It’s a simple thing, continuity, simply pressing on. West Ham have for too long switched master plans and chopped and changed strategies.
Do they want to be a top half club? Perhaps even top 8? Is the Champions League coming to East London really the goal even if muttered quietly? No one upstairs at the London Stadium seems to have decided. Their inability to grow the spines necessary to carry out a plan that would achieve any sort goal is ridiculous and this season that haphazard sort of management has come home to roost.
It is reflected in the squad. Their are too many players who are either playing similar positions with the same skills or players who are comfortable in their places knowing they’re not world-beaters and they are OK with that. More than anything that disturbs me.
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Ambition Is Key To Success
The poet Robert Browning says in his poem Andrea Del Sorto “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” That should be the defining nature of every person involved in sport. More is enough. Fight every single second of every single match for every last blade of grass on that pitch if you have to. If you lose you should be injured, bleeding, sweating and throwing up from exhaustion or you should have won. There is no in between. If you haven’t you’ve betrayed the supporters for whom football is so much more than simply a game.
Too many of West Ham’s players are happy with the status quo as opposed to trying to turn it on it’s head. They know the club typically lay outside the top-6/8 instead of killing themselves to break in. That blind acceptance of a mediocre fate trickles down from a management team that hasn’t been able to decide on a proper plan for West Ham seemingly since they bought the team.
David Gold and David Sullivan bought the club in 2010 and they have had as much failure as they have had success. The move to the London Stadium was a positive if imperfect one but it feels as if for every step forward West Ham take they always take one back. The purchase of Andy Carroll was followed by an inability to get him a true strike partner and then compounded by his hopelessness when it comes to fitness.
Will The Board Live Up To Promises?
It seems as if West Ham are constantly hamstrung by the clubs lack of consistency. They chop and change managers while not necessarily giving them the support to accomplish the goals set for them. Why would a top player want to play at a club like that? They see the man who is supposed to be their leader cut down at the knees.
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This summer Gold and Sullivan need to make a public declaration. Put it down in writing. All good companies have a statement of intent. West Ham should have one too. Date it and sign it so anyone who wants to know does know that a direction exists and is not only being chased down but reeled in. Football careers are short and fickle. Top players are ambitious and need to know that their time and lives and bodies aren’t being taken for granted. West Ham need the spine to show that they deserve those type of players.