Sam Allardyce says he is looking forward to the 2014/15 season - just days after being told that his job was safe.
Despite a concerted campaign by some supporters to have the 59-year-old removed from his position recently, Allardyce emerged from this week's board meeting with his job intact - albeit with a brand new brief for the forthcoming campaign.Having ended a difficult 2013/14 season with the club's top-flight status intact, no longer will Premier League survival alone be sufficient for an increasingly-demanding board who have one eye on the impending move to the 54,000-capacity Olympic Stadium.
Now Allardyce has been instructed that anything less than a top ten finish, achieved with the style of football for which West Ham became famous when four strikers were still in fashion could result in his reign at the Boleyn coming to the sort of unglamorous end that ultimately awaits the vast majority of Premier and Football League managers these days.
To help achieve this target will be a new attacking coach and director of recruitment, which may indeed prove helpful in the long run but right now amount to nothing less than a clear indication of the board's lack of faith in Allardyce's attacking intent and his relationship with agent Mark Curtis, who now represents a number of players at West Ham including club captain Kevin Nolan.
Regardless of having essentially been told 'it's our way or the highway' by his bosses, Allardyce retained a positive tone when addressing the club's supporters via its website today. "I have had fruitful meetings with my employers and we are all in agreement that we want to move this great Club forward in a united way," he said.
"To that end we - the Board, the staff and the players - are unified in wanting to create an exciting team for next season, one that is going to be better than last season. We want to try and achieve at least what we did in the first year back in the Premier League, which was a top-ten finish.
"I sat down with the owners and Karren Brady to discuss many things and the outcome of that meeting is that we are all moving forward in a very positive manner. Things have been resolved satisfactorily on both sides - and we now look forward to a productive summer and, hopefully, a very successful season."
With view to working with his prospective new attacking coach, Allardyce added: "I'm enthusiastic about that idea. We all agreed that whoever comes in has to be qualified and of the right type to supplement our already highly qualified backroom staff, in whom I have complete confidence."
Meanwhile he was equally fervent in his view of a new recruitment ace. "I would say there is always the need to expand that section of an ambitious football club," he said. ""We need to compete in that area globally and being in charge of recruitment is a very specialised position these days."
You may read the full interview with Sam Allardyce here.
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