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Opposites attract: Michael Laudrup is full of praise for Big Sam
Swansea boss Michael Laudrup respects Sam Allardyce's style of play ahead of Hammers clash
“I like managers and teams who are very clear about what they want. I always respect that. There is not one truth in football," says Swans boss
Michael Laudrup has revealed his admiration for the way Sam Allardyce sticks to his his principles in the cut-throat industry of management.
West Ham boss Allardyce is often associated with a direct style of play.
But stylish Laudrup believes the Hammers boss deserves respect for his beliefs on the game.
Laudrup said: “I like managers and teams who are very clear about what they want. I always respect that. There is not one truth in football.
“But there are some managers who say one thing and do another. Sam Allardyce is very honest about what he wants and what he asks from his players.
“You can see what he wants and they are a strong, physical side.”
Swansea face West Ham for the club’s third home game in a week and aim to be unbeaten following a win over Sunderland and a midweek Europa League draw against Russian outfit Kuban Krasnodar.
But Laudrup is wary of the Londoners on the road following their previous away-day success at Tottenham. He added: “We want a positive result on Sunday as West Ham are in ‘our league’ and we’re at home. It is a big chance to get points if we can.
“But it will be a tough one. They are strong and they showed that in the last game they played away at Tottenham.”
West Ham team news: No new injury concerns for Big Sam's Hammers
Andy Carroll is only a few weeks away from a return, but there are no fresh injury concerns ahead of Swansea clash
Big smile on Big Sam: No fresh injury concerns for West Ham Big smile on Big Sam: No fresh injury concerns for West Ham
Warren Little
West Ham manager Sam Allardyce will be buoyed by the fact that he has no fresh injury concerns ahead of this weekend's clash with Swansea.
James Collins (hamstring) and Alou Diarra (knee) are still missing, with Andy Carroll (heel) also absent.
It currently isn't clear whether Big Sam with give Carlton Cole a start or operate without a recognised striker for a third successive game.
Andy Carroll is still some way off of his return.
Reports had suggested the 24-year-old club-record signing could be back training with his West Ham team-mates following Sunday's Barclays Premier League trip to Swansea but Allardyce was quick to quash such rumours.
"The stories that Andy Carroll is returning to us this week are not true," he said.
"There is still a while to go there. He'll be back we hope in the next two to three weeks. Hopefully he can start full training when he does come back. It's always been a week-by-week assessment.
"He is frustrated of course and is desperate to be playing football again, it's what he loves doing most. I will only be too pleased to get him back in the squad."
Provisional squad: Jaaskelainen, Adrian, Demel, Rat, McCartney, O'Brien, Tomkins, Reid, Nolan, Diame, Collison, Lee, J Cole, Morrison, Jarvis, Downing, Taylor, Vaz Te, Maiga, Petric, C Cole.
Getting stuck in: Mark Noble reckons his performances deserve an England call-up
Backing: Allardyce reckons Noble deserves a place in the squad
Room for improvement: Allardyce says the Hammers must climb the table if his stars want to get noticed
West Ham boss Allardyce backs Noble for England World Cup spot
Sam Allardyce agrees with his midfielder Mark Noble that he can break into Roy Hodgson's England squad – and tipped him for a place on the plane to Brazil.
On Thursday Noble insisted he has a chance to be one of the England manager's midfielders for next summer's tournament.
He said: 'I believe I am good enough. I have seen the players we have had here who have been in the England set-up and I believe that if I made that step up, I would be able to mentally and physically cope with it.'
And Allardyce has backed his player, who is yet to win a cap for the senior team but has played for the Under 21s.
'I don't disagree that he has a chance of making it,' Allardyce said. 'I think he has to continue to perform at a consistent level, of course, between now and next summer.
'His performances will have to be consistently of the highest quality to attract the attention of Roy Hodgson.
'If he thinks he's in with a chance then he's put a huge amount of pressure on himself to make sure he performs at his highest level, which has always been very good for us.'
But the West Ham boss has told his team they must improve in the league if they want to stand any chance of being noticed.
He believes they are four points short of what they had targeted at this point in the season.
Asked if he thought West Ham players get overlooked by Hodgson, he replied: 'No I don't think so, if we'd been sitting here with 12 points instead of eight our players would be talked about a lot more.
'If you don't get the points the performances are quickly and easily forgotten.'
Michael Laudrup believes Sam Allardyce's honesty about his players makes his team stronger
MICHAEL LAUDRUP will not say he's a fan of Sam Allardyce - but he does have a sneaky admiration for his work at West Ham.
The Swansea boss, whose side face the Hammers at the Liberty Stadium tomorrow, said he was not surprised Big Sam had flourished since his return to the top flight.
He said: "It is not a question of admiration for what he does, but I do like managers and teams who are very clear about what they want.
"There is not one truth in football.
"Some might say the winner is always right, but when you are very clear about what you want, I always respect that.
"There are other managers and coaches who say one thing and do another one.
"But I think Sam Allardyce is very honest about what he wants, and what he asks from his players.
"You can see that and I think they are a very strong side."
“I think Sam Allardyce is very honest about what he wants, and what he asks from his players”
Swansea thumped West Ham at home last season but lost to an Andy Carroll goal at Upton Park as they failed to cope with Big Sam's direct approach.
Laudrup said: "We were perhaps fortunate in the home game because they made a mistake with a back pass for Michu to score the first goal - but even then they were very strong.
"Carroll is not playing this time, but they showed in their last away game at Tottenham that they can be a difficult team to play so it will be a tough game for us.
"West Ham are in 'our league' and we have to be strong at home especially "West Ham are in 'our league' and we have to be strong at home especially against those teams."
Swansea showed a meaner streak in beating Sunderland last week, and goalkeeper Michel Vorm says they need more of the same.
He said: "It is true we are a team that loves to entertain, but at the end it is about the points you take and not how many passes you make during a game."
No early return for injured West Ham striker Andy Carroll
West Ham manager Sam Allardyce has refuted claims England striker Andy Carroll will link up with the squad again as early as next week.
Carroll has yet to play this season due to a heel injury.
"The stories that Andy Carroll is returning to us this week are not true," Allardyce said. "He'll be back, we hope, in the next two to three weeks. Hopefully he can start full training when he does come back. It's always been a week-by-week assessment."
Swansea Away – a good time to play them?
Despite knocking in four goals against Sunderland in their last home league game, I get the sense that after their blistering start to the season, Swansea City are hitting the skids.
Their Thursday night showing against Kuban Krasnodar which saw their opposition grab a deserved late equaliser in their Europa league clash was disappointing in the extreme. Indeed, in the first half they might well have gone in at half time losing. To put that in context, this was Kuban’s first point in the competition. indeed their first goal.
It was a disappointing night for the Swans and I just have a sneaky feeling that we just might enjoy a second successive away win on Sunday afternoon.
There, that’ll put the mockers on it!
News on Carroll is not great, as we suspected. Earlier reports that he was “targeting the Aston Villa game” have indeed turned out to be the bull we knew they were. The latest mutterings speak of Carroll returning in 2-3 weeks, perhaps, and hopefully then resuming full training. If we see him before Christmas people, we will be doing well. I have a very, very bad Ashton-esque feeling about this player.
More Hammers embarrassment
David Sullivan and David GoldSo once again West Ham has found itself at the centre of a media storm. This is getting a bit too bloody embarrassing now, David and David!
West Ham fans were filmed verbally abusing Muslim supporters who were praying in the stadium at the match against Manchester City last week. And the press have taken, rightly or wrongly, quite a one sided view of things, with the club and fans coming across very negatively indeed.
There are a few points I want to discuss here. Firstly, did you know before this weekend that £5 tickets were offered to community groups to get the local community involved with the club? I personally was unaware of this and think that the club should have made it a much more clear that this was happening. I know that players often go and visit groups in the local area, but what I didn’t know was that they actually get offered cheaper tickets to matches. Now, normally I’d be all in favour of this and happy that the club are reaching out to locals but I don’t think it should have been offered for the Man City game.
Of course our fans who had paid full price for the match would be fuming that other people had been let in to this game for a fiver. It’s a Category A match, meaning that tickets would be at their most expensive – £52 in this case. I’m all for letting people who wouldn’t normally go to matches attend at a discount, but surely this would work better against teams like Norwich City, for example, who wouldn’t necessarily be in as much demand – or as expensive for regular attendees. If anything, I would have hoped the club would recognise that an expensive match being shown on TV would probably fail to sell out, and lower ticket prices accordingly. But that would probably be too much common sense for West Ham!
Our ‘spokesperson’ Jack Sullivan has said that tickets were only given out to fill the stadium for Sky, tweeting: ‘The 5 pound ticket were a one off offer to the local community to fill empty seats for a TV game. Go to KUMB or WHU website for more detail.’ When I look at the official statement from West Ham, I don’t get the impression that this was a one off at all. And if it genuinely was, I don’t understand why the club couldn’t randomly select members who hadn’t yet bought tickets and may have been priced out of going to the game to get the discount.
I don’t blame the people that were chosen for going to the match – I personally feel that if I was offered £5 tickets to go and see Premier League football, I’d definitely take advantage of that. However, there were reports of them cheering on Man City which was bound to wind up Hammers fans. And I must admit I’m really not sure a packed out football stadium was an ideal place for a prayer session.
I’m not saying West Ham fans are innocent by any means, and it must be said that some have behaved appallingly. There have been some disgusting tweets from Hammers fans over the last few days. One of the tamer ones to David Gold said: “why are you giving out free tickets to asians. absolute disgrace.”
To me, the anger falls into two categories – the fact that football fans who were not necessarily even West Ham fans were given cut price tickets to an expensive game, and the fact that they were Muslims. The latter is unacceptable and just makes our fans look fickle and racist. I do think fans have a right to be angry about this match being the one chosen for the community project, as thousands of them had paid 10 times more than the £5 offer to watch it.
There should have been a lot more transparency about this and the club should probably have issued a statement as soon as their position was questioned, rather than 2 days after. Has the lesson been learnt? With our club, who knows?! I think that’s the bigger problem here – there have been a few issues recently that have made West Ham embarrassing, and it needs to get sorted out as soon as possible.
What are your thoughts on last weekend’s events? Leave me a comment or tweet me at @alwaysintune.
West Ham's Andy Carroll still weeks away from returning to action
WEST HAM boss Sam Allardyce has moved to temper expectations that Andy Carroll could be set to return as soon as next week, saying he expects that the player's heel injury to keep him out until at least mid-November.
Andy Carroll is weeks away from returning for West Ham Andy Carroll is weeks away from returning for West Ham [GETTY]
Carroll has yet to feature for West Ham this season after making a £15m move from Liverpool in the summer having picked up the injury in pre-season.
The 24-year-old has received treatment from some of the top medical professionals in Europe and the United States, but reports that he could be back in training next week are premature according to Allardyce.
He said: "The stories that Andy Carroll is returning to us this week are not true.
"There is still a while to go there. He'll be back we hope in the next two to three weeks. Hopefully he can start full training when he does come back. It's always been a week-by-week assessment.
"He is frustrated of course and is desperate to be playing football again, it's what he loves doing most. I will only be too pleased to get him back in the squad."
Allardyce also confirmed he was thinking about brining Carlton Cole into the side, after playing without a recognised striker against Tottenham and Manchester City.
He added: "It's worked very well in the first game, not so well in second.
"It will be our choice in the next few days about whether we change the system.
The stories that Andy Carroll is returning to us this week are not true.
"Carlton Cole played another under -21 game last Monday. Our under-21s are top of the league, that's great news from the younger end.
"I don't think Cole is ready to start from a match fitness point of view but his experience from the bench is invaluable at the moment."
West Ham currently sit 15th in the table and have taken eight points from eight games so far this season, but Allardyce hoped that they might have more points on the board at this point, particularly from home games.
He said: "I couldn't knock the performances too much but I think we're about four points short of what we should have achieved.
"My huge concern is the fact that we've lost three home games on the trot, that never happened last season and if fact we only lost four all season at home.
"That's my biggest worry, our away performances have been very good but our results haven't matched the performances. We should have beaten Newcastle, we certainly shouldn't have lost against Hull City we had a good draw at Southampton and a great win against Tottenham.
"We've got to make sure we give our all in the Premier League because we're a 100 per cent team and we need to play at 100 per cent to win a game of football in the Premier League."
James Tomkins vs James Collins
Coming off of another home defeat isn’t great but considering it was against a city team tipped to win the league and a squad that cost hundreds of millions I’m not too disheartened but for the first time this season it’s called to questions our defence for many reasons including no Collins and Reid’s shocker.
Our defence is normally first class so it’s down to one question
Tomkins or Collins?
Yes Collins was injured this week from an international game which is a massive blow but Tomkins has been our regular starter in recent games.
James Collins is a first class defender without a shadow of a doubt but at times can be a bit hit and miss. He missed our best chance against Southampton and you can tell he was extremely frustrated with that as was most west ham fans, but I don’t think in that position we could get any better. He is now so experienced and strong and in many games I can’t fault him he really holds our team up and I for one always feel a bit more comfortable when I see him in the starting line-up. I remember his 2 goals against united in the cup game last season with Joey Cole assists and its games and goals like that which makes him such a strong member of the team, I just wish we could see him play like that a bit more. A final thought on Collins I also think it makes Reid a better player when they are together; they built up a good partnership and push each other. James is a much more defensive minded player then Tonks at this time as well.
James Tomkins has no doubt earned his place in the recent starting line up from performances in the capital cup games and is a super defender on his day but I do question whether he needs a bit more experience before gaining a regular place, of course I know he needs games to get experience but he’s still very young and could be a future captain of the club. I think if he watches Collins for a little while longer and gets that bit stronger he could be the clubs best defender. I do think it was important for him to start getting some games otherwise some other clubs might come looking for him due to the potential and that would be a disaster.
So who at this stage of the season who would you start?
I’d still go for Collins, for now at least. Bring on Swansea
COYI
By Lily Fenton
@lily_fenton
official site
'Like My Dreams' launched
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