High Fidelity

Top Five Most Unjust Premier League Sackings

1. Jose Mourinho, Chelsea 2004 - 2007
2. Bobby Robson, Newcastle 1999 - 2004
3. Dave Jones, Southampton 1997 - 2000
4. Martin Jol, Tottenham 2004 - 2007
5. Ron Atkinson, Sheffield Wednesday 1997 - 1998

After the last two weeks’ events you can potentially add Chris Hughton and Sam Allardyce to that list. After the longest start to a season without a sacking for 15 years, normal irrational service has been resumed.

As Swiss Toni might say, sacking a manager is very much like breaking up with a beautiful woman. In Chris Hughton’s case it seems that Mike Ashley just couldn’t commit, got bored and traded him in for a “more experienced” model. Blackburn’s Venky’s Group fell into that age-old trap of thinking you can do better when in fact you’re probably punching above your weight. As for Gold and Sullivan’s fidelity to Avram? Well, they do say love is blind.

Fat Sam has been strongly linked with West Ham this week. This may of course be no more than a journalist sitting at his desk with a list of unemployed managers and vacancies, putting two and two together. It certainly would have been unthinkable at the start of the season, but in the managerial merry-go-round of the Premier League stranger things have happened.

The reaction of most supporters so far is predictably hostile. The idea of having to cheer on El-Hadji Diouf as he impedes a goalkeeper from a set-piece is unlikely to inspire many to renew their season ticket. The image of Fat Sam dancing on the pitch at the end of the 2002/03 season as we were relegated still angers and disturbs me in equal measure. The obvious objection of most fans is of course his direct style of play.

However, football is not just about the 90 minutes a week you spend watching a game. It is also about the high of victory or the low of defeat that stays with you well into your working week. I sorely miss the former and believe that Fat Sam would bring with him a winning mentality, offering us our best chance of survival. Even those fans opposed to his appointment will accept this. This raises the question then of whether a more direct style of play is a price worth paying for survival.

One way to look at it is to ask Arsenal fans whether they would hand back the trophies won under George Graham in lieu of more free-flowing football. Or Chelsea fans under Jose Mourinho. I think you can guess the answer. Fat Sam was ridiculed (on this site amongst others) for his comments about managing Real Madrid or Inter Milan when he suggested that it “wouldn’t be a problem”. Perhaps there is a serious point here though. I chose to jump on the bandwagon and make fun of this seemingly deluded arrogance, but in context was he not simply saying that he could adapt his style as necessary. If so, then maybe there is a role for him at West Ham.

Some of the comments made by fans on various sites this week have been positively vitriolic, talking about him as if here were some kind of sub-species, solely responsible for the death of the “beautiful game” (a phrase apt for describing Brazil and 1970s Holland but not much else). A counterpoint to this is surely that he is just a man who has made the best out of working with limited resources in a league where wealth is concentrated amongst a small number of clubs who are not interested in english managers anyway.

I wonder if it’s time to take our heads out of our “playing football the right way” arses and accept that we, like any other club, have to cut our cloth accordingly. Avram may have got the players passing the ball to feet but as soon as this fails to materialise into a serious attack, as it invariably does, the players lose patience and lump the ball up to Piquionne’s head anyway. So what have we got to lose?

As Leeds and Brian Clough demonstrated so succinctly in the seventies, some managers and clubs are simply incompatible. Although I would personally welcome Fat Sam to Upton Park (and have said so previously http://bit.ly/eHcLZm), I know that a significant section of the fans would not, and I am not sure I can bear any more negative vibes in a crowd that boos Luis Boa Morte as he leaves the pitch having run himself ragged for an hour.

I imagine that this will all prove academic as I do not believe he would be interested in the position anyway. If there were one sure-fire way to relive the ingratitude he experienced at Newcastle, it would be to come to another club where the fans put a certain style of football ahead of endeavour and success. I suspect the pull of foreign climes may be more tempting. Unrequited love, eh. Now that really hurts.