There has been a lot of anger and a fair amount of gallows humour among West Ham fans at the choice of our old friend David Moyes to replace the sacked Slaven Bilic as manager.As far as Monsieur Salut can tell, Moyes has not yet announced that the Hammers are in a relegation scrap. Nor has he said the players he needs in January won’t be available to him. Why, he hasn’t even told anyone from LBC Radio she deserves a slap or apologised – yet – for being self-defeatingly dour, honest and ever-so-sure of his ability.And with supreme faith in their new man, the West Ham board has made the appointment for all of six months, ie to the end of the season. That’s the stuff!Earlier this week, the West Ham United fan site asked for reciprocal links with Salut! Sunderland, now established. I invited my contact there, Ade, to share anything his site did by way of covering Moyes. And here it is, with some mischief-making along the way drawn from other sources …
? David Moyes:
? Failed at Man Utd
? Failed at R Sociedad
? Took Sunderland down? Perfect for West Ham pic.twitter.com/P8W9DfG7aw
— The Football Pools (@footballpools) November 6, 2017
West Ham have officially confirmed that David Moyes will take over from Slaven Bilic till the end of the season. The Scottish gaffer has been given a six-month contract at the London Stadium.
It’s obvious that many West Ham fans won’t take well to this news, and you can’t blame them- Moyes’s last managerial assignment at Sunderland saw the Black Cats drop down to the Championship, and he’s effectively been hired by Messrs Sullivan and Gold to prevent that precise thing from happening.
After finishing 10th under Steve Bruce in the 2010-11 season, Sunderland had always flirted with relegation- the likes of Di Canio, Poyet, Allardyce and Advocaat all managed to keep them up before they finally went down under Moyes in 2016/17. Under him, they averaged 0.63 league points per game in 2016/17- Bilic was at 0.82 this season before being shown the door.
Once Sir Alex Ferguson’s hand picked successor at Manchester United on a six year contract, Moyes’s stocks has plummeted dramatically in the last few years after consecutive failures at Old Trafford, Anoeta and the Stadium of Light, and there’s a lot at stake for him personally in this assignment.
That is why it’s imperative that Moyes starts well. His first three fixtures are relatively winnable- Watford (A), Leicester (H) and former club Everton (A). That is followed by a tough run in the lead up to Christmas, with Man City away and Chelsea and Arsenal at home.
Should Moyes start badly, this could well spiral into the kind of poor run Sunderland found themselves in last season. The Black Cats’ last home win, curiously enough, was against Watford (under Moyes back in December 2016), and nearly one year later, they’re sitting at the bottom of the Championship table.
David Moyes the new West Ham manager. Let’s have a look at how things have gone for him since leaving Everton… pic.twitter.com/kD2sDqgLxN
— Paddy Power (@paddypower) November 7, 2017
What does this mean for new summer signing Javier Hernandez?
The Mexican has publicly gone on record previously to say that Moyes was one of the reasons for him leaving Old Trafford. In the season that Moyes managed United, Chicharito had only five Premier League starts.
Can the two work together and forge a successful partnership? Or will Chicha be sidelined and West Ham’s tactics revolve around long ball to Andy Carroll? Playing Hernandez on the wing is a waste, as Slaven Bilic has already discovered. He’s a quality marksman and on paper West Ham’s best striker, but at this moment looks ineffective in the system being employed by the Hammers.
Moyes was accused of making Sunderland a bit of an Everton Old Boys club in his time at the Stadium of Light- with Steven Pienaar, Victor Anichebe, Joleon Lescott, Darron Gibson and Bryan Oviedo all arriving during his tenure, but not having the desired impact. However in his favour, he was handicapped by a relatively small transfer budget, and he left without claiming compensation.
Some fans might not have him as their “ideal manager”, but we love the club more, and here is hoping he can do the job he was hired for. Could argue that West Ham have too much quality to be relegated, but once you go down, it can be tremendously difficult to come back up soon, as several clubs have discovered in the past.
And now some thoughts from Knees Up Mother Brown (KUMB) another West Ham fan site we’ve had good relations with in the past …
“I am genuinely stunned, on multiple levels” – WorcesterWHU, subscriber.
“It goes from bad to worse!” – Hindley Hammer
“So glad I retired the season ticket” – Pop Robson
“I’ll be as polite as I can. Mr Moyes, please take your incompetence elsewhere, you are not wanted here” –
Swash
“Another nail in the coffin” – wolf359
“What a ****ing worm to jump straight into the job barely hours before Bilic was told to leave after weaseling his way in gobbing off on telly telling us all he’s interested etc. He shouldn’t have said a ****ing thing. Moyes Out” – Colours never run
“Prove us wrong David and get us to 17th place. Good luck – you’ll need it” – Westbourne Bill
“Said that Sunderland were in a relegation battle before a ball was kicked – turned out to be spot on. Said that anyone he could bring in in January would not be the sort of players to get Sunderland out of the bottom three – again, spot on. Said that Sunderland couldn’t attract any decent players, essentially because they are Sunderland – three out of three there Dave. God only knows what he’s going to say about us” – wildkard
