The swift and surprisingly popular appointment of Avram Grant’s successor has enabled West Ham fans to quickly move on from denial and anger to some kind of acceptance. Compared to the despair of 2003, relegation in 2011 seems rather cathartic. 2003 was the one that really hurt. My enduring memory? A fat bloke from Dudley dancing on a football pitch in Bolton, basking in the misery of my team’s misfortune.
Less than a year later Sam Allardyce was - in Hammers fans’ eyes - shooting Bambi by ridiculing Sir Trev’s appointment as the Football Association's director of football development.
“I do feel very strongly ... that he is not qualified to be doing the job”, raged the big man. “Like many managers I have spent a lot of time and money over the past five years getting qualified, only for the FA to appoint someone completely unqualified for one of their top jobs”.
He might as well have called Bobby Moore an overrated twat and been done with it.
In the following years, the only thing offensive about Allardyce has been his love of El Hadji Diouf and his cynical tactics. Encouraging players to obstruct opposing goalkeepers from set pieces is a particular favourite, allowing his supporters to bask in the glory of a deflected goal here, a tap-in there.
So what is it that makes 81% of us so positive about the appointment of this ex-Millwall player? Even those players that played under the great John Lyall - Alvin Martin, Tony Cottee, Julian Dicks, Frank McAvennie - could not wait to endorse him. Is it desperation or a sense of perspective?
The answer to that may determine Allardyce’s longevity in east London. One of the more telling fans’ comments came from Nick Frost (he of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame) who tweeted: “People saying West Ham won't play beautiful football under Big Sam. Grow up. We just got relegated.”
It is a popular sentiment and one that seems to suggest that Allardyce is being welcomed as a short-term solution, someone who can fix us before we return to the “West Ham way”. So long as he gets us promotion, few will grumble about direct football – and let’s not kid ourselves that we’re in for anything else. But would a couple of seasons of midtable mediocrity, or worse, in the Premier League not prompt the romantics among us to quickly yearn for a West Ham man? It will be hard for Hammers’ fans to avoid monitoring with interest Paolo Di Canio’s progress at Swindon Town. Or even Malky MacKay’s at Cardiff.
But what is Sam’s thinking in all of this? His interview with Talksport did not suggest a change in style, more a weariness at what he believes are misconceptions.
“I’ve had that long, boring tag with me for many years and it will always crop up for me now, unfortunately. If people cast their minds back to some of the teams I’ve managed, it’s a bit of a nonsense but I can’t relinquish that tag. I’m well aware of the type of football West Ham play, but have they played that recently? Realistically they haven’t, because they’ve just been relegated.”
Criticism for playing direct football does seem a tad unfair. David Moyes and Martin O’Neill are great managers but their teams are hardly easy on the eye, so why single out Sam? It is the cynicism of Allardyce’s teams - the reliance on set pieces, brute force, winding up the opposition - that we may yet come to loathe. Not that it will be a completely new experience. Craig Bellamy, anyone? Lee Bowyer? Neil Ruddock?
Relegation for West Ham in 2003, as in 2011, was never really about misfortune. It was about managerial incompetence. Even Allardyce’s harshest critics would not level that accusation at him. Guaranteed at least is that we finally have a manager who will motivate, organise and win football matches. This is why we are welcoming Fat Sam with open arms. Whether we learn to love him and he love us remains to be seen. For now we are dancing to Sam’s tune.
