A testy summer between manager and board seemed to be setting West Ham up for a tumultuous season of struggle, but while early results have been mixed, signs have been promising as the Hammers get to grips with a more positive outlook.

Overview

Which was rather a problem because manager Sam Allardyce's ability to spot of a foreign bargain, particularly in attack, seems to have waned somewhat and it left the Hammers alternating between Carlton Cole — never really good enough in the first place, brought back because there was nobody else and they felt sorry for him hanging around outside the training ground all day — and Mobido Maiga, who QPR fans know all about and the less said about him the better.

The result was like a laptop blue screening. Nothing worked. The Carroll was broken, and therefore so were West Ham. Big Fat Sam alternated frantically between Cole and Maiga as his striking option while they tried to get a new horse shoe on their talismanic target man’s troublesome heal. Every set back was met with an assurance from the West Ham medical team that “this is not the same injury Andy suffered before, it’s a new one” as if that, somehow, was good news.

Initially they lost regularly, but every time you thought Allardyce was all set for the tin tack they beat Spurs — 3-0 in the league, 2-1 in the League Cup - and that’s enough for a stay of execution in these parts. Then, when the entire back four went to join Carroll in the medical room, they started getting annihilated regularly. They lost 3-1 to a lousy Norwich team and followed that swiftly with a 4-1 set back at Liverpool. They lost 2-1 at Fulham, 5-0 at Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup, and 6-0 at Man City in the League Cup in one particularly memorable week.

A 3-1 defeat at Upton Park to Newcastle seemed to have the manager on the brink but with defenders returning, Maiga taken out into the woods at night and abandoned, and Carroll making the odd appearance, results turned just in time. They drew with Chelsea - when Mourinho played the race card over the colour of Big Sam's pot and accused him of parking the bus at Stamford Bridge - and then won four on the spin to climb away from the drop zone. Safety was sealed with consecutive 2-1 wins against Hull at home and Sunderland away.

Davids Gold and Sullivan don’t sack managers often, and the PR spin on last season says they kept faith with their man and were repaid with another year of Premier League football - vital to all in the top flight, but particularly West Ham who have a move to the Olympic Stadium fast approaching — while others sacked their bosses to no avail.

Allardyce's remit was to get West Ham back into the Premier League and consolidate their place there — which he’s achieved to the letter. Hard to feel sorry for a big dislikeable slug like him — he never did get round to suing the BBC for that Panoroma programme by the way — but what more could he really have done? He’s spent big money on some lousy players — one can only assume that while the rest of the country watched on with two raised eyebrows at Kenny Dalglish and Damien Comolli’s expensive assembling of a dreadful Liverpool team, Sam was sitting there thinking “this guy’s making all the right moves" - but West Ham wanted to be securely back in the Premier League, and they are. Take the entire back four and forward line away from most Premier League teams and the results aren't going to be good.

But a section of the West Ham support base has a sense of entitlement like few others. Because Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst, Trevor Brooking, Paolo Di Canio and others have all played here at the “Academy of Football” it apparently means that only a certain type of player should be allowed to play one type of football here forever more, and any deviation from it is to be seized upon. Even when they were promoted from the Championship the results were better away from Upton Park where the home fans found the brand of football unpalatable. That important 2-1 win against Hull, achieved with a dreadful performance against ten men, saw the Hammers booed from the field by their own fans.

Problem is, none of this really fits with a modern day Premier League where everybody from seventh down is a relegation candidate and the task each year is to accrue 42 points as quickly as possible however you can get them. Things like entertaining football and going beyond the fourth round in the cup are fossils from a bygone era. Allardyce doesn’t get relegated often, but his teams rarely look good doing it. I sat through Southampton 0 West Ham 0 last September and, honestly, I'd have taken death if it had been offered to me at half time.

Pitching this sort of practicality and consolidation to supporters while at the same time charging extortionate ticket prices isn’t going to work, particularly at West Ham where the history is rich, the supporters less so, and the adverts in the Evening Standard this week say it will cost you £56 to go and watch them play Aston Villa.

So in the summer the Upton Park board told Big Fat Sam they are expecting a Big Fat Entertaining Brand of Football this season, and that he must hire a new attacking coach. One can only imagine the big fat size of Sam’s contract pay off for him to stay on despite this — he must know that were he to resign saying he’d achieved all the targets he’d been set only to be undermined in the face of supporter pressure that he’d be an automatic favourite for just about every Premier League job that comes up this season.

The beginning of this brave new era wasn't peppered with initial success stories. Firstly, injury prone former Liverpool flop Andy Carroll is injured again, for four months this time, although the medical staff are at pains to point out that it’s a different injury to last time. Again. They spent £12m on Enner Valencia after he featured in the World Cup for Ecuador but he also wasn't fit for the start of the season. Tottenham and Southampton both won early games at Upton Park.

Last season Ravel Morrison, despite scoring a spectacular goal in one of the Spurs wins and at one point being tipped as a potential World Cup pick, was bombed out on loan to QPR allegedly, according to Daniel Taylor in the Guardian, because he’d refused to sign for Big Sam’s favoured Big Fat Dodgy Agent. This summer David Sullivan went public with the fact that Allardyce wants to sell the player, while the board see him as part of the club’s future and want to give him a new contract. Not known for sacking managers, but not averse to feeding out rope until they lynch themselves it seems. They did it to Gianfranco Zola, eventually replacing him with Avram Grant who then, when things went predictably badly, had to put up with Brady publicly fluttering her eyelashes at Martin O’Neil in the hope that the hapless Israeli may take the hint and piss off. He didn’t and they were relegated.

Morrison, typically, has clouded his issue somewhat by being charged with giving an ex-girlfriend a dry slap at four in the morning and threatening to throw acid in here face (“bitches be getting up in my peripherals giving me static,” he told a judge at Manchester Crown Court, perhaps) for which spent a week inside having been refused bail. Now on loan in the Championship, wasting his talent once more at Cardiff City. Bright lad.

The pre-season results were not good. The Hammers were turned over by mediocre A-League opposition on a tour of New Zealand which manager and board have both since admitted was too far to travel, and they reverted to getting everybody behind the ball playing for a 0-0 draw with Schalke in Germany. “You can’t attack teams like Schalke, you’ll get destroyed” said the board’s unofficial spokesman Jack Sullivan (son of) on the Twitter, so at least they’re getting chance to work on their excuses. This was starting to look like a bit of a disaster, and a managerial change, waiting to happen.

But left back Aaron Cresswell was a splendid capture from Ipswich, and an absolute steal at less than £4m. Diego Poyet (son of) from Charlton another shrewd acquisition. Allardyce also seems to have rediscovered his eye for a foreign bargain — 24 year old Senegalese midfielder Cheikhou Kouyate, signed for a relatively small £7m from little-known Belgian outfit Kortrikj, has hit the ground running and is already being compared to Patrick Vieira. Alex Song was picked up on loan from Barcelona, seemingly while everybody else was distracted by the felating of Louis Van Gaal — two signings for less than £10m that take West Ham from over-reliance on ageing Kevin Nolan, to having one of the strongest and most formidable central midfields outside the top six sides.

Valencia, gaining fitness every week, unleashed a shell with no back lift whatsoever into the roof of the net at Hull three weeks ago to announce his arrival in the UK and with skillfull, tenacious, dangerous Argentinian Mauro Zarate playing behind him the Hammers were… wait for it… good to watch. They're shipping goals, and have only won twice, but Liverpool were destroyed on this ground a fortnight ago. For the first time in more than a year, the prospects for West Ham, and Sam Allardyce, are looking up once again.

Scout Report

So, probably not a lot of point in this, but here it is anyway…

QPR's defence has been left badly exposed by the midfield at times this season, something Harry Redknapp admitted to in his press conference today. Against Hull, Zarate's nose for space between the opposition midfield and defence caused Hull problems all night and will do so again against Rangers unless that gap can be plugged. Sandro, whose fitness problems are already starting to grate, could be paired with Karl Henry at the base of the midfield in a 4-2-3-1 system and help QPR with that.

Kouyate looked great. Strong and quick, causing panic amongst a set defence by carrying the ball forward with real athleticism, forcing players to step out of position to meet him, leaving space in behind as a result. Let's hope that knock he's got isn't anything trivial.

Hull altered to a 4-1-3-2 system for this game, abandoning their usual three man defence, possibly concerned that West Ham — usually — like to get two wingers bombing down the flanks and sling crosses in. Whether it's because Matt Jarvis is injured, or a permanent change of attitude, the Hammers were actually very narrow in this game, particularly during the transition in possession which meant Hull were able to get two players running at one full back if they won the ball back and released it early into wide areas.

A couple of things QPR should have picked up from the tape — watch out for straight free kicks in the 30-35 yard region. Stewart Downing and others shape up like they're going to shoot only to switch their run up at the last second and hang a ball up into the area looking for Winston Reid and others up from the back to flick on. In addition, Valencia has a prodigious leap on him, and crosses hung up to the back post caused Hull problems all evening, so Rangers must be careful not to allow the Ecuadorian to isolate their full backs at the back post when facing a cross from either side because he'll just pile in over the top of them.

Links >>> West Ham Official Website >>> West Ham Blog >>> West Ham Till I Die Blog >>> Scoop It — West Ham news >>> Claret and Blue blog >>> Knees Up Mother Brown message board >>> West Ham Mad site and message board

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TacticalR added 21:49 - Oct 4 Thanks for your oppo report. 'I sat through Southampton 0 West Ham 0 last September and, honestly, I'd have taken death if it had been offered to me at half time.' Yes, that would have been a mercy. When they first came up they were terrible. I haven't seen much of West Ham this season, but it sounds like they are putting together a decent team that can handle life in the Premiership. Meanwhile Joe Cole has been dumped on the motorway near Birmingham, while Maiga has been exiled to the easternmost corner of France.

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