I urged for caution after the victory against Arsenal and it gives me no great pleasure in feeling vindicated. Defeat is always a difficult pill to swallow, no matter how often I tell myself: you’ve been supporting this team for as long as you can remember, get used to it. Not many actual fans talk of the “West Ham Way”, but I’d argue that if that phrase had an accurate meaning it would be more about inconsistency than playing beautiful football. That was what I overheard a number of times at the Boleyn on Saturday: same old West Ham. Beat Arsenal one week, lose to Leicester the next.
Having said that, Leicester are the in-form team at the moment: their performances since they triumphed against us back in April have been staggering. In Claudio Ranieri, they have appointed an experienced and stable manager. It is also delightful to see his Leicester side do so much better than Chelsea, the team that treated him so poorly. If I want anything from this season, it would be to see Ranieri beat Mourinho in both home and away fixtures. Then Mourinho really would need a new doctor.
But what I really want from this season is…well, what? I have never been one to get caught up in the aura or allure of Slaven Bilic: yes, it’s great to have a Boleyn ground fully behind its manager, cheering us on at 2-1 down with a sense of unity. Yet surely the Leicester game ultimately revealed more about Bilic and the squad’s limitations: defensively a worry and lacking an attack.
Last week, I said we still did not have enough shots on goal. I felt that was the same this week: in the first half, we seemed so content to just play the ball back and forth at the back, as if the squad was more concerned about listening to chant “We’re West Ham United, we play on the floor.” Mauro Zarate’s amazing run in the second half summed it up for me: he played brilliantly, got all the way to a shooting position and then…he hesitated, nervous about shooting. Opportunity missed.
Yet to return to the broader point about Bilic, I think this comes down to what do we want from this season? Hopefully the Leicester result has made most of us sane fans aware that Champions League football is a long way off. So what next? The Europa League? I find this confusing: we got into the tournament via Fair Play, but we wanted to focus on the Premier League. Fair enough. But if that is the case, why bring in Bilic now?
I am not calling for Sam Allardyce to return, but if the premise of this season is the stay in the league and finish in the top ten, I would argue you may as well have stuck with Allardyce just because he has the experience to do that.
So maybe Bilic is here to do what Allardyce would have done, only more attractively? As much as a good feel as there is around the Boleyn these days, I wouldn’t mind having that same new manager, new era feel next August when we start at the Olympic Stadium. I don’t think we will get relegated, I just feel that that outcome is slightly more likely under Bilic.
Essentially, this comes down to a problem that has inflicted the English mindset for a while: not enough prestige or love is given to the Europa League. Yes, the argument is that we didn’t want it, we’d rather qualify properly and go straight into it. But overall, there appeared to be a bizarre sense of euphoria that we had made it into the competition and then a blase reaction to us going out: from the board and from the manager.
So the question is, what do we want from this season? Premier League safety for the Olympic Stadium? Europa League qualification, but will we take it seriously? Either way, we have to at some point stop being the team that beats Arsenal one minute and loses against a side we should beat at home. And maybe that is something far greater than the relatively inexperienced Bilic can handle – at least, in the short term.
P.S. Please follow me on @kirancmoodley