Thank God there have been no knee jerk reactions inside West Ham.
A media frenzy got underway today with names such as Mancini being thrown around …Guus Hiddink is another I’ve heard.
Neither are going to replace Slav anytime soon or at all.
Sacking managers has become a national pastime. It rarely works and can be seriously costly anyway. The only reason it happens is because there’s no one else a club can move on making it entirely unfair.
What’s happening at Wet Ham this season is so West Ham and those of us who have been supporting this team down the years know that life with this club as always beeb as unpredictable as it gets.
Mind you I have yet to hear anybody explain with any degree of logic how we have slipped to our current position after the excitement of last year.
We’ve all had a try but the explanations have been so varied that arriving at the reason for the downturn is as difficult as understanding the amazing upturn last term.
As I say it all very West Ham and in David Sullivan and David Gold we probably have the most reluctant sackers in the national game.
I honesty believe that we will see things start to turn this weekend. It’s a gut feeling based on the anger the players are feeling at their own performances under a manager who has made no secret of how annoyed he is at the level of performance.
Training has been intense and the message of how urgent a clean sheet has become is being hammered home every day.
Slav knows every one of these players inside out and backwards…we trusted him in the good times and I personally trust him to see us through this.
My prediction is a draw or a win at Selhurst followed by a victory over Sunderland.
COYI
I don’t think it is difficult to understand why we have struggled and statistics lay it bare all the players bar Antonio and Payet have underperformed, they haven’t worked hard enough and for those that were here last year all excepting Payet and Antonio’s stats are down and even those two haven’t pressed hard enough. Slav has said all the right things so he understood well enough but he kept playing the players that were under performing so as a team and management unit they have all been to blame, now it’s time to prove how good they are, show some backbone and grind out some results a draw would be ok at Palace who are averaging more than a point and a half a game but hopefully we will do even better COYI !!!
Good argument 32 but I won’t settle for anything less than 6 points in the next two games.”Respect the point” has left the building.Cheers.
Well playing away at Palace i would take a point.They are playing pretty well at the moment so i wont be taking them lightly.
Certainly 3 points should be expected against Sunderland but 1 point at CP i will take 😛
Spot on – the Team as a whole have been undeperforming, they have not been working hard enough and most importantly Slav and his coaches have taken their eye of the ball and not worked the players hard enough.
It is only this week that we’ve heard tha Slav is getting really serious with the Players and that he’s no more Mr Niceguy – not before time!
If we don’t get anything against Palace or Sunderland I think the Dave’s will be forced to act – they cannot allow the situation to drift and Slav will be history – only my opinion but the situation is getting desperate.
I’ll give you some reasons for our current perilous state of affairs!
Let us first go back to the late part of last season. Slav’s insistence on playing Antonio at RB was a bad managerial decision, which not only weakened our defense, but also reduced our attacking prowess at the same time. Sakho was (and still is) our best striker, but Slav seems to have some crazy notion that Andy Carroll is our top man; maybe, if we were playing the old ‘long-ball’ game, but not when we are trying to play fast attacking soccers typified with fast,
I have not finished my last contribution?
So, I was suggesting that if we were to play a fast attacking style of football, with quick passing, then Andy is not well suited; great impact sub however.
In addition, Bilic did not play Enner Valencia in his preferred position as an out and out CF (which he plays for the Ecuador national team, with considerable success). He gets shunted out to the RW, and plays poorly, and suddenly becomes a scapegoat for the supporters!
This season has been marked by an overly excessive pre-season build up. We bought poorly, and never got the’marquee striker’ which was advertised for so long. Then James Tomkins was not given the right treatment to encourage him to stay at West Ham.
In addition, we continued to play with Slav’s preferred formation of the 4-2-3-1. This works well when you have the right (fit) players for the ‘2’ in front of the back 4, and an effective single lone-wolf striker. With Noble and Kouyate playing below form, we have been getting murdered through the mid-field. Flexibility in formation was one of Bilic’s first principles he discussed last year. Well, we need a formation which allows greater team stability and solidity, at least for the present time. In the good times, I love the 4-3-3, but this would be a disaster at the present time. I think Slav should be using something like a 4-4-2, which adds more strength in the mid-field and allows someone to chaperone Zaza up front.
While I would not moot the sacking of our incumbent manager, something drastic has to be changed to avoid the real potential of going down at the end of the season.
Aaron Cresswell will be back for the Palace game, Payet, Kouyate, and Lanzini seemed to be have regained fitness in the last game, and Obiang and Abreloa performed very well. Even Zaza put himself about somewhat better, and Sakho will be available soon. Based on these observations, one would hope that we could get the full six points against Palace and Sunderland, respectively (although, Palace are not a bad team at all).
If we end up losing the next two games, I think that the West Ham policy of resisting the pressure of early sacking, may be heavily tested.
COYI
All valid points , MW , but Bilic isn’t big on listening to the fans .
Anyway , there was far too much poorly judged movement in the last transfer window .
Now we have a very unsettled squad . The task Bilic has is to re-establish stability .
With no evidence of this so far this season I don’t feel over confident of coming away with more than two points from out next two games . I would love to feel optimistic and on a high but it’s not happening .
Prove me wrong , Please , West Ham .