For the second season in succession West Ham United host Swansea City on a Saturday afternoon in spring but while some things stay the same others most definitely change. On that May day last year, Slaven Bilic’s men welcomed their opponents to Upton Park with realistic hopes of qualifying for the Champions League – now they face them at the London Stadium desperately hoping to halt a slide towards the Championship.
The story of how West Ham have sunk so low in the space of 11 months is a long and complicated one involving poor transfer dealings, injuries, a loss of confidence, a loss of a star player and – despite what the club’s vice-chairman, Karren Brady, insisted earlier in the season – a less-than-successful “stadium migration”. An internal inquest is sure to follow but all that matters now is keeping the club up, and for that to happen victory over Swansea on Saturday afternoon is an absolute must.
West Ham are 15th, three places and five points ahead of Paul Clement’s side following a run of five successive defeats. Suffer another and the London club will be within just one more reverse of the relegation zone and well and truly in the midst of one of those collapses that can be impossible to stop.
That is certainly the fear for Bilic and it will not have escaped his attention that his future is the subject of speculation, with rumours doing the rounds that the Croat will be sacked on the spot should the worst happen for West Ham this weekend. That would be somewhat harsh given Bilic’s achievements last season – leading the team to seventh with 62 points, their highest ever Premier League total – but such is life for managers in English football these days. It is sink or swim, and Bilic has barely got his head above water right now.
He was left deeply disappointed by his side’s 3-0 loss at Arsenal on Wednesday, claiming those in white shirts “crumbled” after conceding Mesut Özil’s opening goal at the Emirates Stadium. The two that followed, from Theo Walcott and Olivier Giroud, also made it 57 goals conceded in 31 matches this season, leaving West Ham with the third-worst defensive record in the division, worse even than Sunderland.
“We are conceding way too many goals,” said Bilic. “We either get a clean sheet or we concede more than two goals, or even three. We can talk about individual mistakes, but if you have to score more than three goals to get something then you can’t expect to.
“We can find excuses, but it doesn’t matter. You are always going to find excuses but we are conceding too many and we are working on that. We are talking, analysing, changing little things.”
It can be argued that change lies at the heart of West Ham’s problems – the change of stadium and then those to a team who were largely settled and subsequently thrived during the previous campaign.
This time around numerous players have been deployed in a variety of formations, with Bilic having switched from a four- to a three-man defence in order to remedy their problems at the back. Neither has done the trick, with the arrival in January of José Fonte not having had the desired effect either. Little wonder Bilic has said any further changes he makes for the visit of Swansea will not be radical.
Instead this is a time for players who have underperformed for close to two months to stand up and be counted, and for all his criticism of how they performed in midweek, Bilic feels sure they have the capacity to do so. “If you are asking me if they care, of course they care,” he said.
“This is not a question of qualifying for Europe, or whether or not we finish in the top 10. We care about those things, but this is a very serious situation. Do my players care as much as me? I think they do.”
Michail Antonio and Andy Carroll should be fit enough to feature on Saturday having left the pitch against Arsenal due to illness and injury respectively, and that is somewhat crucial for West Ham given they are two of their three top scorers this season with nine and seven leagues goals respectively.
The visitors’ own top-scorer, Fernando Llorente, is a doubt due to an ankle injury, but it should be remembered that when Swansea travelled to Upton Park last year their then manager, Francesco Guidolin, made six changes. Few gave them a prayer of beating opponents who had gone 10-games unbeaten and had the two Manchester clubs in their sights. In the end, Swansea won 4-1. A repeat is unthinkable for West Ham and their increasingly beleaguered manager.
