Sam Allardyce was right all along.
Last December, as he faced mounting criticism for his side’s disastrous start to the season, the embattled West Ham United manager told his critics the tide would turn as injured players returned to the line-up and communication with the club’s board of directors became clearer.
In other words, he would endeavour to keep the Hammers from a relegation fight until his squad was healthy and a plan for the next campaign was put in place.
If his message wasn’t all that well received it’s because, at the time, it seemed highly implausible, even fantastical.
Going into the Premier League’s jam-packed holiday fixture programme the East London outfit had recorded just a trio of wins, sat a point above the drop and were playing some of the most unsightly football imaginable.
Soccer Central podcast: SPORTSNET.CA’s Soccer Central podcast, hosted by John Molinaro and James Sharman, takes an in-depth look at the beautiful game and offers timely and thoughtful analysis on the sport’s biggest issues. To listen and subscribe to the podcast, CLICK HERE.
On Boxing Day, in the wake of a 3-1 defeat at home to Arsenal, bookies William Hill had West Ham 3/1 to go down while Bet Victor was offering 6/1 that Allardyce would be the division’s next manager to get the sack.
“I’m not saying (the sack) won’t happen,” he said at the time. “But we’re supportive in terms of trying to do something in January to help the players and try to bring back the injured players to get the squad back to where it was at the start of the season.”
He added: “We’re in a difficult time and a difficult period—I know why.”
It seems he did.
Without Stewart Downing, Andy Carroll, James Tomkins and Winston Reid available for selection, West Ham entered 2014 with their heads just above water. But as key players began to return the points started to accumulate.
A scoreless draw with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Jan. 29 was followed by a run of four wins on the trot, after which the spectre of relegation was rather less threatening.
But even after securing a respectable, 13th-place finish in the spring, Allardyce telephoned co-chairman David Sullivan to see if he’d be retained for the 2014-15 campaign—the final year of his contract.
The two met in person the following week, and by the end of May a new-look West Ham was beginning to take shape. On the 23rd Joe Cole, Jack Collison and George McCartney were released from the club, and five days later enigmatic forward Mauro Zarate was acquired from Velez Sarsfield.
If nothing else, the Zarate signing was symbolic of the stylistic changes in store at Upton Park. A shifty attacker with as much arrogance as ability, the 27-year-old led the Argentine top flight in scoring before signing off on the move, and his arrival signalled Allardyce’s break from the primitive, long-ball football that defined West Ham for much of the previous season.
That they paid nothing for Zarate (his release clause allowed him to leave Velez Sarsfield for free if a European club came calling) only justified the risk in taking a chance on a player who had previously burned bridges at Lazio and Inter Milan. And while he scored on his debut he quickly made rumblings about leaving, with Southampton and Malaga among his likely landing spots.
Nevertheless, the template had been set, and over the course of the summer Allardyce would spend just over £27 million to recruit left-back Aaron Cresswell, midfielder Cheikhou Kouyate and strikers Enner Valencia and Diafra Sakho. He also added right-back Carl Jenkinson and hard-tackling midfielder Alex Song to the mix on loan deals.
All six players featured in the Hammers’ 1-1 draw away to Sunderland on Saturday, just as they did in the impressive, 3-1 win over Swansea on Dec. 7 and the statement-making defeat of champions Manchester City in late October.
Song, in particular, has given West Ham the sort of midfield presence they haven’t enjoyed in years, and he’s bullish about what the future could hold for the club.
“The way West Ham are looking now, in the next five years they will be one of the best clubs in England,” he remarked after the City triumph.
Allardyce, meanwhile, has been able to get the best out of the Barcelona man by using him as the anchor of a midfield diamond. Kouyate and the inspirational Kevin Nolan operate in front of him, and converted playmaker Stewart Downing works just behind the pair of strikers.
A former winger, Downing still floats into the wide areas from time to time, but with Jenkinson and Cresswell providing the width in a rather narrower setup for an Allardyce side the 30-year-old has been allowed to evolve into something more effective than a runner and crosser of the ball.
His transformation has been Allardyce’s foremost masterstroke, and given the tactical shift and squad enhancements this Hammers side is almost unrecognizable from the one that flirted with relegation only a year ago.
“It’s always been about starting from a low ebb—which is what this club was in, a really bad place—cleaning it out, remodelling it internally from a football point of view and giving it the opportunity and platform for sustained success in the Premier League,” Allardyce remarked in an interview with Sky Sports earlier this month.
“Nobody knew more than me that if the first 10 games didn’t go well it would probably be the end.”
Instead, West Ham are setting up for long-term competitiveness that should only be helped by a 2016 switch to the Olympic Stadium. Allardyce will need a new contract if he’s to oversee the move from the Boleyn Ground—something he’s targeted as his “ultimate goal” with the club. And at this rate the new pact is mere formality.
Every explanation he offered for last season’s troubles proved correct, and he backed up his words with meaningful, even revolutionary, action.
He was right all along.
Jerrad Peters is a Winnipeg-based writer. Follow him on Twitter