Moyes? Maybe the board missed a trick
By Mike Walters, Daily Mirror Sports Writer
Beggars can’t be choosers. West Ham are in the bottom three for a reason: They are not very good.
Some of the metropolitan snootiness which greeted David Moyes’ appointment to replace Slaven Bilic has conveniently overlooked the Hammers’ predicament. After sailing close to the wind last season, the prospect of 25,000 crowds rattling around inside the London Stadium when Burton or Barnsley visit Stratford on a Tuesday night in the Championship is still very real.
Come off it, amigos. When the Premier League table reads like a threatening letter, you have to pay the ransom.
Moyes floundered at Manchester United, but whoever took over from the Gorbals growler was always going to be on a hiding to nothing. His biggest mistake at Old Trafford was to dispose of Sir Alex Ferguson’s backroom staff where continuity might have served him better.
We can write off Moyes’ ill-starred stopover in Spain, where he was the squarest peg in the roundest hole at Real Sociedad.
And as for Sunderland, not just a basket case but a whole wicker factory, he was the latest in a long sequence of prominent managers – Martin O’Neill, Steve Bruce, Paolo Di Canio, Gus Poyet and Dick Advocaat among them – to struggle in the quicksands.
Moyes made a rod for his own back at the Stadium of Light by admitting, two games into last season, that they were destined for a relegation battle, and his pessimism became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Notably, on the day he slipped into the cockpit at Rush Green, he was making only positive noises about his task.
But for 11 years Moyes did a decent job at Everton, taking them into the Champions League qualifiers in 2005 on a modest budget.
Do we discount a decade of competence completely because the last four years haven’t gone according to plan?
Whatever happens over the next six months, Moyes should be under no obligation to serve up football from archives of the ‘West Ham way’ – whatever that means.
He inherits a squad in the bottom three. His only prerogative – at the expense of all else – should be to finish the season at least one place higher.
For what it’s worth, the last time I watched West Ham in the flesh – against Swansea – they looked short of a gallop (not fit enough) and unsure whether Andy Carroll was a target man or a luxury they couldn’t afford.
When Everton were at their most obdurate under Moyes, they often brought as much muscle to the party as finesse, but Tim Cahill, Ayegbeni Yakubu and Marouane Fellaini all served him well.
Thankfully, it is unlikely he will fall into the trap of trying to put the band back together in January for a reunion tour.
Moyes’ best bet will be to channel the Hammers’ good intentions through Manuel Lanzini, their most creative player, and show more faith in Javier Hernandez than he did at Manchester United, where Chicharito started only six Premier League games in 2013-14, the season where Moyes took the Red Devils from champions to seventh.
Despite his lukewarm reception among East enders, few of us in the Fourth Estate have axes to grind with Moyes. Good luck to the fellow.
But without being mischievous, have the Two Daves and Her Ladyship missed a trick?
If Premier League survival is paramount, and the flowery stuff can follow later, there was a manager out there who has delivered on that manifesto with half a dozen clubs already.
Now we’ll never know if Big Sam 2.0 would have saved West Ham.
The views expressed here are those of the blogger and are not necessarily shared by ClaretadHugh