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A Little Bit of History Repeating... Will The Board Ever Learn..?

Regular readers of my blogposts and comments here will know I’ve been a staunch Slaven Bilic supporter. I was championing his arrival to the club over a year before he actually joined and remain steadfast in my view that he would have been a resounding success as our manager without the underhand comments and undermining which came from above (either directly from our chairmen or indirectly from their leaks to the media and fansites).

I was tremendously disappointed to hear on Monday that Slaven had been relieved of his duties as West Ham United manager. His first season showed just what a good manager he can be – not many managers, in one season, lead their teams to victories at the homes of Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool while also getting draws away to Manchester United and Chelsea. We did not lose to any of those teams in the league that season and also beat Tottenham at the Boleyn.

How, then, does a manager go from getting such good results, our highest league finish for 14 years, our first top-flight positive goal difference since the best season in our history and an FA Cup quarter-final to what we have seen at times over the last season-and-a-bit? Dimitri Payet obviously made a huge difference – but his signing was top of Slav’s wish list. Slaven was supported with the players he wanted in his first season – he knew what was needed to help us push on in the following campaign but was left frustrated as, in his own words, the board “did not go big or go early” on his top targets.

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Despite this, and a difficult transition to life at London Stadium, Slav reached another Cup quarter-final and an 11th-placed finish. He became the first manager in our history to record top-11 finishes in his first two top-flight seasons. The board supported him with four decent signings in the summer just gone but, crucially, did not deliver William Carvalho – a player Bilic was so keen on that he sanctioned the sales of eleven players to secure his signature.

Despite my support for him, I obviously appreciate that Slav was not, and is not, the perfect manager. However, he proved that he had real promise in that first season but, when your chairman comes out and says you have to prove you’re not a “one-season wonder” while simultaneously handing bumper new contracts to players based on just one campaign, the power is handed on a silver platter to the players. From that point onwards, the outstanding work of the first season started to unravel. He was not given the conditions within which to succeed, as he had been in the first campaign – the undermining had started.

Incidentally, I see the re-writing of history and sullying (pun intended) of Slav has started. Daily Mirror writer Darren Lewis, a close associate of David Sullivan, wrote in an article at the start of this week that Bilic “did not want” Carvalho – the very same writer wrote in September that “Bilic still wants” Carvalho in the January window having been unable to sign him in the summer!

And so we move on to Slav’s replacement – David Moyes. By way of a minor comparison, Slav illuminated his time with us with good results at big clubs – he took two wins and four draws from nine games at the homes of the traditional top four teams of the last 15-20 years (Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool). Moyes is yet to win in 57 away league matches at the homes of those clubs. Let’s, for now though, ignore Man Utd, Real Sociedad and Sunderland and focus instead on Moyes’ real success – Everton Football Club. What allowed Moyes to be successful at Everton was stability and job security. He finished seventh in his first full season but the Toffees dropped to 17th in his second campaign. If Slav had experienced a bottom four finish the year after his first season finish of seventh, there is little doubt he would have been out of a job in May. Immediately after that flirtation with relegation, Moyes took Everton into the top four but they dropped again the following season to 11th. Again, is this something our board would have tolerated as being “in line with their ambitions”, to use their words from Monday?

In a nutshell, Moyes was allowed to get things wrong. He was supported with little, if any, undermining coming from the boardroom. No ‘two games to save your job’, no leaks of players he didn’t fancy or club statements of players he refused to sign. Will Moyes be allowed to operate and flourish in the same way under Sullivan, Gold and Brady? I would like to think so, but I just can’t see it. Before we’ve kicked a ball under the management of Moyes, Sullivan has already found a newspaper interview with The Sun too much to resist and has labelled his new manager “a gamble”. How about that for unequivocal support?

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There are two scenarios I can foresee. The first is that Moyes doesn’t do well and is gone in the summer – our second ‘dead man walking’ of the season. The second is that he is given support, as well as funds, and impresses – he lifts us up the table, stays into next season and we again secure mid-table status.

If the second of those scenarios occurs however, I actually fear for Moyes. He is not a big name manager – he’s not Mancini, Pellegrini, Ancelotti, Benitez and he’s never won anything (Community Shield aside) at football’s top table. Our board will actually believe that they could do better still if we are in a decent position and their delusions of grandeur will set in. They will believe that, for the ‘next level’, they will need a manager of the aforementioned ilk. If that happens, the undermining that crippled Slav for 18 months will begin, in turn, for Moyes. Polls after bad results, leaks to the media and fansites, club statements which throw the manager under a bus. It happened with Allardyce, it happened with Bilic and I can almost guarantee it will happen with Moyes.

And what will happen to West Ham United in this case of history repeating? We will be back where we are now, going round in circles with no long-term plan, no strategy and plenty of short-term thinking. The gap to the next level, meanwhile, will grow ever wider – and that is the best case scenario if Moyes does well! I shudder to think what will become of us if he doesn’t. As manager of West Ham United, I will support David Moyes as I have the previous incumbents of the post – I hope his new employers assess their treatment of their recent managers and decide to take a very quiet back seat in order to allow him to do his job to maximum effect.

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I’d like to end this article with a thank you to Slaven Bilic. Thank you for those days at the Emirates and the Etihad, thank you for our first win at Anfield in 52 years (and in some style, “parking the bus but leaving the handbrake off – and all that”). Thank you for taking us to Cup quarter-finals in three consecutive seasons for the first time since 1989-91. Thank you for galvanising the club’s support in that final season at Upton Park – for wins over Chelsea and Tottenham in our final matches against them at our spiritual home. And thank you, most importantly, for my best night supporting our great football team – that last Boleyn stand against Manchester United. Your emotion at the final whistle that night will be my abiding memory of your time as our manager.

To David Moyes – I wish you good luck. One way or another, I think you’re going to need it…

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