If West Ham United win at White Hart Lane at lunchtime on Sunday – and they won there 3-0 last season – Sam Allardyce’s side would be two points behind Tottenham Hotspur, sitting in a very respectable eighth place. That would be a huge boon to a club whose season appears to have run out of oxygen despite the fact there are three months of it remaining. And playing on fumes is not what you need against a Spurs side whose players are energy-rich, reaping the benefits of Mauricio Pochettino’s fitness regime.
Yet, with one league win from their previous eight games, beating Tottenham would be out of character for West Ham right now. It is a club that seems to be on a downward spiral. The windowless, stuffy room in which Allardyce held his pre-match press conference, at their training ground in Chadwell Heath, lent a further cloying feel to a club which is finding it hard to breathe.
The Hammers lost in desultory fashion in the FA Cup last weekend, 4-0 at West Bromwich Albion, who have been fighting relegation all season. The apologies for that defeat, by Adrián, their goalkeeper, and David Gold, one of the co-chairmen, were not enough to assuage the anger of many supporters, and on Monday rumours were rife that Allardyce had been sacked.
With all the enthusiasm he could muster on Friday, which was not much, Allardyce did not respond to those stories, but the manager, whose contract runs out in the summer, did clarify his situation. “There have been no contract discussions. My contract will be talked about at the end of the season.” He should have said “talked about by everyone between now and the end of the season”, because with the sense of drift at the club, Allardyce’s future dominates the agenda.
Yet, despite what he says, there were talks this week between Allardyce, who was appointed in the summer of 2011, Gold and his co-chairman, David Sullivan. The lack of positive signals from the club’s owners is frightening. Waiting for your manager’s contract to run out before talking about renewing it is tantamount to putting an advert in the Barking and Dagenham Post, asking for people to apply for the job.
The negative feeling inside the club does not end with Allardyce’s increasingly fragile hold on his job. Andy Carroll was injured at Southampton two weeks ago. Gruesome pictures he posted this week on Instagram of his knee, post-operation, confirmed he is out for the rest of the season. Winston Reid, the centre-back, is out of contract in the summer and likely to leave, possibly for Tottenham.
Allardyce tried to sign Emmanuel Adebayor, the striker of last resort, as the transfer window was closing last month, but that deal with Tottenham fell through. Who have West Ham signed instead? Nenê, a Brazilian, 34 in the summer, who was out of contract with Al-Gharafa in Qatar. But he won’t be seen at White Hart Lane as he is not fit. Allardyce estimated he would be ready in “10 days to two weeks”.
Yet all this is par for the course for most clubs: speculation about the manager’s future, injuries, transfer dealings that do not meet expectations. Allardyce must wonder what he has done wrong. He took West Ham out of the Championship at the first attempt, in 2011-12, and his Premier League finishes have been 10th and 13th. Eighth place would be their best Premier League finish since they were fifth in 1999. Last summer’s signings, Diafra Sakho and Enner Valencia, have made positive contributions.
So, West Ham would appear to have it good under Allardyce, but, like Brentford and their treatment of their manager, Mark Warburton, the owners think the grass is greener on the other side. In West Ham’s case, that grass is the Olympic Stadium, which they will move into in the summer of next year. Making sure the club are in the Premier League in August 2016 is uppermost in the owners’ minds and yet Allardyce would be most people’s idea of the man custom-built to prevent West Ham from nosediving next season into the relegation zone.
James Tomkins, Reid’s partner in central defence, said on Friday: “It doesn’t faze us that Sam is out of contract, that’s out of our hands. Whoever takes charge of us next year, it doesn’t matter if it’s the manager or not … we don’t talk about it in the dressing room.”
Not the most reassuring words from one of his best players, but as Allardyce, he of the rhino-like hide, said: “I don’t read the praise or the criticism.” If West Ham lose on Sunday, that is a policy that will serve him extremely well.
