West Ham United’s owners David Sullivan and David Gold met with Sam Allardyce on Tuesday this week; subsequently making little secret of the fact that they will take ten days to decide whether the Hammers’ manager will remain in his post. It is unusual for the fate of a high-profile football figure to be left so publicly hanging in the balance. In reality, though, with the season over, this scenario will be replicated in boardrooms across the country. And it isn’t only the game’s powerbrokers that face the prospect of making choices which will have enormous ramifications on the future of clubs and individuals alike.
Sullivan and Gold’s impending ruling on Allardyce’s Upton Park tenure is afforded extra complexity by West Ham’s impending move to play in the Olympic Stadium. Already hampered by a reported £75m debt, the east London outfit can ill afford to drop out of the cash rich Premier League in advance of their switch to Stratford in 2016.
The argument in favour of continuing with Allardyce’s cantankerous regime is simple. The 59 year-old offers as close to a guarantee as is possible that, under his charge, the Hammers will keep hold of their prized top-flight status. But, the supporters, who continue to fill Upton Park every other week, want more than pragmatism for their money.
Terrace discontent reached its height in late March, when the home faithful booed their team from the field after a 2-1 win over Hull City. That outward display of dissatisfaction, coming in the wake of an important home victory, was more troubling than any of the unrest that followed January’s cup maulings at the hands of Nottingham Forest and Manchester City.
This is all familiar ground for Allardyce. As long ago as March 2012, during the Midlander’s first term in charge of the club, a 2-0 win at Peterborough United wasn’t enough to mollify 5,000 travelling Hammers fans. The three points won at London Road substantiated West Ham’s third place position in the Championship table, – they eventually won promotion through the play-offs – but the team’s followers were sufficiently unimpressed by what they saw to break into repeated choruses of ‘West Ham United, we play on the floor’.
The manager responded in typically belligerent fashion;
‘I’m sick of all that rubbish. It just keeps rearing its head. I look at the facts and the facts are that we outplayed and outpassed all the six teams we have played recently’.
Two years on, and Allardyce is still fighting his corner. Discussing that victory over Hull the former Bolton Wanderers boss said;
‘We’ve played 31 games and have 34 points. We’ve taken ourselves above Hull now. When we look at the league table, tonight’s performance hardly matters. It’s just about the three points and the victory. Nothing can be taken for granted in this game’.
After finishing the season with a limp display in losing 2-0 at Manchester City, Allardyce focused on his side having won 7 of their final fifteen league matches (although they lost 5 of the last six) and a record of 14 Premier League clean sheets over the campaign. Judged across his three year spell at Upton Park, there can be no disputing that Allardyce has fulfilled the remit asked of him. He took the club out of the Championship at the first time of asking and has, relatively comfortably, kept them in the top flight since.
There are, however, very few sets of football supporters yearning to come back year after year to watch a team that is happy to scuff, fight and punt its way to mid-table security. Allardyce’s reputation for dour football is perhaps a little overdone. The latter editions of his formerly unlovable Bolton teams, featuring Jay Jay Okocha and Youri Djorkaeff produced some captivating stuff. There has been little, though, to suggest that such a transformation is imminent in the East End.
It is, in these times of escalating ticket prices, the right of the paying punter to demand more for their cash than a side content to sacrifice any daring or adventure for the humdrum of survival.
Messrs Sullivan and Gold are undoubtedly confronted by a tough predicament. They know that second-tier action will not fill 54,000 seats at their new stadium. More pertinently, though, their current manager’s brand of football is unquestionably on the verge of driving away plenty of the 35,000 folk who traipse to the Boleyn Ground on match days.
Architects of the club’s move away from its home of 110 years, West Ham’s owners know that progress isn’t achieved by standing still. It is for that reason that Allardyce is unlikely to be in the Hammers dugout come August. Nevertheless, a strong past body of work will ensure that the Dudley born boss, if he is to be dismissed from his current job, will not be short of offers elsewhere.
Allardyce’s plight will act as a warning to others in his profession. If a man who has led a side to promotion, and through two ensuing Premier League seasons largely free of trouble can be shown the door, what hope the rest? That is why one of the most important calls any aspiring manager has to make, is that of when to cut his losses and run. Year upon year of fighting the odds only earns so much credit in the eyes of the people responsible for recruitment higher up the ladder.
Lee Clark will know better than most what a harsh line of work he is in. The Geordie announced himself to be ‘perplexed’ when, in February 2012, he was shown the door after over three years in charge at Huddersfield Town. The chief cause of the ex-Newcastle United midfielder’s confusion was that his sacking came off the back of losing only three league matches of the previous 55 he had overseen – the Terriers were undefeated in the first forty-three of those games.
Notwithstanding his apparently stellar record, Clark’s then chairman Dean Hoyle – and, it should be noted, a fair proportion of the club’s fans – felt that Huddersfield’s chances of promotion would be better served with a new man at the helm. Three months after the change, Simon Grayson steered the Yorkshire outfit into the Championship.
Clark went on to take charge at Birmingham City in the summer of 2012. A mediocre first season at St Andrew’s was followed this year by an almighty fight to keep the Blues from dropping into the third-tier of English football, just three years after they were a Premier League team. A ten match unbeaten run between November 9th and New Year’s Day, provided hope that Birmingham’s fortunes might be on the rise. Clark, though, soon saw loanees Kyle Bartley, Jesse Lingard and Dan Burn – all integral to that prosperous sequence of results – return to their respective parent clubs.
Unable to battle the odds ad prevailing background chaos any longer, Clark couldn’t arrest a downward slide that only ended when Paul Caddis’s injury time goal at Bolton Wanderers secured the Blues’ safety in the season’s final minutes. The 41 year-old boss, was last seen sprinting across the Reebok Stadium’s turf to celebrate with his side’s exultant supporters.
With no sign of any immediate resolution to the ownership and financial strife that is bedevilling the Blues, it would be astonishing if Clark isn’t pondering on whether his career prospects will be aided by taking himself out of this particular firing line. There is surely little to gain by going through another campaign that promises nothing other than more of the same.
The situation isn’t quite so grave at the second city’s other club, Aston Villa. That will not stop Paul Lambert experiencing similar emotions to Clark. A manager with a reputation on a rapid upward trajectory when he was lured to Villa Park, after three ultra-productive years at Norwich City, Lambert’s stock is now in steady decline. The Scot hasn’t been dealt an easy hand across his two seasons with the 1982 European Champions, but he has made mistakes along the way. The former Celtic player’s recruits have been more miss than hit, and there has been a lack of any clear plan towards the team’s evolution.
Now, with his club in flux after owner Randy Lerner officially stated his intention to sell, Lambert will want assurances that he is able to go toe-to-toe with his peers in this summer’s transfer window. An inability to strengthen a flimsy squad would leave the 44 year-old with small hope of avoiding a third successive term with his team embroiled in a relegation scrap – a thought that might have Lambert eyeing self-preservation and a future away from the Midlands.
Another manager at a crunch point of his tenure, albeit for contrasting reasons to Lambert, is Southampton’s Mauricio Pochettino. The Argentine, unlike his Villa counterpart who, despite his own possible misgivings about staying in situ, faces a threat to his position from above, has his destiny in his own hands.
Since arriving at St Mary’s in January last year as an unknown and unwanted replacement for the popular Nigel Adkins, Pochettino has established himself as one of the Premier League’s foremost bosses. Indeed, the twenty times capped former Argentina defender has imposed his style on the Saints so swiftly and emphatically that he is high on Tottenham Hotspur’s list of potential replacements for the sacked Tim Sherwood.
If the call comes from White Hart Lane, it could conceivably be decisions made in the Southampton boardroom that influence the manager’s choice of whether to stay or go. If the south coast club can resist cashing in on their treasure trove of young stars, that would surely go a long way to persuading their progressive chief that he is in the right place to thrive.
Even with revenue of £78.5m earned this year from their 8th place finish and share of the Premier League’s television contact, Saints could be forgiven for allowing Adam Lallana, after his gargantuan contribution to the club’s climb back to prominence, to depart. Any money yielded from that potential deal, however, must be re-invested in the playing squad, not supplemented by further sales.
If Luke Shaw is then flogged to the highest bidder, a trickle through the exit door will hurriedly become a flood. Jay Rodriguez, when he is back in rude health, would be more prepared to listen to his many suitors if his present employers are selling off their prime assets. What then of Dejan Lovren, Morgan Schneiderlin and Victor Wanyama? It’s safe to assume that none of that trio would fancy sticking around at a club which has implicitly lowered its goals. The same goes for the manager.
It doesn’t have to play out that way. Aston Villa held onto Gareth Barry for an extra 12 months when, in 2009, the midfielder seemed bound for Liverpool. The Anfield outfit, meanwhile, last year ignored the sulking and agitating of the disagreeable but brilliant Luis Suarez to prevent their star striker scarpering elsewhere.
The answer to Pochettino’s anticipated dilemma – to stay or go – is inextricably linked, then, to Southampton’s newly hands-on owner Katharina Liebherr’s reaction when the big guns come hunting her club’s stockpile of talent.
Play-offs, cup finals and next month’s World Cup might be at the epicentre of the football universe right now but, away from the spotlight, decisions will be made that dictate much of the game’s narrative for a long time to come.
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