Irons legend Billy Bonds is totally behind Sam Allardyce as the manager bids to end the Hammers slump.

Bonzo spend three decades at Upton Park as a player, coach and manager and said:  “I came along and saw the first game of the season. I saw nothing in that game against Cardiff which suggested that staying up wasn’t achievable this season.

“Since then results haven’t gone as well but we know what’s gone wrong — it’s a shortage up front, really.

“Sam [Allardyce, above] set his side out to be tough to beat and they’ve kept a lot of clean sheets this year.

“He has brought in two wide men in Matt Jarvis and Stewart Downing. He’s got Joe Cole playing in that area, too, and it was all geared up to getting the ball wide and then in the box.

“When Andy Carroll was in the side he was a real threat, people didn’t even like to mark him.

“Even when Andy’s back fit, though, you have to get someone else in because he’s a big lad and when you come back from a long injury like that there is every chance he could get another one.”

Claretandhugh reveals in our Macavennie the Legend section that the club is searching high and low to do exactly that!

And Bonzo added his own words of support for Allardyce in an interview on the club’s official website.

He said: “I think Sam has done what he was asked to do. His brief was to get the club out of the Championship into the Premier League and then to cement that place.

“We’re not in a desperate position because if you’re four or five points adrift then you start to worry but we’re not in that position — we’re one win away from being mid-table, it’s that tight.”