This post could be replaced fairly quickly during the course of the day depending on the fallout from yesterday’s meeting between the board and Slaven Bilic.
Urgent crisis talks have been held (with further discussions scheduled for today) to determine whether Bilic will get a few more games to turn things around and save his skin or if this is the end of the road for him at West Ham.
Apparently the board are concerned about Bilic’s tactics and team selection and frankly the league table is not a pretty sight right now and it doesn’t lie either, three games, three defeats, ten goals conceded, bottom of the table. As a club we should and need to aim higher. Over the last few days more and more critics of the manager have come out of the woodwork demanding for Bilic to be sacked or walk himself if he wants to avoid the sack.
You all know my stance on Bilic. As a person I love the guy to bits, he is an intelligent bloke, he seems to genuinely care about West Ham, he is a good man, easy to root for, a leader with a certain aura and (for a while at least) he had a good thing going at our club. But now things seem to have taken a wrong turn putting us on a downward spiral past the point of no return.
We have a decent team (much better than what the table would suggest anyway), but our players look helpless out there on the pitch. There is not a lot of running going on, there is hardly any creativity, we don’t chase the opposition enough, we are second best in most statistics and, as Bilic has admitted himself, we look awful right now with or without the ball.
Not good. I’m sure Bilic must have an idea of how he wants his team to play.
But either his players don’t understand what this gameplan is or are unwilling (or unable) to follow that gameplan. Funnily enough there is a similar situation at my beloved Concordia too where the football is going backwards as well after hiring a new manager last season.
The manager here also seems to have a clear picture in his mind of a certain style of football, but just like at West Ham it only takes a quick pass or two to get past all the midfielders and defenders and score plenty of goals against the Cordi boys.
You won’t win many games of football if you concede three goals on average, no matter if it’s the Premier League or 5th level local football in Hamburg. Yes, a lot of our goals come from individual mistakes, shocking ones at that. Players need to take their fair share of blame for that, but as you cannot sack an entire team that’s underperforming it’s obviously going to be the manager eventually being shown the door as the easiest option to kickstart your season.
I don’t see a way back for Bilic unfortunately although I would have loved to see him as our manager for many more years, because in my view he was pretty much perfect for our club, but the Premier League is a shark tank and once you have shown a weakness and the fans, rivals and club owners smell blood there usually is only one solution.
Looks like Bilic’s race here is run.
Before we talk about the potential replacements who are being rumoured to take over from Bilic, let me be crystal clear about my skepticism that things will suddenly be all rosy and peachy in a West Ham Wonderland after the arrival of a new manager, the owners are still the same, the modus operandi in our transfer dealings will not change and certain aspects of our training ground will remain.
I was shocked to read that apparently there still is no ice bath facility available at our Rush Green training complex. Bearing in mind the number of injuries suffered by our players one would imagine certain basic features being in place at our club to help minimise the number and impact of certain injuries.
Also it didn’t help to play the first four games of the season all away from home which contributed to the dire situation we’re finding ourselves in.
I suppose that comes with the package of only renting a stadium, not owning it. But we were told that West Ham games would always take priority over other stuff that happens in our “home” stadium, well, unless it involves athletics obviously, especially when converting the seats back into football mode takes about a week, not 48 hours.
Which can happen if you install demountable seating by mistake instead of proper retractable seating. This is so NOT next level…but I digress.
Replacing the manager can only be one step in our efforts to become a bigger and better club from top to bottom, the owners have to do their bit too. The timing of course is very unfortunate if we were to bring in a new manager today or later this week. With the transfer window closing shut later this week ideally you would want to see 2-3 more signings, considering the number of players who have left our club already. Our squad looks threadbare and unbalanced at this point which will hopefully be addressed in the next few days, regardless of the manager situation. But do you sign new players when you cannot even be sure if the new man in charge will actually want and use them ?
Anyway, first candidate as our new gaffer is Rafa Benitez. At one point two years ago we were apparently just a few minutes away from nailing down his signing before he changed his mind and chose Real Madrid instead which took nobody by surprise really, apart from our owners probably.
It looks like we could sign him now from Newcastle after all if we pay them a £5 million release fee. The Spaniard no doubt is an experienced head, he has won cups, titles and trophies in Spain, Italy and England (including the Champions League of course), so he knows how to manage and win at big clubs.
I have no doubt he could organise our back four into a solid unit again and drum some tactical discipline into our players to stop us leaking goals left, right and center. Benitez teams in general are hard to beat which most fans will be happy enough with at this point. On the other hand former players of his like Jamie Carragher claim that he is not exactly a great motivator for the players.
Then again I feel that there is something fundamentally wrong if a Premier League player looks to his manager for motivational skills in order to be sharp and up for it.
The next candidate would keep the Balkan theme at West Ham alive and kicking, with Serbian Slavisa Jokanovic replacing our current Croatian manager.
Jokanovic is currently managing Fulham and while The Cottagers have started their Championship season in indifferent fashion so far (6 points from a possible 15) I understand that he has established a style of football at Fulham that’s both modern and pleasing on the eye.
A bit of a groundhopper as a player (playing for 8 clubs in his career, spending no longer than 2 years at either of them) he also managed at some interesting clubs so far, Partizan Belgrade, Muangthong United (Thailand), Levski Sofia and Hercules (the club, not the divine hero), before managing Watford and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
He has kept Fulham in the Championship before then reaching last season’s playoff places.
The biggest plus apparently is his technical flexibility, he allows his teams to play and switch to different formations, according to which players are at his disposal for any given game and the style, strengths and weaknesses of the opposition. So, not just Plan A, but also Plan B, C, D and E.
His general approach is attack minded and possession based, with an emphasis on supporting the strikers from both wings. As a consequence Fulham are very dangerous attacking with the ball, much less so when defending. In that respect he doesn’t look like the answer to West Ham’s defensive shenanigans at this point.
Another name in the hat appears to be that of Marco Silva, the current Watford gaffer who West Ham apparently were interested in signing earlier this summer, if you believe certain rumours. Silva, being a young manager, hasn’t been around for long, but he certainly has turned a few heads and is very much flavour of the month among various pundits. He has managed at Estoril, Sporting, Olympiacos and Hull before. Apart from his Estoril reign (3 years) he has never stayed more than one season at his previous clubs which seems to indicate that he moved to another club whenever reaching another level or opportunity.
The Portuguese football tactician has been known to be a proper teacher to his players, constantly talking to them about organisation, using space on the pitch and movement to enable them to make the best decision in crucial on-field situations whenever they arise. Many West Ham fans will be happy to hear that Silva’s approach is very much focused on keeping clean sheets first and foremost, with attacking prowess taking a backseat, unless it’s a counter attack.
While managing in Greece the fans there even joked that Silva was so set in his ways of attacking on the counter that he sometimes told his players to deliberately give the ball to the opposition in order to win it back again and go on the counter attack.
Either way the next few days at West Ham will be busy and interesting, though not necessarily exciting or overwhelmingly positive.
Will Bilic really leave his post this week already and will his replacement be ready straight away ? Will we make more signings in the next few days ?
Will we get the Carvalho deal over the line after all ?
And will we be able to get some decent training sessions under our belt during the international break, so the players are in significantly better shape physically and mentally for our first home game of the season ?
All we can do as fans at this stage is wait, see and drink a nice hot cuppa from our favourite West Ham themed mug. COYI!