West Ham would be crazy to sack Slaven Bilic now
West Ham have won one game from their first five in the Premier League. Now Slaven Bilic could soon be heading for the sack.
West Ham United have had a surprisingly poor start to the season, with just one win from their first five games. Slaven Bilic was set for a new contract this year, but is now inching towards the sack instead, reports The Sun.
The Hammers were hoping to push on this season after a seventh place finish in the last campaign. West Ham exceeded expectations and, thus, set the precedent for this season. Set the bar high. Bilic received a lot of praise for that. Conversely, now he’s feeling the heat.
A 4-2 defeat to West Brom at the weekend was particularly hard to take. The Hammers didn’t just lose, they were humiliated in the first half. The Baggies, a team who had scored just two goals this season, were 3-0 up at half time. Eleven minutes into the second half they were 4-0 up.
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The Hammers fans have rightly come in for criticism recently for fighting in the crowd at home games. But if the players had that same fight they might not be in the position they are now. If conceding four to West Brom wasn’t enough, that was on the back of a loss by the same score to Watford the week before.
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That game showed some of the problems at West Ham right now. Dimitri Payet made an assist with a wonderful rabona cross for Michail Antonio to score. But the tricks and flicks were out well before then. It was unacceptable.
This is West Ham, not Barcelona or Real Madrid. And the game was only 1-0 at the time, not 4-0. The Hammers players were way too over confident. The reason they performed so well last season was because of the unity and organization. Sprinkled with a bit of Payet magic.
Not everybody in the team trying to be Harry Houdini. Leave that to Payet. The rest are getting away from what made them successful last season. Bilic has to take the blame, too. He is the leader, after all. But to insinuate the Croatian could soon be sacked is crazy.
The Hammers board might need to look at themselves first. Bilic talked about the club needing to splash out on a top quality striker in the summer. The board failed on all of their initial targets and eventually had to settle for Andre Ayew and Simone Zaza.
Ayew was unfortunate to pick up an opening day injury. Whilst Zaza has done nothing so far. How far down the transfer list were those names? How many players did the board fail to sign that Bilic wanted before Ayew and Zaza became genuine targets?
West Ham had no major signings outside of those two. No players that changed the face of the starting XI. And now you see the consequences of that. A lack of competition. A lack of fight. Motivation, even.
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Bilic has to do what he can now with the squad he has. There’s no getting away from that. But not all of the blame should be on his doorstep. To sack him, after what he did last season, would just be panicking.
Bilic has a lot of work ahead of him, but the problem at West Ham is not the manager.