Sam Allardyce, the 13th highest paid manager in world football, has done nothing but blame everyone other than himself for our current predicament. It is time for him to go for a multitude of reasons and the recent mauling at the hands of Nottingham Forest and Manchester City only highlight our desperate situation.
The most common excuse made for Sam is the injury situation. This has only been a viable excuse over the past two or three weeks whilst James Tomkins and James Collins have been injured.
Losing Winston Reid was a blow but Collins and Tomkins were worthy replacements and for the majority of this season Sam has been able to pick his first choice 11 aside from Andy Carroll and Reid. Two first team players being injured is not an excuse to fall down so spectacularly. Our form was terrible before the centre back crisis hit us so using it as an excuse for our current league position is mindless.
Any manager who spends 75% of their budget on one player to the detriment of the rest of the squad’s needs must be accountable. If Sam had spent £10 million on a striker nice and early in the transfer window that gives him £10 million to boost the squad elsewhere and not make panic buys. If you spend such a great amount on one injury prone striker, the buck can only stop with you. Granted, the owners were stupid to go along with it but Sam placed everything in the hands of one player and that huge risk has failed to achieve anything, in spectacular fashion I might add.
Loveable rogues in the football managerial circuit include guys such as Ian Holloway and Mick McCarthy. What makes these guys so likeable is they speak their mind and they are more than happy to blame themselves for defeats. In fact, most managers worth their salt have probably blamed themselves for defeats at one time or another.
Despite the fact that many of our losses can be largely attributed to terrible tactics chosen by the manager, Sam has not once even hinted that he might have got it wrong. Against Nottingham Forest the whole world saw how useless that formation was yet did Sam step up to the plate and take responsibility? It doesn’t take a genius to know that a manager who never stands up for his players hardly sets a positive tone around the club.
Modibo Maiga, Mohamed Diame, Ravel Morrison and even Ricardo Vaz Te have looked fed up for quite some time. Vaz Te looked fed up from day one of Premier League football due to Sam’s insistence on playing him out of position.
When you insist on playing the most talented players on the squad in Morrison and Diame in order to keep Kevin Nolan in the team, do you really expect those guys to be bothered about playing? Not one guy on this team seems to care about the club and to be quite honest, I don’t blame them.
If you don’t believe in the system, the manager or the culture at the club what is making you perform? Multiple theories show that money only motivates so far so anyone who suggests they should be committed to the club because they get paid so much need to educate themselves on what motivates people.
From an outside perspective the club looks shot to pieces. No one seems to care and our manager was seen laughing in the dugout whilst the kids were getting slaughtered at Nottingham Forest. The Boleyn isn’t rocking anymore; in fact it is nowhere near rocking. It paints a very sad picture, in fact.
Under Avram Grant, there was never this despondency, the players did seem to be playing with a certain level of motivation and on the most part Avram stuck by his guys. Sam does nothing to instil an ounce of confidence in anyone and it is upsetting to see him ruin the club we all love.
Sam will not be manager of West Ham in the long term but when he does eventually go we will struggle if we don’t get rid now. He builds squads around his philosophy and said squads are unable to perform in other systems. Our squad, luckily, is still fairly diversified and it is good enough to stay up. Can it stay up under Sam? I am not one bit convinced that he is willing to change anything and in that case I wouldn’t be surprised if we finish bottom of the table #AllardyceOut.
And today he said he has no reason to apologise for the two heavy cup defeats!!!!! Yes you do Sam, yes you bloody do!!!
Can’t say too much on a subject which is already done to death. There is no motivation in our hugely underperforming squad & no half decent player wants to come to W Ham no matter who’s in charge.
Apart from five or six, our mob are Championship at best & our owners are not willing to invest in top talent.
just want to add to that rant. not only did he not take responsability for forest, he said after that game that he was trying to mastermind a trip to wembley in a few days. … However, the genius he had in mind was to sign Roger Johnson. pick Obrien after some howlers in the last few games, and continue with maiga upfront, and the use the same system which had failed so many times before. … But after city, he said he’d told the owners what would happen. and he criticised the players for not being good enough. AND took a swing at the owners saying that free transfers couldnt compete with the multi million pound players they had (the swing being that he wanted more investment from the owners?). how can he criticise the owners for not backing him??? …Jarvis? Nolan? Carroll? Diame? Downing? Maiga? New contract? Time given?
i agree with this criticism and think it’s best move him out NOW. the squad is good enough to stay up under most new managers (+1 striker) but it’s important (for next season) to invest NOW in players who can “play”. in the words of Frank McAvennie “players who can get the ball down, and play”.
not 7ft donkeys.
(im not necessarily putting carroll in this category because there is a bit more about him, but diarra, maiga, c cole. carew, chamakh, johnson, nolan)
Come on West Ham! Not only should we be playing like Swansea or Southampton, we should be playing like Arsenal or City or some spanish teams or like the great west ham teams of the past!! … We’re the academy of football and should have the courage of our convictions! play football the way it should be played’ Sign players would can play the game!!
WHO can play the game!
Nice one Legends!!
And I’d like to remind people that we played a damned lot better under Avram Grant & had better players with Scott Parker scoring a beauty of a goal at Upton Park when we beat Liverpool 3-1. The next game after that win we played Stoke & recorded back-to-back wins by beating Stoke 3-0 (Sam has still not, to date, recorded back-to-back Premier League wins). We climbed out of the relegation zone, after previously having had some wretched luck when we went to Goodison in January, & after going ahead 2-1 with around 5 mins to go, our goal scorer thinking he had scored the winning goal, goes on a huge celebration spree with West Ham’s travelling fans & unbelievably the referee sends the player off for celebrating & West Ham with 10 men concede in injury time to lose 2 points & we all know what happened at Wigan after we were 2-0 up at half time. It was wretched luck like that that got us relegated, so I don’t criticize Avram Grant too much because he really did try to keep us up, however I do criticize a manager who never takes the blame for his wrong tactics, and yes, if Sam keeps on blaming his players then that is bound to have an effect on a professional player’s confidence. Maybe a win at Cardiff would be too good for Sam in keeping him in a job that maybe ne does not deserve, because if we don’t get a result at Cardiff & Sam doesn’t walk, then he will get one hell of a reception at our home game the following week versus Newcastle, as I think, for the good of everyone, that he should walk before then if need be.