The Blues are still blue

Heissenberg: Chris Scull respected my anonymity but did share this artist's impression

Much ado right now about Jose Mourinho’s reaction to Wednesday’s 0-0 draw at Stamford Bridge. I have taken his comments about timewasting and negative football as a compliment but, judging by the reaction of others, I may have misunderstood.

Sam Allardyce’s response was worthy of his Twitter parody. When asked about his reaction to Mourinho’s comments he replied: “I really don’t give a shite.” After years of nice-but-not-very-effective managers, I still find Allardyce’s abrupt manner refreshing. A far cry from Gianfranco Zola smiling throughout an interview following yet another defeat.

Allardici will be hoping that a big impact from new signings Marco Borriello and Antonio Nocerino will reaffirm his credentials as a big player on the European stage. My fear is that they will take time to acclimatise to the Premier League. Time is something we don’t have. There are four winnable matches in February before a final run-in featuring Man City, Arsenal, Man Utd, Everton, Spurs, amongst others.

Tony Cottee has argued that the signing of a homegrown player who could hit the ground running, such as Ross McCormack, should have been prioritised. I know this because I had the pleasure of taking part in this week's Knees Up Mother Brown podcast, as did TC. Many thanks to Chris Scull and James Longman for having me. Chris and James are really talented and if you don’t already listen to the show I recommend that you do.

I am sorry that I couldn’t offer more positive predictions during the pod. I hope to be proved wrong. 

Negativity, eh? What would Jose say.

Song of the week: Belle and Sebastian

Ignoreland

Insert your own caption

Over to you. Over to those of you who can still see a way out of this mess. I’ve got nothing. The 3-1 defeat to Newcastle United on Saturday hammered home all my worst fears: the majority of our players are average; we don’t have a goalscorer; we cannot retain possession; our few genuinely quality players are not bothered.

Sam Allardyce (and the board) must take responsibility for assembling a group of very ordinary players. I’ve read Moneyball. I get how Sam wanted it to end. He got it wrong.

Joey O’Brien, George McCartney, Matt Taylor, James Collins, Razvan Rat, Joe Cole, Kevin Nolan, Matt Jarvis, Carlton Cole. You can carry three – maybe at a push, four – of those players and survive in this division. But our team is riddled with them.

At the fans forum in December I asked Allardyce about the setup of our scouting network, questioning in particular why we had wasted the summer chasing Romelu Lukaku, a player who is clearly too good  for us. Allardyce dismissed my question, claiming that Lukaku was close to signing, but opted instead to join Everton, having been persuaded to do so by his friend Kevin Mirallas. Nothing to do with wanting to play for a team likely to challenge for Champions League football and with a rather different footballing philosophy to yours then, Sam?

Exactly the same thing has happened this transfer window. We have courted Monaco’s Lacina Traore and, guess what, he would also rather play for Everton.  We tried to sign John Heitinga – yes the guy who played in the World Cup final. But funnily enough, he prefers the idea of playing for Roma – yes the team second in Serie A.

So while David Sullivan and Allardyce chase their pipe dreams, we are left with Andy Carroll, Carlton Cole and Modibo Maiga as our attacking options, and a rotating defence which yesterday included Roger Johnson (he of the lower leagues) and left-footed Matt Taylor at right back.

Maiga is not a bad player but he cannot play the role that Allardyce’s one-dimensional system demands of him. Cole just isn’t very good and never really has been. He was a free agent in the summer. Nobody signed him.

Carroll pockets £80,000 a week while leading a social life that would make a student during freshers week look square. He made his Premier League debut in 2006 and since then has scored 28 goals in this division. Our hopes now rest on his shoulders.

The transfer window offered false hope. We all know that the chances of doing any good business at this time of year are minimal. Far from the focus being on who will join, it’s now about who will leave. Ravel Morrison and Mohamed Diame have both been tapped up by Fulham. It shows in their performances. These are two players who have the ability to turn our fortunes around, but just aren’t interested. Funny how all the fans’ criticism sits solely at Allardyce’s feet.

That’s how fans behave. The manager is the scapegoat while the sun shines out of every player’s arse. Slaven Bilic made some 50 appearances for us before sulking his way to a big payday at Everton. Still a large section of fans call for his return as manager. Why are so many players spoilt brats? Because they can get away with it.

When David Gold and Sullivan joined we were told about a five-year plan. That implies a strategy. How I would love to see that paper. What exactly was the plan – buy British? Bring back ex players? Court world-class players we’ve no chance of signing? Blow the transfer budget on an injury-prone striker devoid of self discipline? Get James Collins to hit aimless 60-yard “passes”.

And don’t get me started on our beloved Academy. Why spend millions of pounds a year running it then employ a manager whose only use of youth players is as cannon fodder in the cups. Allardyce would prefer to stick square pegs in round holes (see poor Matt Taylor’s woeful performance at right back yesterday) than nurture someone like Leo Chambers who can play in that position but who is instead left on the bench.

Some clubs build their squads through a combination of nurturing young talent and making smart good-value signings from foreign leagues. We do neither. We amass average players with a few good ones who soon lose their motivation. Someone really should take the blame.

This is the hardest pro-Sam Allardyce blog I've ever had to write ...

... and I’ve written a few. Prior to Christmas I was arguing solely with those who never wanted Sam as manager. Four matches and one solitary point later, many of those who shared my support of the big man say enough is enough.

I sympathise. The only match of the four I attended was the 3-3 draw with West Bromich Albion. To see the team throw away the lead not once but twice was not what I signed up to as a supporter of Allardyce. Life under him was supposed to be about killing the game. If I’d wanted to watch such lily-livered defending I would have given my backing to Avram.

There was something incredibly spineless about the players wilting as West Brom walked their way through them within moments of us retaking the lead. Turning a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 victory could have been the spur for another great escape. Surrendering the lead once again felt like waving a white flag. The Fulham match compounded that feeling of hopelessness.

Allardyce’s mistakes have been plentiful.

His persistence with Kevin Nolan is frustrating because his reasons for doing so are so transparent. A refusal to drop a player he has managed since 1999 is a refusal to break his strongest link to the rest of the team. Nolan represents the manager on the pitch and to leave his captain on the bench would be for Allardyce to demote himself.

Sadly, Nolan has not been able to cut it in the Premier League. He deserves praise for his goals and leadership in the Championship but in the top flight fans have witnessed a player out of his depth. On Saturday’s Match of the Day, Alan Hansen decided to put together a montage to demonstrate Nolan’s effectiveness. It was a bizarre piece of analysis which included Nolan missing the opportunity to make a straightforward pass. Hansen’s point seemed to be that at least he was there. A fitting epitaph perhaps: Kevin Nolan – he was just sort of there.

Another flaw of Allardyce’s is his preference for putting square pegs in round holes rather than dropping the supposedly better players. This season Mohamed Diame has got lost on the right of midfield, George McCartney and Joey O’Brien have been left exposed in the centre of defence, while numerous games have been played without a striker.

Why? Because a significant number of the first-team squad – Elliot Lee, Pelly Ruddock, Leo Chambers, George Moncur, Dan Potts, Mladen Petric (before he was released) – are not deemed good enough to start a Premier League match even when the squad is so blighted by injuries. That’s a hell of a lot of players to carry in the squad for no discernible purpose.

Don’t have faith in the youngsters, Sam? Then don’t keep them on the payroll.

And I haven’t even mentioned the massive balls up that was blowing the entire transfer budget on an injury-prone striker and another player who should have been a back-up for the aforementioned striker, but wasn’t.

So why, then, am I part of the 44% (according to a KUMB poll at the time of writing) who believe sacking Allardyce would be the wrong thing to do? In short, because I think he will sort it out.

With even just half of the injured players – Andy Carroll, Ravel Morrison, Winston Reid, James Collins, James Tomkins – fit again and with a couple of new signings, we will be a much better team, superior to most of the bottom-half clubs. We were poorly prepared for this spate of injuries but even with a starting XI barely worthy of the Premier League, we are still picking up points and being only narrowly beaten.

There are still 18 games and 54 points to play for.

Many people are pointing to the upturn in fortune of teams that have changed their manager – Fulham, Sunderland, Crystal Palace, West Brom. In the short term, they have had a bounce, as is often the case, but that’s very different to being able to sustain that form over the rest of the season. On Wednesday, Sunderland and Crystal Palace both failed to win their home matches against Aston Villa and Norwich – the sort of results that in West Ham’s case would add to the number of fans calling for Sam’s head.

If only because of the large number of teams that have pressed the panic button, it is inevitable that one, two or even all three of the relegated teams will be clubs that have changed managers. Sacking the boss is not the panacea that Vincent Tan would have you believe.

Unless you have a genuinely excellent alternative lined up – which we don’t – then there’s much to be said for sticking with a man who in nine Premier League seasons has never been relegated, despite having managed the sort of clubs prone to the drop.

His success is not down to good luck in the same way our poor season to date has not been down to bad luck. Bad decisions have been made, but the worst one of all would be to ditch a manager who in his first two seasons in charge turned the fortunes of this club on its head. It’s not about loyalty, it’s about putting faith in the man with the expertise to clear up the mess he's made.