All respect lost for Big Sam after ‘deluded fans’ rant!

After Sam Allardyce brought his sabbatical to a premature end to join Sunderland, many would have thought the majority of his time with the media would be spent explaining exactly how he’d keep, seemingly doomed, Sunderland in the Premier League. But instead, he’s spent a lot of the time firing insults at West Ham’s supporters.

Article by Tom Burford

He made it very clear in his first press conference that he was glad to be away from the club’s ‘moaning’, ‘deluded’ and ‘potty’ supporters and that he did a ‘bloody good job at West Ham’.

I like many of you have friends that don’t support West Ham and have been very complimentary of Sam’s achievements throughout his tenure, which I tended to agree with until last season.

The record books will tell you that he got us promoted at the first attempt, and kept us in the Premier League for three seasons, a lot of promoted teams would snatch your hands off for that record.

But stats don’t lie, as Sam is very clear to address at almost every press conference that he has ever given. So here are some for Sam who did a ‘bloody good job’ for us, as he’s such a big advocate for statistics.

• He has the 3rd worst win percentage of any manager in our history when leading the club in the top flight (30% - only beaten by Zola & Grant).

• The year we were promoted, we won less than half of our home games (11). Only one more than Portsmouth, who were relegated.

• His last 21 games provided only 16 points from a possible 63, scoring only 15 goals.

• After perusing the ‘Price of Football’ segment from BBC Sport this morning, I learned that last season fans of the club would have, on average, paid £24.80 per goal if they attended every game (2nd worst in the League).

All interesting points when taking into consideration this quote from the big man;

​“What do they think they will achieve – Champions League? Top Six?”

“I doubt they’ll come anywhere near that in the near future and it must be a big anxiety for the owners who need to fill 54,000 at the Olympic Stadium with entertaining and successful football next year. The fans won’t turn up if West Ham are playing fantasy football and losing 5-3 every week. They’ll soon be demanding a winning team & wanting to know why they are leaking goals.”

I have to reiterate that Sam’s last 21 games produced 3 wins, 15 goals and 11 defeats. Not to mention some of the worst football I have seen in my 25 years as a Hammer. Correct me if I’m wrong, but those stats show a team who played dreadful football winning only 14% of their last 21 games! Is that winning football? No it isn’t.

And this is why he’s struggled at big clubs. If he doesn’t believe now that we can’t achieve a top six place, they he sure as hell wouldn’t have when he was manager. If you can’t aspire to take your team onto greater things then you’re only going to be asked to manage teams in positions where you are comfortable, and for Sam that’s a relegation battle!

People have said it was a risky decision to part with a man who would ‘definitely have kept us up’ this year. But I would find it very difficult to put 100% trust in that theory when we only collected 15 points from our last 63 available.

Sides like West Ham and Newcastle should be aspiring to be one of those teams that are on the fringes of regular European football, if they just want to be happy with survival, thenwhat’s the point?

So for those who said ‘Be careful what you wish for!’ when we hired Slaven Bilic, come and see me at the end of the season, when not only have we stayed up, but have an outside squeak of the top 6!

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