Euphoric, a little bedraggled, flashing around his rock star’s poetic licence (he is after all still a guitar player in the progressive metal band Rawbau) Slaven Bilic just about got away with describing beating Manchester City at the Etihad last weekend as like walking into “a pub full of girls”. It may, however, be worth taking a deep breath before describing his feelings if results once again fall Bilic’s way on Saturday.
Another defeat for City at Tottenham Hotspur combined with a win for West Ham United at home to Norwich City could leave the Hammers top of the league for the first time since August 2005, and for the first time this deep into the season since Trevor Brooking was in the team. Like Bilic’s all-female pub of the imagination, this is in itself a slightly improbable scenario given West Ham have also lost to Bournemouth and Leicester City at home, added 12 new players over the summer and spent the second half of last season displaying all the raw competitive zeal of a house brick.
These are changing times though and once again Bilic appears to have arrived at Upton Park at both the start and the end of something. The victories at Liverpool, Arsenal and City were brilliantly executed by a team set up to play at speed on the break. But they also chimed with the aspirational qualities of this mid-gentrification West Ham, a club facing perhaps the most profound change of gear in its professional history in the next few years.
On Thursday Bilic was able to play down the likelihood Andy Carroll would be fit to play much of a part against Norwich this weekend. “Andy can’t be doing more in training,” Bilic said “He is working so hard … but after seven months, these things take time.” Carroll is of course still West Ham’s record signing, as Bilic himself once was, having joined from Karlsruher in 1995 for £1.3m. If he is unlikely to be rushed back this is in part because Bilic currently has at his disposal four of West Ham’s all-time most expensive signings.
This is not just the costliest squad in the club’s history, but arguably one with even more depth than the last really upwardly mobile West Ham of the early Harry Redknapp years, when some energetic transfer activity, buttressed by Frank Lampard and Rio Ferdinand, led to a fifth-placed Premier League finish in 1999.
Bilic was long gone by then. Indeed there has been a degree of myth-making about his time at the club as a player, a spell of 18 months, 54 games and one runner-up spot to Julian Dicks as Hammer of the Year that has led to him being described now and then as “a club legend”. And yet Bilic’s time at West Ham was undeniably intriguing, an echo of the present perhaps with its rash of bolt-on overseas stars: Florin Raducioiu, Hugo Porfírio and the great Paulo Futre, who played nine games before abruptly retiring.
Bilic the player was popular as much for his obvious charisma and the fact he seemed to represent something progressive and forward-looking. As perhaps he does now as the club counts down to signing off on the Boleyn Ground and a leap into the long-lease unknown. The manager is still a very potent figure at a club that has only ever had 15 of them. If Bilic feels reassuringly West Ham, there is also something reassuringly personable about him, not to mention at times reassuringly chaotic.
If the meat-and-potatoes stability of the Sam Allardyce years offended the West Ham sensibilities, the onset of Bilicism has at the very least been eventful. So far the season has brought six red cards, one drawn match in 13, and 34 players used across three competitions. The positives through this have been obvious enough. Mark Noble is perfectly cast as West Ham captain. Winston Reid and James Tomkins have been rugged in defence. The new signings have largely been hits, most obviously Dimitri Payet, who plays a slightly different role but has already stirred memories of Carlos Tevez with his swagger and his upright, muscular creative style. “He is special,” Bilic said this week. “This is why we signed him.”
Of course, nobody realistically expects West Ham to keep this up without a hitch. The Bilic bounce is based to a degree on the fact their season started in early July, giving them a running start on the rest. Other teams will now be forewarned of that pacey, counterattacking style away from home, of Payet’s influence, and of some possible weaknesses behind the first choice full-backs when West Ham attack in numbers at home. Plus of course Allardyce’s team were also fourth at Christmas last year before packing up for summer five months early.
If this season feels different then this is, after all, a rare moment in the club’s history. For now at least this Stratford-bound West Ham, with a ground to fill and a brand to sell, seem to have found a manager with just the right amount of homespun pizzazz.
