West Ham United are one of the oldest teams in the Premier League – what has happened to ‘The Academy of Football’?
Sky Sports report that Slaven Bilic has been given two games to save his job as West Ham United manager.
The Hammers have lost five of their opening nine Premier League games and sit 16th in the table.
But the Croatian is not to blame for the change of culture at the club.
West Ham have fielded three of the five oldest starting XIs in the league this season, each of them with an average age of 29.7.
That is the same average age of their four first-team summer signings.
This is a club whose youth setup was nicknamed The Academy of Football after local lads Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Sir Geoff Hurst won the World Cup while at West Ham.
It also produced the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole and Jermain Defoe at the turn of the century, when Bilic spent time as a player at Upton Park.
Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard are part of West Ham celebrations in January 1998
Since then, only Mark Noble has come through to have any impact on the first team.
But the club’s current owners seem to enjoy playing the transfer game too much to return West Ham to its roots. And the pressure on Bilic is too constant for him to give youngsters a chance.
Whether Bilic survives this week or not, West Ham’s board need to remember what made them great.
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