The Hammers have endured a nightmare season so far, but how much longer can their manager hang on?
Former West Ham United Carl Fletcher has told talkSPORT (broadcast on Sunday 4 December from 7:00am) that the club’s current players are the wrong sort of characters for a potential relegation scrap.
After an impressive seventh-placed finish last season, capped by victories against Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and the two Manchester clubs, the Hammers have failed miserably to recapture that form in 2016/17, with Saturday’s dismal 5-1 home defeat to Arsenal increasing calls for manager Slaven Bilic to lose his job.
Dimitri Payet, arguably the most exciting player in the Premier League in the previous campaign, has come under severe pressure from supporters due to his perceived lack of effort while the vast majority of West Ham’s summer signings have ranged from the ineffective to the anonymous so far.
Following a capitulation against the Gunners which saw them concede four times in the final 20 minutes, Bilic caused a stir by claiming that his players were not showing any intensity in games or, indeed, in training.
And Fletcher has now questioned the mentality of the under-performing confidence-bereft squad.
“Bilic’s comments about a lack of intensity shows there’s obviously cause for concern,” the midfielder, who was part of West Ham’s promotion winning side in 2005, said on the Weekend Sports Breakfast, broadcast at 7:00am on talkSPORT on 4 December.
“You either go one of two ways; you dig in or you give up. Obviously at West Ham they’re not the kind of players you want at that football club.”
Fletcher has also called into question Bilic’s tactics, with West Ham trialing three-man and four-man defensive systems to little success in recent weeks.
“They started with a back three and went to aback four when James Collins got injured and they didn’t look comfortable,” he said. “You could see the confidence wasn’t there in all areas of the team.
“They lacked pace with Michail Antonio injured, no one will provide you with that boost of pace to beat a player.”
With the Hammers travelling to Liverpool next weekend, too, their predicament could certainly get worse before it gets better.
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