Guest Post by Risboro Monkey
I’m starting to become concerned with the amount of abuse directed at our Captain, Kevin Nolan, on this and other forums and most of all, on Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, I would rather see someone else playing in his position because I think we have better options at the moment, but all this negativity is not at all good for our club. Let’s think back to when we were first linked with signing him, all the West Ham fans I know were over the moon with the idea, we were a Championship side, desperately struggling to find anything positive about the playing staff that Avram Grant had left us with. The team seemed to lack any backbone for massive parts of the relegation season. Scott Parker clearly didn’t want to be at the club any longer. The board kept on bleating on about the seriousness of the financial side of being relegated. Then out of nowhere there was talk of us signing Kevin Nolan, the lad that had not only been top scorer for Newcastle 2 years before, helping them get promoted back into the premier league at the first attempt, but was then top scorer their first season back.
Now, at this point I remember I wasn’t a fan of bringing Sam in as manager, but I was prepared to give him a go, signings like this one really helped. My memories of Kevin Nolan up to this point were mostly of him playing for Bolton though. In truth, this was mostly from Match of the Day, the guy always seemed to play well on that program, scoring loads from midfield, in pub chats I always brought his name up as an outside bet for the England squad, what team didn’t need a goalscoring midfielder? My other outstanding memory was of that Bolton side coming to us and being played off the park, but Jussi was man of the match and that lad Nolan popped up about 4 minutes into injury time at the end and snatched an unlikely draw for them. We rarely seemed to do that, we always seemed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and not vice versa. Is it possible that in one of Sam’s most divisive and quite frankly as far as I am concerned just plain stupid (he can think what he likes, I do NOT want to hear my own team’s manager slate our history) statements that’s what he meant by “What is West Ham’s way?” and what he was trying to do was give us a bit of fight, more backbone, less likely to be bullied into a late loss?
Obviously Nolan is exceptional at these qualities, he seems to be the sort of lad that all the other lads want to play for, the kind of captain that will take you under his wing if needs be, but will also give you the rocket up the backside that some of the squad at that particular time clearly needed. Lest we forget, it worked as well, he was captain in our promotion season! Although… well it was during this season it all went a bit wonky for me. I remember being at the Wycombe friendly, how refreshing it was to see one of our players winding theirs up getting in the ref’s ear, same at Watford away, the problem was, when is he actually going to play any football? When will the Kevin Nolan we all thought we had signed make an impact, other than winding people up or score goals, he just didn’t seem to be contributing much. We still got promoted though, he was also our top goalscorer for our first two years back in the premier league, so why the negativity?
Well, for me, the list is fairly short, he is inadequate at passing the ball, is slow and immobile which leads to lots of problems, makes me realise why England never came calling. Top of my list though, it’s Sam’s reluctance to drop him when we have options that I think are better, especially when he is clearly out of form. Yes, he is top scorer, but that is in a system built by Allardyce to get the most out of Kevin, we really ought to have a plan B by now, but Sam is being so bloody stubborn as we can all see this pre-season, I’m just loving this new attacking system!?!?
The one thing I can’t seem to shake off as being the real problem here though is Sam, it’s not Nolan’s fault he gets picked. Be honest with yourself as well, it’s not like he doesn’t try, he puts himself about as best he can, I remember a time when we loved a hopeless trier at West Ham, I give you Samassi Abou as an example. No, for me we need to get off Nolan’s back (he is slow enough already after all) and get behind him, ergo the team. We need to get some positivity back around the place, I know its difficult to ignore the negative feeling most of us get from Big Sam and his arrogant ways coupled with his defensive system. But for the good of the club we need to. We do make a difference on match day, the players do respond to the atmosphere, I know that goes both ways but someone has to start it! In all honesty I like having Nolan at our club, I would love to see him as an impact sub coming on as a plan B if we need to chase a game, I also think he is a positive influence on the place, but it’s got to be hard to put 100% in if you don’t think you are getting the backing from the stands. It’s interesting to note Cardiff fans being excited about the possibility of signing him. For me, I reckon we could all do a lot worse than aiming any animosity about what is happening on the pitch towards the dugout, it’s there that our problems stem from, having said that I am not going to suggest a successor, football club chairmanship is not my business. I run a pub, what I can tell you about running a pub though is that if I employ a great member of bar staff, guess what, the pub gets busier, if I employ an arrogant, negative member of bar staff I would probably be bankrupt in a matter of weeks.