The Hammers may need to find a modern day Trevor Brooking, says Mickey Ambrose
David Moyes has been offered a new contract but will wait until the end of the season to sign it. So his destiny is in his own hands and that is a magnificent gesture by the owners of the club.
In the Premier League table West Ham United were sandwiched between two of the richest clubs in the world who have spent over £1 billion on players – Newcastle United and Chelsea. Yet the fans are in a right old pickle with their Manager David Moyes once again after a hammering loss to Arsenal 0-6 and Nottingham Forest 2-0.
But no one can accuse David Moyes of failing to lay on enough entertainment in the action packed game that West Ham really needed to win against London rivals Brentford at the end of February.
This was bubble-blowing at its best and Jarrod Bowen certainly blew away Brentford with a hat-trick as West Ham got back to winning ways to record their first win of 2024 with a 4-2 victory. It was a relief all round and no wonder happy Hammers fans stayed to the end to cheer Moyes and the team off the pitch.
I rewatched those six goals Arsenal scored and it told me something pretty basic: poor marking from set pieces, free kicks and corners, with a lot of ball watching, that is when a player is watching the person with the ball who may be about to cross it, and not watching who is around him.
Nine times out of ten if the delivery of the cross is decent the opposition scores.
So with Arsenal’s quality of crosses they seemed to find their players quite easily. You can’t blame David Moyes the Manager for that, it would not be fair.
But football is a results game and it doesn’t matter how good or bad the team is playing, it will be the manager who gets fired every single time if there is a pattern of losing.
No-one is untouchable. Just ask Jose Mourinho when he was sacked by Chelsea for the second time. The reason was discord among the players apparently.
The ‘Special One’ wasn’t special anymore because he had lost the ‘dressing room’, meaning the players did not back him anymore.
Has David Moyes lost the dressing room? No, I don’t think so. Can he put it right? I hope so.
It is not that long since West Ham won their first European trophy for 43 years. The joy of that victory parade brought the East End to life; it was awe inspiring, immeasurable.
However, West Ham fans need to understand that this season is set against the backdrop of Declan Rice’s departure to Arsenal (oh, and huge respect to him for not celebrating his wonder strike when he came back to haunt his old club in the 0-6 drubbing). But when you lose first Mr West Ham, motivator Mark Noble and then Rice, these are major blows to any team, especially when you’re short of leaders in the dressing room and on the pitch.
Moyes has the best points-per-game average of any manager/head coach with 20-plus games in the club’s history.
Former West Ham manager Sam Allardyce. Big Sam, as he is known in football, said nobody could define ‘The West Ham Way’, “but whatever it was, I apparently didn’t play it,” said Allardyce. Well, Sam, I could have defined it for you if you asked me. I grew up watching the culture and artistry of a team that played with flair, and style with another Mr. West Ham, the great Trevor Brooking who delivered magnificent performances time and again. The fans loved it then and they still love our Trevor.
Brooking spent almost his entire career at West Ham United, making 647 appearances for the club. He won the 1975 FA Cup and the 1980 FA Cup in which he scored the only goal. He was also the club’s player of the season on four occasions and caretaker manager on two occasions in 2003.
Brooking had an elegant upright style, never looking down at his feet because he knew where the ball was all the time, it was beautiful to watch, the ball glued to his boot and that is what is meant by the ‘West Ham Way,’ attacking football with flair and style.
Perhaps West Ham are missing a player of Brooking’s calibre. This is part of the challenge now that the Hammers are back to winning ways.
Mickey Ambrose is a former Chelsea and Charlton player who lives in Stratford.
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