swash wrote:Scaloni
The trouble is football has completely changed.
No manager now will be given the time to play good football but without getting results.
John Lyall would not have lasted half as long as he did in the modern day environment.
I'm afraid too many posters on here are stuck in the past
Surely you cannot deny football has changed, had it been the same John Lyall would have probably been sacked after relegation in 1978 and if he had survived could you imagine the abuse he would have on forums like this had they been around for not getting the best squad in the Division 2 promoted in 1978/9? Today he would have gone in those circumstances and look at what would have missed out on. The finances in football at clubs like ours allow very little time to build anything every week for years it has all about survival or promotion for us with money being the main focus not football. Years ago some well run clubs almost accepted relegation as an acceptable route to rebuild teams today you would probably be classed as an idiot for saying that. Now relegation is like a prison sentence and you need to escape ASAP, this is why we appointed BFS and anyone who thought we realistically had any other option is deluding themselves, if it turns out BFS couldn't get us up I doubt anyone would have. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and maybe we could have appointed a promising young manager but as with Pardew we might have had to accept that promotion might not happen for a couple of seasons, had we done that I doubt the fans would have turned up in numbers to see a side in transition losing as many as we won and therefore financially the club probably thought that route too much of a gamble rather than going with someone like BFS.
So many keep banging on about the likes of Norwich, Swansea and Southampton and the way they are achieving success but look where those clubs have been over the last few seasons and where the building started, we could do the same but how many of us would suffer for relegation and League One football to kick start it.
I don't like the fact BFS was appointed and if he fails to get us promoted then should feel he has failed but we really shouldn't assume that anyone else would have. I would happily go back to the days when someone like Lyall would be given time to do his job but those days are gone for a club in our position and I struggle to think what we could have been different this season by the board.
Football on the pitch stopped being enjoyable for me long before BFS turned up, with the exception of one season under Pardew not since Harry was manager can honestly say that going to the Boleyn Ground was not a good experience more often than not so let's not kid ourselves that BFS has come in and ruined it all. The main difference to me was in the past was fans had a different passion and the ability to entertain or even laugh at ourselves in times of struggle nowadays we rarely demonstrate any of that making the atmosphere somewhat different and in my opinion for the worse, I am not blaming supporters for this just trying to say football is different be it on the pitch, in the stands or in the boardroom and we kid ourselves if we think things were cherished in the past are really there in the game today especially at the top level.
At the end of the day maybe it is League One, administration and a clean slate that we need to get our so called West Ham back because even if we do go up I can only see the same arguments being on here next season that we have seen for over the last decade, so come on then who fancies Orient away in the League in a couple of years?
Sorry for boring all those who have read this all the way through but I think the problems at our run a lot deeper than what happened yesterday or even with promotion will not go away so needed to get off my chest.
West Ham United we are a special club and the atmosphere at the Boleyn Ground can really influence the results on the pitch sadly for some time it has been in negative way rather than a positive one, as fans I think we really need to accept whether we want to support West Ham United or a non descrpit Premier League team, if it is West Ham I think the atmosphere will return quickly but if it is the latter we might have to wait until a rich Arab rolls up to improve things.