve Potts used to play the ball out.

We also had attacking full backs who would over-lap and get forward, best exemplified by John Bond, Noel Cantwell, Billy Bonds, Lampard Snr, McDowell, Dicks, Stewart, Breaker…

Billy Bonds has a repuation as a hard tackler, but when he played at centre back, he too used to bring the ball out with no little skill, sometimes going on swashbucking runs, well into the opponents half.

Of course, that cavalier style of play made us vulnerable and is one of the reasons we used to concede so many goals – even with Moore at the back!

But that style of play was part of our identity, and very few English teams played that way (especially in the 1980s). Ultimately, we were playing in a more European/South American style, and were good for English football, in general, in my opinion.

Every now and again, when the stars line up in the right order, it all comes together, and we have a good team, both attacking and defensively, eg. 1986, the early Greenwood years, and the golden 1980-84 period when we finished 9th, 8th, 9th, with Brooking, Devonshire and Alvin Martin at their peak – that team was a real joy to watch… but most of the time, the West Ham Way will always be incomplete because we’ve never had enough money to have top players in every position, which that intricate style of playing requires.

But, for me, striving to play that way is funadamental to the clubs identity, and why I’m proud to be a West Ham supporter, even though it means we’ll lose a lot of matches, and sometimes be on the receiving ends of some right hammerings due to the openness of the style.

It may not have come off all the time, but until the last decade West Ham sides did always try and play that way.

I remember once a teenage Rio Ferdinand gave the ball away which led to some groans from the crowd, but manager Redknapp was quick to defend him afterwards,“He’s still learning the game, and we’ve told him to play like that”, he said,“I’d rather he makes a ricket than just kick it into the stands”. There was a clear philosophy, handed down by Ron Greenwood; it sometimes cost us points, but was one of the reasons why, on a good day, West Ham were great to watch.

It’s not so much the fact that we don’t play that way anymore that hurts, but the fact that there’s no attempt to. We’re just another club in terms of style of play. No, it’s worse than that because other teams, not just the bigger clubs like Arsenal, but clubs smaller than us, like Southampton and Swansea, play more like West Ham used to play than West Ham.

Southampton decided a couple of years back to implement a clear style of play that goes right the way through from the youth to the first team, so when they inevitably have to sell players or have a change of manager/coach, it can all be done smoothly without much disruption to the way they play.

Swansea decided a decade ago, when their Supporters Trust tookover the club, to have a very clear footballing ethos – a modern passing game that they’ll stick to come what way.

The complete opposite to West Ham.

We’ve jumped from Zola/Clarke to Allardyce via Grant, in a manner reminiscent of the schizophrenic behaviour of Alan Sugar, a man who clearly had no idea how he wanted his Tottenham team to play as he went from the polar opposites of Ossie Ardiles to George Graham in just a couple of years.

I hope I’m wrong, but demanding the most ‘direct’ manager of the last 15 years to suddenly change his whole footballing outlook, and then trying to graft South American ball-players onto his tactics is asking for a mess, in my opinion.

I worried when I saw David Gold quoted on ESPN.

When we suggested we were looking for more attacking style this season, it essentially meant we want to see more goals from the team. We scored 40 goals in 38 games last season and it is not too much to ask for an improvement on those figures."Let me tell you categorically that Sam wants us to score more goals, just as much as I do, and all the club’s fans and the players. Those players we have looked to bring to the club this summer will hopefully allow us to offer more of an attacking threat in the weeks and months ahead.

(Full quotes here)

That sounds naive to me? That you just buy some attacking players, and there you go… But what do I know? Maybe he’s right? Maybe it’s as simple as that?

To be honest, I’ve never quite understood what’s been going on at West Ham over the last few years. The owners issued a statement at the end of last season, saying that some people (meaning Allardyce, I guess?) may question what the West Ham Way is, but “we understand what it means”. If that’s true, why did they appoint Allardyce in the first place? That’s a contradiction, surely?

And the irony is that when the owners tookover we had a management team who had a very clear attacking and passing philosophy, who believed in coaching, who believed in playing the yougsters, and who were happy not to be involved in transfers, but they sacked them! Personally, I always felt Zola/Clarke were never given enough credit for keeping the club in the Prem despite having thier best players (Bellamy, Etherington) sold from above them, replaced by cheap inferior loans and has-beens. They even lost influential captain Lucas Neill on the eve of the new season, who simply wasn’t replaced either as a leader or as a right back, and yet they kept us up.

Although I despaired when Allardyce was appointed, because I thought – perhaps wrongly? -that he represented everything that West Ham was not, I am not one who boos or demands he gets sacked now. He’s here now, and I believe we should back him – after all, wasn’t loyalty and not sacking managers another long lost tradition of the West Ham Way?

No, I’m not angry with West Ham, as so many of my fellow fans seem to be these days, just a bit baffled by it all, to be honest?

And without wishing to stick the boot into Sam anymore, I think it should be pointed out that he was a bit economical with the truth in that infamous first conference when he mocked the West Ham Way – or, to give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe his memory failed him a bit? – because when he said he used to enjoy coming to Upton Park as a player as West Ham were known as a soft touch and it invariably meant leaving with 3 points, a quick bit of research reveals that, for nearly all his playing career, Allardyce was in a different Division to West Ham (Bolton came up in 78, the year we went down), and neither did his teams (Bolton, Sunderland, Coventry, Millwall) meet us in any of the Cups. He actually played at Upton Park only once, for Coventry in 1983, and the score that day was 5-2 to the Hammers! I remember that game well; I was watching from the North Bank, one of my favourite ever matches, as Brooking, Devonshire, and Dave Swindlehurst tore the big moustachioed Coventry cent re-half apart with beautiful passing moves, wave upon wave of attacks, many initaited by Alvin Martin and Billy Bonds bringing the ball out from the back.

About us

West Ham Till I Die is a website and blog designed for supporters of West Ham United to discuss the club, its fortunes and prospects. It is operated and hosted by West Ham season ticket holder, LBC radio presenter and political commentator Iain Dale.

More info

Follow us

Contact us

Iain Dale, WHTID, PO Box 663, Tunbridge Wells, TN9 9RZ

Visit iaindale.com, Iain Dale’s personal website & blog.

Get in touch

Copyright © 2024 Iain Dale Limited.