We had only played 3 games of the 08/09 season when the Chelsea (yeah Chelsea) ‘blue nose Zola’ arrived at the Boleyn we were 5th in the league at that stage and the year was full of promise.
Virtually with Curbs side, we/he finished the season in a very respectable ninth. Our Curbishley Hammers won 12 of our 35 games under Zola and we finished just two points off Europe and only behind the spuds on goal difference.
Zola came to us purporting to know and understand West Ham’s youth academy; although he came here as a novice he came with the experience of running the Italian U-21 side for a short while. Zola was said to understand the culture at the club and was to go on to give more opportunities to the young and upcoming players than any of his recent forerunners; the “project” if I heard it once I heard it a million times. But most youngsters were used out of a desperate need - to cover his failings - rather than being blooded in the correct manner to become an important integral part of our side as they had done so successfully in the past.
Has Zola’s inexperience ruined some of them; well that’s another debate but Freddie Sears springs rapidly to mind; are Tomkins and Stanislas (among others) suffering the same fate at the hands of our ‘manager's’ raw amateurishness? Quite a few of our youngsters were 'let go' recently too - 8 in all I think, not made the grade under Zola? Sad indictment for such a great player and national under 21 coach, isn't it? "The Project" of failure?
Zola began to ‘play with’ and experiment with the team, tactics and playing staff, his naïve inexperience and Steve Clarke’s seeming reluctance to get involved soon started to show and tell in all the wrong ways. Clarke I might add is another Chelsea ‘blue nose’ who was brought in to give Zola some much need know-how and support and add a little steel to the defence; defender himself – what a joke that has turned out to be with his hang-dog expression and the look of a street drunk, who’s body language sets himself separate and apart from this debacle, and yet he must accept that he is also to blame for our current abysmal plight – he too is just as culpable as Zola in my eyes. More so in some respects when you see the appalling and dreadful performances of our defenders.
Season 09/10 began and catastrophic collapse soon followed equivalent in disaster only to the French defeat of 1940 - today considered to be one of the most catastrophic military defeats of all time, until Zola and Clarkie began this season’s campaign for us beleaguered Hammers.
I could go on to make excuses for him- like the global credit crunch and subsequent collapse of the Icelandic banking system and the affect it had on West Ham - with all its ‘off-field’ disasters and distractions - or the injuries that we have continued to suffer under him for which Alan Curbishley was so wrongly blamed by so many during his tenure, but I won’t. The time for excuses has passed; it passed long ago when everyone at the club had grown so complacent they had become blindly contemptuous towards our great club and failed to see the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs was swinging around for another go now hurtling towards us unseen until Gollivan had to point it out by calling it Armageddon.
No the time for excuses for Zola – and Clarke – are gone. They are so-called managers of a premiership side that looked in a quite a good state of health until they took over; their apprenticeship has been the total demise of West Ham United Football Club in a relatively short space of time and could culminate in years of obscurity for us – maybe even league one football after next season – for the foreseeable future.
The Icelanders promised us Champion’s League football within five years of their takeover and they sold us a dream we all naively bought into only for it to be dashed. The remainder of their involvement at West Ham is all too obvious and far too painful to repeat anymore.
Gollivan have promise us a seven year plan to pull us back from the brink of the abyss, but only if we survive and maintain our current status in the best league in the world, anything less does not bear thinking about.
It’s time for Zola to stop acting like a Bambi caught in a gin trap and Steve Clarke to let go the “it’s got nothing to do with me” attitude, and between them get us out of this Titanic disaster they have gotten us into.
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Agree with much of what you say, but cannot hold Zola to blame for everything. The loss of Collins for a pittance and the failure to retain Lucas Neil along with failures to cover the left back position are mistakes that I don't believe Zola can be held 100% accountable for. I DO believe that at those defining points, he should have walked from the club as it made his, and probably to a lesser degree, Clarkes positions untenable.
ReplyDeleteHowever their failures to make do with what they had left does not make them any less culpable as they have not made the best use of the ingredients they had.
I also must say that the rot started way before the Icelandics came in, indeed I would say the defining point was the day Billy Bonds was made to walk for Harry Redknapp.
Further, I think Gold and Sullivan are not the answer to our prayers, but are just the pair to put the finishing touches to the rape of our club. Say your farewell to The Boleyn, you KNOW it's going to happen. The day that happens will see the demise of everything that our club stands for.
I don’t necessary hold Zola solely to blame, when I think about it it’s not really his fault at all, but the post is about him and his part.
ReplyDeleteI remember once I made a complete hash of a hod carrier’s job when I was very young. The two brickies I was loading-out for could see that I was a grafter and wanted me to stay – they knew that in a fortnight or so I would have cracked it and they’d have earned a lot of money with me because they were on a price, it was just a matter of time. However the site foreman had a different view of it though and the last bollocking he gave me - over some facing bricks I’d damaged – I chucked the towel in and walked off the site. When I look back now I wish I had stayed. I see that episode in my life now as a failure and that does not sit well with me. If you get the simile I’m trying to make Dave?
The ‘mistakes’ you highlight in your first paragraph I would tend to agree with to an extent, however, Collins - Zola would have been told - was for the continued survival of the club so you can’t blame him for that eh? The defence I agree was naïvely over-looked (that just shows you his inexperience) but the world and his ladder were screaming for goals and strikers that could get them.
He has made a lot of ‘people’ mistakes including flop signings again not his fault he doesn’t know what he is doing and can’t really be blamed for that, that is “West Ham’s” fault for employing him.
“I also must say that the rot started way before the Icelandic’s came in, indeed I would say the defining point was the day Billy Bonds was made to walk for Harry Redknapp.” I tend not to agree with that Dave, it was a despicable time in the history of WHUFC but that kind of dirty dealing had (and still is) been going on for years. A lot of muck gets chucked in all different directions during the Terry Brown years but not all of it was fairly thrown. That whole saga was terrible for Bondsy, who actually came back to the club, after many years in oblivion, after TB had gone. He was re-introduced to everyone in the premier suite to great applause.
There has been a lot wrong at West Ham for a lot of years caused by a lot of people – even Galey and Cottee were taking 40 grand each for doing practically nothing, knowing the financial plight of the club – that’s just the epitome of it all.
One of my sons (one of the ones who is related to Harry) said to me it does not feel like West Ham anymore which already kind of bears out your last statement – and yes you are right – if I dwell on it for too long I become melancholy.
Gollivan I’m not so sure about, the jury is still out for me as I watch from a distance with baited breath.
MAN DO I MISS THE FOOTBALL, or do I miss the football?
------- COME ON YOU BEAUTIFUL IRONS! -------
PS By the way Dave thanks for taking the time to reply
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