By Simon Leyland
All this talk about a new manager has made me think about us as a club and the managers we have had.
Since the start of the Premier League we have had 11 different permanent managers – and you will be not particularly surprised to hear quite a few of them were not very good at all.
The total goes up to 13 if you include the two caretakers appointed in that time: Sir Trev enjoyed an unbeaten stint which wasn’t enough to stave off relegation in 2003, while Kevin Keen’s sole game in charge eight years later came with the team already condemned to the Championship.
Over the next few days, let us have a look at the 10 permanent appointments, not counting Moyes, and see if they would have done a better job.
Avram Grant
Well, this was a complete disaster. Whose bright idea was it to appoint a man whose previous team had finished bottom would lead to your team… to finish bottom?
The baggy eyed one wasn’t helped by marquee signing Thomas Hitzlperger going AWOL for more than half the season through injury, but he also wasn’t helped by his other rubbish signings, including Pablo Barrera, Tal Ben-Haim, Wayne Bridge and Robbie Keane.
West Ham were deservedly relegated after picking up an embarrassing one point from their final eight games.
Manuel Pellegrini
A promising first season and then…
It is a continual theme of this list.
Pellegrini’s appointment was a well intended attempt to give the club a new, glamorous, shiny image and the owners threw good money after bad chasing that aim.
Yet for all the cash wasted on the likes of Felipe Anderson and Sebastien Haller, Pellegrini’s reign can only be defined by one man – Roberto!
Slaven Bilic
Bilic was the man who gave West Ham fans one of the most enjoyable seasons in living memory, and that’s more than enough to make up for some of the misery the not- so- super Slavs’s second and third campaigns.
West Ham were simply a joy to watch in the 2015-16 campaign, with Dimitri Payet – given his debut by Bilic – the main orchestrator.
Ok, things tailed off the following season with a limp start to life at the London Stadium, and the wheels threatened to fall off completely before he was replaced by Moyes.
That one season, though, is perhaps more than many will achieve in charge of the Irons – in terms of achievement and the hope Bilic was able to create amongst our long suffering supporters.