Slav and Payet in happier times
Let me say at the very start of this piece that I love Slaven Bilic as a manager and a person. I’m among his biggest fans.
We saw his tactical nous on Saturday when he went 4-4-2 to put old Allardyce in his place and then his humanity as he briefly lost it to the F word in his post match presser.
This was always going to be the most difficult season of all having left our beloved Boleyn behind but slowly the manager is getting a grip on things as it wears on.
Having said all that nobody is above criticism and if I am 100 per cent honest with myself I believe Slav and the club got it wrong in their handling of Payet.
Giving him a massive rise soon after he’d signed a contract was not a great idea because it started the inflation of head size which I believe eventually led to his treacherous behaviour. He obviously thought he was bigger than us.
Slav constantly told everybody that he was our most important player, that he made those around him play better and that he was building the side around the guy and so on.
All well and good but it gave everybody including perhaps Payet the impression that we were a man team and in the long run was never going to work.
Thank God it’s over and thank God it was Palace as the match immediately post-Payet.
There will be tougher tests ahead of course so we must keep some perspective but the player’s decision to remove himself from West Ham and the manager and squad’s response look very promising indeed.
So a message to Slav and the board – no more special treatment of anyone please!
It doesn’t work in any walk of life but can create many problems. Lesson learned!
Easy in hindsight Hugh but we had a player at our club last season who lets be honest could have been in a top 6 team & not looked out of place.However at the bigger clubs he would not have been the billy big ones.If he was at Man.City for example he would have had a raft of players as his equals.
I think if another mid to lower placed team had ended up with Payet in their team playing as he did last season many of them would have been bending over backwards to keep him on side.Lets be honest he was merchandising gold dust as well.
As i say easy to look back but for me other clubs would have gone the extra mile to keep an asset like him at their club.
“.If he was at Man.City for example he would have had a raft of players as his equals.”
and now that they have effectively ruled themselves out of winning the league after a total butt job c/o Everton he would no doubt want out of there as well and thrown his croissant out of his boîte dans laquelle on transporte son déjeuner !
Probably so but if he had been there he would never have become the billy big balls of the team in the first place.
Im afraid i speak little French so much of that last paragraph passed over my head Lol
thrown his croissant out of his lunchbox !
true, he wouldnt have stood out like he did for us..but that also shows how desperate we were for a “match winner” and we put him on the pedestal…anyway, hes gone now and we are moving on with yet another “new start”…onwards and upwards !
Well written Hugh. But we must not compound these past mistakes by selling him for less than £30mil just to get rid of him. My view is we should hold out for £35mil minimum because after 12 months back at Marsaille I am convinced they will sell him on to China for stupid money. As part of the deal we should also demand a written transfer request so that he does not pick up 10% of the transfer fee and the repayment in full of the £1mil loyalty bonus he was given just a few weeks ago. We must show backbone here!! If all this is not possible in January, then make him train with the under 18’s and keep him away from the first team until he is prepared to commit fully to the club with the promise he will be sold in the summer but only if an offer of £35mil is received for his services. WHU made him, not the other way round.
A valid argument. Everyone wants to be father Christmas; no one wants to be the person handing out bad news. And it is so easy to lose perspective when you are dealing with someone else’s money, the upsides are immediate and the downside is longer term. Yes, no one is bigger than the club. Please one, disappoint 24 others. Again you are right about this being 20/20 hindsight. I think we have all learnt something and the shameful behaviour of Payet has brought us together. I was certainly losing my patience with Slaven and his tactics but have cosniderable sympathy now we all know what he was having to deal with. Payet’s treachery reads like some Shakespearean plot. Who would touch him now? Definately, lessons learn; lets move forward now.
Im all Payeted out.Lets just finally flush the floater down the kharsi & get on with supporting the rest of the team.The ones who proved on Saturday they care about wearing our shirt 😉
Yeah you’re right it is easy in hindsight Colin but to be fair to myself I didn’t like all the “we are building the team around him” and “he makes other player play better ” at the time mate. The contract things is difficult though. I get that. If that was said in a normal place of work under different circumstances of course it would cause resentment among the rank and file I reckon.
I agree Hugh but i can see how it might become easy to fall in to the trap of believeing you need a player so much that you become mesmerised & start to believe without that one player you dont have a team.I dont think Slaven has been the first manager to fall into that trap & i doubt he will be the last.Im sure he himself will admit he has learnt a harsh but good lesson because of this situation.
Whether im proved wrong or not whos to know but im still not buying in to this family reasons nonsense as the driving force in this move.Absolute rot as far as I’m concerned.
AAAAAHHHHHH……. another Payet story…..
every club wants to keep their best players happy so they stay at the club as long as possible. If the same performances from last season was carried over into this we would most likely be further up the table. there has obviously been tension behind the scenes over all this & there must have been a knock-on effect. hopefully that has now been removed from the squad along with him.
We do need to sign decent players this window, as good as the result was on Saturday it was again against one the worst teams in the PL. we are winning the must win games & that will keep us in the PL this season, against the top teams though we are still being battered. we shall see over the next couple of games how much the recent off field troubles have had on our performances.
Will buying british from the Championship take us up a level & will it be enough for the whingeing section of the fan base who will find fault in everything the club do to shut the Fk up?
Manure,Liverpool and Spuds away suggests we don’t have to be battered by the big teams if we turn up.
Arrrrghhhhhh!!!!!!
Just tell me when he is sold.
There is a simple way around the selling him to China deal if we do end up selling him for less than market value insist on a 50% of the sell on deal. Personally I had no problem with telling him he was our most important player because he was, the vastly inflated wages was a whole different matter but then if it turns out we were paying him 62.5k basic and the rest linked to appearances I haven’t so much issue with that either, I don’t think rewarding players with an improved contract every year is sustainable and it is likely to lead to unrest, if you think you have got a player on the cheap like Sakho for example just build a 10% annual increase related to performance into their salary or better still a bonus, that way if you have to pay them off it doesn’t cost you as much, likewise if you need to exile them as we have done to Payet.
Its a no win situation with some fans essexclaret.If you buy some poor foreigners they say buy British or from the Championship if we buy from the Championship & they dont make it in the Premier League they say what are we doing buying players from lower divisions.Their views change from day to day.
The same as the fans who are now teliing others they are berks for saying we should sell Carroll because of his recent performances but when he is injured say its time to cut our losses & get rid of him.
If you read sites regularly you see these type of fans all the time Lol
I read some fan getting smartass on Saturday shouting down fans who wanted rid of Carroll when its in writing he wanted rid himself when he was injured.Its comical really buddy.
Can we just clarify something as it gets repeated time and time again. We can’t sell Payet to anyone that he doesn’t want to go to right? If China Globetrotters bid £50M (which lets face it is highly likely) if Payet don’t want to go, and genuinely wants to go to OM then that’s the only show in town? So based on OM not budging on £20M we got no place to go. I have sneaky feeling PSG might be the saving grace at £32/33M.
Colin. Sadly, It’s a fact of life that everybody loves to shoot people down isn’t it?. We all do it because it’s easy and makes us feel better. and if there’s sarcasm thrown inwe love that (or some do).. I get that it’s easy to speak in retrospect but it’s really about learning from our experiences. Knocking for knocking’s sake and reinforcing it with the inevitable obscentity is for mugs as far as I am concerned
d 🙂
Yes you are right Hugh but it is mildly amusing reading the fans that live in the moment with their huge array of knowledge.Carroll plays well they tell other they were idiots for wanting to sell Carroll.When he is injured they are crying loud & proud we need to sell him Lol
it’s amazing the difference a win can make to certain people, a week ago there were big calls for Bilic to go with cry’s of ‘he doesn’t know what he’s doing’ ‘in over his depth’ ‘has only got plan A’ etc etc …. now the same fans love him & he is the man to take us forward to the next level.
The same with AC, suddenly he is god’s gift to football. Maybe I had become a disillusioned with big guy with his injury history & lack of playing time. I will be the first person to admit that I was wrong to want rid.
When match fit & given the service he will score plenty of goals, he scares the sh1t out of defenders who don’t know how to handle him. he is also good back in our own area when needed, he wins his fair share of defensive headers & clearances. the only problem is keeping him fit.
Many fans were sick to the back teeth with Carrolls injuries,myself included.I think he is a super player when available.That has always been the major issue,he is injured so often.
Who knows maybe he will have a good run of games now,i wouldnt put my house on it.
I think it was quite reasonable that fans may have felt it was time to cut our losses.
And you know what come his next injury they will be saying the same again.
That argument works with other people at the club. Some people idolise Noble and think being local and loving West Ham is more than enough to be a first team regular – others have a different opinion on him. I have yet to be convinced about Bilic. I cannot remember a single game that we have dominated since he became manager, he doesn’t play our youngsters like Spurs and Everton do and he lets a game run away from us before changing things. However, that didn’t stop me from singing his name on Saturday.
He will have certainly burnt his bridges with some managers who may have fancied him as a player.Some of them wont want to touch him with a barge pole now after seeing how he conducts himself.Not that they wouldnt have known about his attitude towards other clubs previously.
It goes without saying that views will change as form changes. Calling people out for that is a bit daft. Everythng changes apart from the ability to say: “Oh I got that one wrong”
I wasnt on about your everyday joe fan whos opinion my change occasionally.I was on about the ones whos opinions change to suiit their own agenda to deride other fans.You see it all the time from some.
Thats not daft to me so i dont have much time for them.
One mans daft is another mans sensible.Is called opinion isnt it Lol
So true Hugh. I laugh how someone that manages a Sunday league side thinks he knows better than Slaven who has been in the professional game for 35 years or someone who spends all day on FIFA17 in his underpants knows more about transfer values and pay structure than Sullivan. Or the wages clerk that knows more about running a multi million pound company than billionaires Gold and Sullivan. Or the security guard who has spotted all of Brady’s faults as CEO without the faintest idea what she does. I could go on.
I suppose we are all guilty of having an opinion but I think some actually think they do know better. For the record I don’t.
Top man John nor do I despite many believing I think myself above criticism…. NOT TRUE!
I don’t get all this anti/hatred towards the board. We all know that the stadium move hasn’t gone to plan & there are numerous problems that need addressing, but this the same board that everyone praised so highly this time last season over their summer transfer dealings.
I said this before, on paper the signings we made in the summer should have made us stronger. Most were being chased by more than us & a couple were seen as major coups for us. Nordveit & Calleri being two of them, both had good seasons 2015/16 but both have struggled in the PL. a few of the other signings are questionable (Tore & Zaza) to say the least but not every signing is going to work out. take a look at manure & some of their recent signings, a number of them are already being shipped out
As for Brady apart from opening her mouth before engaging her brain, do any of her attackers actually know what she does at the club? I’m not that keen on her myself but what people don’t remember is that is an employee of the club & therefore must have been given a brief of what is expected of her. what I have gathered is that the club is in a massively better position financially than it ever has been. Along with her team they have delivered a fantastic deal on the LS along with more & more commercial deals that have been signed over the last couple of years as well.
Most wont have a scooby claret as i dont meself.I do belly laugh though when i see fans motor mouthing about the club financies as if the mushies get weekly personal updates from the board.
Praps other managers thought he may have grown out of it but sadly not
too many people change that much eh Colin
Impossible situation for the board and manager. The haters say the board aren’t spending and look what happens when they do. I think it was a managerial issue and IMO Slaven has come of age. He has the ear of the player and the form and should be communicating with the board. Arguably, he could of called Payet earlier but that’s all by the by. He’s fone the right thing now and look at the reaction on Saturday. The whole crowd were behind him. I also hope the respect for Slav rises amongst the playing staff. He’s supported a player through thick and thin but eventually refused to be rolled. If Fergie had done this, we would all be saying it was genius. Din’t think Slav is quite in the same ball park but i hope it inspires him from here.