At last! A much needed Hammers reality check!

During a long career in this business I’ve heard more managerial cliches than I care to remember mixed with an excruciating  crucifixion of the English language on occasions!

Many bosses spend an eternity saying very little. Speak less – say more are the words that spring to mind!

I’ve heard more mixed metaphors about taking things  with “a pinch of petter” or having “fires in the iron” when asking about possible transfers, than I want to remember.

One one famous occasion an unnamed manager told me in response to a question: “Oh I’ll keep my head under the apple cart because I don’t want to upset the oranges!” WHAT?

So when blokes like Slaven Bilic come along you celebrate and enjoy them. I like and trust intelligence and this guy has it in spades.

Look what he has to say about the state of the Premier League and our place in it right now. Just a clear assessment based on the need for some to take a reality check. Needed and very well expressed without the necessity for any sort of cliche or “know what I mean.”

He said during his post match press conference: “After beating Arsenal, Liverpool and Man City away, people are expecting us to beat Norwich 6-0. It doesn’t happen like that.

“We would love to be big guns, but let’s be fair – nobody said we are big guns before the season started. Because of the away wins, they are putting us there, but we are not the big guns. No. We have some really great players, but we have to work our socks off every single game.”

It was a reality check everybody needed. One cam become swayed by ill informed criticism on the social networks from people with the right, if not the knowledge, to express a worthwhile opinion.

There have been bosses who resort to the easy excuses for failure or claim all the credit after one half decent result.

In Slaven Bilic the Hammers have a very bright man with a very firm grasp on his business who also has some highly amusing turns of phrase – “room full of girls” and “buses without handbrakes” – spring to mind.

His assessment of our position after a mere handful of games seems spot on to me and perhaps for now it may be worth taking the OTT Twitter and FB reactions with the aforementioned pinch of pepper!