Emulating Allardyce era at West Ham would be a success for Moyes

As a means of gauging how a manager is viewed by supporters of a football club, the BBC’s post-match phone-in 606 always makes for an interesting – if at times inaccurate – barometer. One impassioned defence may be followed by a vow never to attend another game for as long as the current manager is still in office. “He’s ruining our football club,” complains one fan. “I’ve never seen a side as bad as this in all my years as a season ticket-holder,” says another.

It therefore made for particularly interesting listening one Saturday evening as I made way back from a university open day in Stirling. The end of Sports Report and the subsequent six-minute segment of news often had me bracing myself for the impending argument with my parents about why listening to 606 really wasn’t as bad as they said it was. Unlike me, they didn’t see the funny side of football fans – or, for that matter the BBC’s Alan Green – having a moan on national radio.

For once, I got my own way, and the opening caller was, as my parents predicted, a particularly unhappy fan – in this case, of West Ham. “Albert Einstein,” he began, “defined an idiot as someone who tries the same thing over and over again and expects a different outcome. So how is it that Sam Allardyce can expect a different outcome when all his teams do is lump the ball up to some big centre-forward?” Poor Modibo Maïga was not deemed worthy enough to be referred to by name.

Allardyce’s West Ham side had been defeated 3-2 at home by Everton, who had risen to fourth in the table after five games. The match had somehow yielded a healthy number of goals despite there only being a handful of chances for both sides. But West Ham had neither won nor entertained. A deflected Ravel Morrison shot had put them a goal up, only for Leighton Baines to curl in an equaliser from a free-kick. A penalty from Mark Noble had edged the Londoners back in front, before double jeopardy in its queerest guise intervened – Mark Noble was dismissed for a second bookable offence, and Leighton Baines produced a carbon copy of his first set-piece to level the scores at 2-2. Then on 85 minutes, debutant Romelu Lukaku headed in to sink the Hammers.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/33ced3_e438adf5dc0f452fb8f20d25930e426a/480p/mp4/file.mp4

There were to be many more critics of Sam Allardyce on 606 that 2013-14 season. The occasional victory over the likes of Tottenham, Fulham, and Cardiff provided only brief respite in a campaign marred by injuries, a stultifying style of football, and a forward line that was blunt in the extreme. Captain Kevin Nolan ended the season as the side’s top-scorer with only seven goals, while Carlton Cole, Ricardo Vaz Tê, Modibo Maïga, and Andy Carroll shared a grand total of 11 goals between them. A quick scan through a typical starting line-up that season explains the dearth of goals and entertainment, for this side was particularly mediocre:

Adrian; Winston Reid, George McCartney, James Collins, Guy Demel; Matt Jarvis, Kevin Nolan, Mark Noble, Stewart Downing; Carlton Cole, Modibo Maïga. (Cumulative transfer fees: £31.6m)

This line-up, though industrious, is striking primarily for its lack of creativity – a characteristic that has become an unwanted hallmark of ‘Big Sam’ sides. It is therefore to Allardyce’s credit that, with the aid of several judicious signings, West Ham were a side transformed for the first half of the following 14-15 season. Wins over Liverpool and Manchester City coupled with a more captivating brand of football saw the side climb to 4th at Christmas.

Yet with Allardyce’s contract set to expire at the end of that season, uncertainty eroded the confidence of a side that started to look like incorrigible backsliders. The second half of the season yielded only 16 points from a possible 57, making for a miserly average of 0.84 points per game between New Year’s Day and the closing day of the season. West Ham fans serenaded Allardyce’s send-off on the final day with a chorus of “Fuck off Sam Allardyce,” to the tune of Verdi’s La donna e mobile following a 2-0 away defeat at St James’ Park. Final position: 12th. Points tally: 47.

Allardyce managed West Ham from 2011 to 2015, though never completely won over the east London fanbase

Looking back at the uninspiring squad of 2013-14, and its brief revival in the following season, got me thinking. Has the club moved forward since the Allardyce era, if at all – and if not, why not?

When Allardyce departed, it seemed he took with him the negativity that had lingered around Upton Park. He still found time, however, to warn his successor Slaven Bilić of ‘deluded’ fans and the indefinable ‘West Ham way’. He wrote in his autobiography: “Slaven Bilic is the new man in the hot seat and good luck to him. He will need it.”

Whatever luck Allardyce wished Bilić, it certainly seemed on the Croat’s side in his first season. As a former player under Harry Redknapp in the mid-90s, Bilić now seemed the right man to placate supporters, many of whom saw Allardyce as an outsider – a manager who arrived unwelcome and remains unappreciated.

A raft of new signings accompanied Bilić that summer: Pedro Obiang, Angelo Ogbonna, Michail Antonio, Nikica Jelavić and, most notably, Dmitri Payet, all of whom joined permanently. (Cumulative transfer fee: £41m)

The post-Allardyce era started unconvincingly. In the Europa League qualifying rounds, West Ham could only overcome Maltese side Birkirkara via penalties, before a 4-3 aggregate defeat to Romanian side Astra Giurgiu ended any aspirations of their first European campaign since 2006. But such an early setback was not to define West Ham’s final season at the Boleyn Ground; there followed away wins at the Emirates, Anfield and the Etihad, culminating in an ascent to 3rd in the table by late October. Equally prominent was the rise of – and reliance on – Dmitri Payet.

The Frenchman, who had arrived from Marseille for £13.5m, became integral to a team unshackled by Bilić and reinvigorated by Payet’s creativity. His absence was therefore all too keenly felt. Come November, Everton were once again the visitors to Upton Park – and once again, it was Lukaku who grabbed the headlines by scoring in his seventh consecutive game against West Ham in a 1-1 draw. The problem was not the two points dropped – but an injury sustained by Payet.

The following seven games in Payet’s absence saw West Ham win just one in seven, with opponents including lower- and mid-table clubs such as West Brom, Stoke, Swansea, and Aston Villa. Lo and behold, when Payet returned, West Ham emerged as 2-0 winners over Liverpool. That this sequence of results ran in tandem with Payet’s absence was surely no coincidence.

West Ham finished their final season at Upton park in 7th on 62 points, with the Croat’s style of management coupled with a strong recruitment policy paying major dividends. A change of ground and a second chance at European football beckoned in the following season.

But, as we have all seen for ourselves, the move to the Olympic stadium, rather than opening a new chapter for the club that had enjoyed its highest league finish since 1999, instead proved to be a grim anti-climax. Determined to bolster West Ham’s push for another European spot and impress fans in a stadium near double the capacity of Upton Park, Gold and Sullivan signed off £75.15m worth of transfer fees in the summer of 2016. What followed was an immediate exit from the Europa League – once again at the hands of Romanian minnows Astra Giurgiu. And so the storm clouds began to gather.

What few wins West Ham picked up during the first half of the 2016-17 season were narrow and scrappy – the same attributes that had been used to deride Bilić’s predecessor. Defeats were heavy and the goals against column was a major worry. Dmitri Payet, who had been mercurial the previous season, astonished coaches, players, and fans by his sudden drop in form. With the club languishing in the bottom half after a summer of hefty spending, Bilić appeared before the press crestfallen as he announced the Frenchman’s intention to leave the club. Without Payet – whose arrival initially appeared such an outstanding coup – West Ham continued a steady slide down the table. By April 2017, they hovered five points above the drop zone, but a respectable run of 12 points from their final seven games – including a 1-0 win over Spurs that ended their rival’s title chances – was enough to keep Bilić his job. Final position: 11th. Points tally: 45.

Bilic had an excellent first season as West Ham boss, but failed to build on his initial success

Another summer of rather lavish spending in the region of £50m once again did not represent value for money. In the 2017-18 season, West Ham never rose above 11th, and much of the campaign saw them escaping from the sides below rather than taking aim at the sides above. The appointment of David Moyes to replace Bilić was met with ridicule in some quarters – even though many accepted that the Croat’s time was up. Moyes’s disastrous reign as Sunderland boss, as well as his dismissals from Manchester United and Real Sociedad, had undermined the reputation the Scot had built as Everton boss. But during his 27-game reign, he did restore some respectability. Where Bilić had only averaged 0.8 points per game in his opening 11 matches, Moyes managed 1.1 points per game. Yet a final points tally of 42 and 13th-place finish tells an all too familiar tale for West Ham fans, whose perennial hopes are raised by a high transfer spend, only to be brought back down to earth by uninspired bathos.

The subsequent Pellegrini era from 2018 onwards did little to sting West Ham out of their perpetual, maddening penchant for mediocrity. As the Chilean looked to assemble a squad of higher calibre players with greater technical aptitude, he went on to invest £90m in Felipe Anderson, Issa Diop, Andriy Yarmolenko, and Lukasz Fabianski, amongst others. Four consecutive defeats was a miserable way to kick-off another false dawn, and although results did improve, a final placing of 10th with 52 points fell far short of the club’s pre-season ambitions.

Pellegrini brought serious managerial pedigree to the London Stadium when he arrived in 2018, but fell short of expectation and was sacked a year and a half later

Come the summer of 2019, managerial continuity, a mid-table finish the previous season, and another £100m on new arrivals gave at least some cause for optimism. A 5-0 thrashing at the hands of Manchester City opened the new season – though such results against the Citizens have become somewhat customary for West Ham – but seven games in, they sat 5th in the table. And once again, there ensued an inexplicable tailspin that entailed another relegation battle, only for Moyes to step in as he did two years before. 12 points from their final six games kept them safe for at least another year – only the difference this time is that Moyes will stay on.

So, where does this leave West Ham now? As their points progression shows, little progress has been made since Allardyce took the east London club up from the Championship over eight years ago. The stadium may have changed, but too many problems remain: exorbitant transfer fees; a paucity of youth players breaking through to the first team; a lack of accountability at the very top; and the harking back to an era in the club’s history that many West Ham fans will not have been alive to witness. With Moyes, however, at least the club has a manager who knows he has a lot to prove. He may fall into the same category as Sam Allardyce, a manager characterised as dated and uninspiring – but given it was arguably Allardyce who provided the club with more stability than his successors, such a comparison is more complimentary on second viewing.

This is arguably the Scot’s final attempt at reigniting his career. Given the turmoil that has engulfed the club for so long, stability for the next season will certainly classify as success – and trump the innumerable false dawns of years gone by.