10th May 2016, East London.
Tears of joy tinged with sadness, an overwhelming sense of the end of an era, and two Payet assists was just the way the Boleyn Ground deserved to go out. A win against the most successful football club of the last 25 years, and Bobby Moore turning the lights out for the final time.
How times change.
12th January 2017, a different part of East London.
Outrage, discontent, and a clear divide in the dressing room. Not the way the London Stadium deserved to be ushered in. Losses against Watford and West Brom, and complete capitulations against Man City and Man Utd in the cups, and Arsenal in the league. And now, to top it all off, Slaven Bilic reveals Dimitri Payet is refusing to play for the club and is demanding a transfer.
But where does the blame lie? Is it at the feet of Payet and his teammates for not reproducing last season's form? Is it Bilic for failing to adapt when necessary as the going got tough this season? Or is it the board for repeated promises to players and fans alike for a marquee signing which failed to materialise?
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| West Ham team photo 2015-17 |
First let's look at Payet. This season in the Premier League, he has created 16 more chances than any other player. That includes Ozil, Sanchez, De Bruyne and Pogba; players who cost a total of nearly 22 times what West Ham paid for Payet in the summer of 2015. Fans have been on his back because
he looks 'disinterested' and 'fat', but the stats prove that Payet is still doing just as well as he did last year, but because he's not scoring free kicks week in, week out, and getting all those Twitter users their precious Vine loops, he's being lambasted for not doing absolutely everything for the team. The man can't cross the ball AND score the goal. Other players must make themselves accountable and step up to the plate. Payet's level may have dropped from last season, but not by as much as everybody else's. So far this season, only Randolph, Reid, Obiang and Antonio can hold their heads up high and say they've played out of their skins. Dimitri Payet may well have gone about this transfer saga in the wrong way, but I absolutely cannot blame him for having done it. He's been carrying this team on his own for far too long, and it's about time the rest of the squad did something about it.
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| WANTED for impersonating a professional footballer |
Next up, Slaven Bilic. A remarkable first season at the helm of this famous club, and what a fall from grace. Over the summer he became everyone's favourite pundit on ITV during the Euros, and then he came back to West Ham, promised a marquee signing by the board. Here's the names of the players brought in: Feghouli, Lanzini (kinda), Martinez, Nordtveit, Quina, Fletcher, Ayew, Masuaku, Fernandes, Arbeloa, Töre, Calleri, Zaza. Not great. Not a marquee signing in sight when you consider that Zaza was brought in on loan, and to date his only goal at the London Stadium was FOR Juventus in a pre-season friendly before he joined. Bilic started the season playing a 4-2-3-1 system which obviously failed to work, before switching to a 5-4-1 wingback situation which started to yield results after a run of 5 games without a win. Since then it's been very up and down, with Slaven even calling out his squad for not trying hard enough in training. That kick up the backside started a run of three wins on the bounce, but didn't have enough momentum to carry through to games against Man City in the cup, or indeed Leicester or Manchester United in the league. Bilic seems to be at his wits' end with the situation, he looks increasingly tired, and sounds increasingly fed up in his press conferences. He's a poor man stuck in the middle of a shit sandwich, with players not performing on one side of him, and the board not doing what they promised him on the other side. Of everyone in this situation, Bilic is least to blame, and I for one am proud to call him the manager of my football club.
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| What the fuck is this? |
David Sullivan, David Gold, Lady Brady. The last three to go under the microscope. There can be no doubting that since they came in, they have taken the club from strength to strength. Promotion from the Championship at the first time of asking, solidifying a mid-table position under Sam Allardyce, firing him maybe a season too late for some people's liking (i.e. mine), bringing in Slav, and moving us from Upton Park to the Olympic Stadium. They have done everything in their power to grow the club, but has it gone too far? Yes, the new stadium is nice, but it's patently not built for football, and the whole seating arrangement could do with a severe overhaul. There are popcorn stands on the concourses. POPCORN. AT FOOTBALL. There seems to be a desire to commercialise and sanitise West Ham United to make it more appealing to the masses, which has included a change in the badge which a large percentage of fans were vocally against. Most importantly, though, there has been zero investment in the squad, the likes of which fans were promised at the back end of last season. 'We're moving into a world class facility, and we want a world class squad to go along with it' was the jist of the promise. World class facility we can tick off the checklist, but world class squad is about as far as you can get for a description of the players on the pitch at the moment. We've already discussed the marquee signing in the summer, and the way in which the club goes about its dealings is absurd, tweeting news as and when it happens regarding players like Lacazette, Batshuayi, and Bacca, and then being surprised when they turn us down because they know how much we're offering other players is frankly amateurish. I have no issues with keeping fans in touch with the club, but a line has to be drawn, and West Ham haven't found it yet.
There are plenty of other qualms that I currently have with the football club I have loved since I can remember, but so much of it is on a downward slope at the moment, and something needs to be done about it before we get relegated to the Championship with a squad of overpaid underachievers. What's going on at the moment is not pretty, but it sure as hell is spectacularly West Ham.
Was Dimitri Payet wrong to handle his unhappiness with the club in this way? Yes. Can I blame him? Absolutely not. Who can/should we be pointing fingers at? The board. Get on board with the players on the pitch and the results will come. Hammer the board off the pitch, and eventually they'll have to do something about it.
COYI
P.S. Thanks to my Auntie Helen for making me a West Ham fan. You taught me early not to expect too much, which has helped put this season in perspective.
