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The expulsion from Paradise - will Allardyce lead us into the OS ?

Which West Ham fan could ever forget that glorious Saturday in May when Vaz Te shot the Hammers back into the Premiership just a few minutes prior to the final whistle.
Players hugging and celebrating on the Wembley pitch while the Hammers fans in the stands were singing their very own version of the Coldplay smash hit “Paradise”.
Suddenly Allardyce was Cockney rhyming slang for paradise and it was true – Allardyce had brought the club back from its knees to the promised land of the Premier League where not milk and honey flow but a seemingly endless stream of TV revenue beckons plus a global audience of hundreds of millions of football fans.

These days though Allardyce (again) may have bitten off more than he can chew from the forbidden fruit (or should that be chewing gum ?) as again fans are not happy with a recent run of just one point of a possible nine, albeit including games against biggies like Chelsea and Arsenal. It was not so much the results as such but the manner of the defeats, some baffling decision by the manager regarding his lineup and resting certain players in certain games and of course the still somewhat mysterious treatment of Mauro Zarate.

I think it’s fair to say that Allardyce had managed the nigh impossible in the first two or three months of the season: He had won over a lot of his fiercest critics among fans and pundits. And most possibly his employers as well. With Nolan and Carroll unavailable West Ham were playing breathtaking and exciting football with Sakho and Valencia upfront and a diamond formation behind them. Players were constantly running, chasing, interchanging positions. It was unexpected. It was unpredictable. It was pacy. It was successful. It was downright brilliant.
We all have seen what happened next. Injuries took Sakho and Valencia out of the equation for a while. Carroll and Nolan were available again and while the results initially were still good the football had changed again to something which was eerily similar to the fare on offer for the majority of games last season, albeit with a generally better quality overall due to our much improved squad.

Which leads us (and more importantly the board) to the question of what lies ahead for Allardyce. I’m sure the manager would love to see an extension to his contract arriving on his doorstep rather earlier than at the end of the season as originally planned. The board apparently want to wait matters out though and take in the rest of the season to evaluate performances, development, maybe even satisfaction among the fanbase.

Make no mistake, Allardyce has done a fantastic job up to this point. He took on the job when West Ham very much resembled the ugliest bird at the graduation dance.
Not an attractive proposition at all. Relegated. An ageing and very mediocre squad. With virtually no team spirit to be seen anywhere. A shambles really.
Allardyce took us back to the Premier League at the first time of asking. And he’s kept us there although the football at times was diabolical. And he did this with very limited ressources. There are not a lot of managers around who can stretch a limited budget as far as Allardyce, vital for a club like ours not blessed with owners who have hundreds of millions of pounds to spend without thinking twice. Our team spirit is the best it’s been in years. We rarely get a thrashing on the pitch these days.

But Allardyce keeps on dividing the fanbase. Some just don’t like him as a person. Some despise his perceived stubbornness and inabilty to shoulder the blame for anything. Some don’t like his formations and lineups or what they see as an extreme loyalty to certain players while ignoring others perceived to be better options.
Some fans still think Allardyce knows best and is maybe the best manager West Ham could wish for at this point.
Others think Allardyce has done a fine job, but taken us as far as he can and therefore want him gone. At the end of the season or earlier.

It’s hard to tell at this point if indeed the board may have actually made their mind up already about NOT extending Allardyce’s contract. And it’s also possible that Allardyce may know, or at least sense, that his days at West Ham might be numbered. With the OS on the horizon the main objective can no longer be to just stay up.
Especially after the brilliant first half of the season future West Ham teams need to constantly play attacking football which is pleasing on the eye AND pleasing on the points tally. Can Allardyce deliver that and can he make the West Ham team as unpredictable and nasty to play as in the early parts of the season ?

Personally I reckon that Allardyce knows he will not be leading West Ham out onto the pitch of the OS. In my view he’s merely going through the motions which he can afford to do as we are virtually safe already. That’s one bonus payment pocketed for him. More money may be available depending on league position or qualification for European football. But would Allardyce really try really hard to get West Ham into Europe if he already knew that another manager would be taking the squad to Rome, Lyon and Prague next season, and not him ? I doubt it. Allardyce is not the kind of manager to “go for it”. He is a safety net kind of manager, perfect for putting stability into clubs, but not good enough to make “the next step”.
The ideal solution in my view is an amicable parting of ways at the end of the season. Which of course may result in the current season petering out in unspectacular fashion.
But if unspectacular in this case means midtable obscurity, it would be just about acceptable I reckon. West Ham qualifying for Europe with Allardyce is not impossible, but I have a gut feeling it’ll be up to his successor (whenever he may arrive) to clinch European football for West Ham.

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