Slaven Bilic’s future is back in the melting pot as the club continue to pursue a minimum requirement of a top ten finish.
Expectations have been regularly revised throughout the campaign but the big yardstick by which Slaven will be measured is whether the Irons finish in the top or bottom half following the club’s recent slump.
At one stage the club was talking top six, before top eight and top half became rapid fall-back positions in the light of results.
With the team failing to win since beating Southampton on February 4 and just two points collected from 12 since worried frowns are appearing again..
The popular boss looked bang on course to lead the club into his third season after Christmas but ultimately club chief’s will make their decision when assessing his overall performance in the annual reviews that follow every campaign.
The defeat at Bournemouth has thrown a different perspective over the manager’s situation after the team was out battled and again lost points in the closing minutes.
Memories of games against West Brom and Spurs returned when the team was caught in the closing minutes with some questioning their ability to see games out possibly via the often discussed fitness levels of the team.
With Leicester City, Hull and Swansea three of the four next games with Arsenal sandwiched between them the manager will know what must be done as the season’s countdown continues.
He will know too that Roberto Mancini has been regularly mentioned as a possible replacement and that even Claudio Raniei could enter calculations if the club cannot recover from another dismal run of results.
Interesting that Jaap Stam has questioned the training methods at West Ham after saying that Reece Oxford has been surprised at the level of intensity in training at Reading compared to at West Ham. Enner Valencia made similar comments after joining Everton.
I can’t see a top10 finish simply because we don’t beat sides above us and struggle most times against those below.IMHO
I thought last week it was being said he was to get a new extension to his contract.
It changes every week with different articles
Jaap Stam saying nothing interesting,nothing most West Ham fans give a **** about anyway.Only the ones looking for something else to **** on the club about.
Swanie…it’s all explained in the piece. Nobody ever said anything about an extension anyway. Just that he was ok for the final year of this one.However, as the article explains, Bournemouth caused some serious alarms and to be sure of a deal now he will need a top 10 finish. There’s more in there – give it a read. Nothing is certain in this game and yes situations do change and that can be generated by two points from a possible 12 as is now the case.
From past history Hugh the chairmen always leave these things until the end of the season don’t they ? I certainly remember numerous times with Allardyce them doing that.
Bottom half is not progress is it? Clearly not compared to last season, but this is our fourth season back in the PL. Two full seasons with a lot of cash splashed is a reasonable trial period. It’s probably above the average managerial life span if you take out Wenger.
H64 last season was a strange season though wasnt it .Chelsea Mourinho situation,Van Gaal doing nothing at Man.Utd,Rodgers failing at Liverpool,Wenger flattering to decieve at Arsenal,Pelligrini under achieving at Citeh,Martinez poor at Everton.The beneficiaries of that were clearly Leicester but also us and The Saints.
Parity has returned this season and it is no shock to this oldie we are now midtable again now the big players have got their acts together.
Yes-agree with all that Stan. But that is my point- we are still pretty much where we were when Bilic took over. And we have had a poor season which I am hoping will still improve, but fearing that it won’t! Maybe it is too soon to expect any progress, but I reckon the owners will expecting some sign of it. I think the problem is that once you go below the top 6 ( perhaps that will now become 7 with Everton?) you have a chasing pack of teams that have very little between them. All it needs is an injury crisis or a Payet crisis, or a money crisis, and a team can sink. So teams like us, West Brom, Swansea etc are yo-yo ing up & down depending on how things go. I know a lot of fans have dreams of us joining the Big Boys, but I think getting ourselves established as regular top ten is more realistic. At the moment I don’t think we are doing that, but I would love to be proved wrong.
More like Slavens future depends on a bottom 6 finish. Finish there and he’s out lol