West Ham Eyeing a Different Profile as Sam Allardyce Heads Closer to Summer Exit

For those teams not involved in the battles for position and status at the top and bottom of the Premier League, as the season winds to its conclusion attention inevitably starts to turn towards the next campaign.

For some, the security afforded by a mid-table position is achievement enough, with the focus being on replicating that performance—or, more accurately, continuing to avoid the dreaded relegation battle—next term. For others it offers a brief period to evaluate, to consider what is now required to make that next step up—the one Southampton have made, for example, in challenging the more established clubs for those European qualification spots.

For a period this season it looked like West Ham United had also made that sizeable leap, forcing their way into the Champions League conversation as the season eased into 2015. Results since then have waned, unfortunately, and it should have been no real surprise to anyone when Sam Allardyce confirmed on Friday that he remains unsure whether he will still be West Ham’s manager next season.

Allardyce’s contract is up in the summer, as it has been since speculation about his future first started many weeks ago, and it seems the Hammers board are still considering their options—with plenty of rumours of potential replacements making their way into the press during the week, including a report from the Daily Telegraph's Matt Law that David Moyes and Rafa Benitez are in the running for the job.

"We are already planning for next season,” Allardyce told reporters on Friday when quizzed about the speculation:

"

We sat down yesterday and planned when we are coming back, where we are going to go and who we are going to play.

I don’t know whether I will be here—but when you are contracted to a football club you do the job you are paid to do.

"

At the turn of the year the club were targeting European qualification, possibly in the Champions League, but a severe downturn in results since means it is not beyond the realms of the possibility that they could ultimately finish below Stoke City and Crystal Palace in the table, quite possibly in the bottom half.

At the start of the season that might have been acceptable, but after the heights of the early part of the campaign it now feels like a crushing disappointment.

"The target we set in January is probably not achievable now,” Allardyce acknowledged while defending his side to the media:

"

The performances have been right up there and we have been creating chances.

But we haven’t been converting them like we were earlier in the season.

We are disappointed because we all built the expectation so high by getting into the top four.

I didn’t envisage us to maintain that and stay in the top four, but I thought we would have picked up more points than we have. The entertainment level and performances have been right up there.

But when you don’t win you get still get the criticism levelled at you.

"

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This is not the first time Allardyce has come to the end of the season facing uncertainty about his future; indeed, he was in an almost identical situation 12 months ago. On that occasion it was West Ham’s atrocious league form that was the cause of concern (the club barely avoiding relegation), with Allardyce ultimately retained on the understanding that he would turn the team into a more attacking, attractive footballing side.

That he managed to do (earning a great deal of credit in the process), at least until the engine started spluttering in the second half of the season.

Now West Ham, a club with huge ambitions for their future, face a quandary: Is Allardyce the man to take them to that next level, or is it now a timely moment to change direction?

“Everybody has got short memories,” Allardyce suggested. “It is my job to remind everybody how well we’ve played.”

That is not his job, though; his job is to get results on the pitch. A manager’s job security may depend to a large extent on recent results, but ultimately his continuing employment hinges on where his employers believe he can take the club next.

West Ham are looking to next season, and the season after that—when they move into the Olympic Stadium and their horizons expand exponentially.

The club are looking for a manager to turn West Ham into a top-six side, and perhaps believe that one of the names mentioned in the press—Benitez, Moyes, Slaven Bilic—has the qualities required. Considering their hesitations over retaining Allardyce last season, you sense perhaps that the hierarchy has never been convinced he is the right fit for them.

Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images

Perhaps, too, Allardyce is paying the price of perception, the lingering belief that he is a manager of an older era; a tracksuit manager in an age when the most successful clubs have managers with the aura of city workers.

Perceived as more motivator than tactician, he certainly seems to be one of a dying breed in the English game, at least at the highest levels. Tony Pulis has carved out a niche for himself as a survival specialist (“Facing relegation? Call Tony!”), but beyond that the recent trend has been to move towards a different type of manager—or “head coach”—for the bigger roles. For managers like Allardyce or Redknapp, following the Pulis model (taking on a club in trouble and pulling them up by their bootstraps) might be the only route to go.

Redknapp, dismissed by QPR earlier this season, admitted to Sky Sports this week that he would love to return to West Ham but seemed to acknowledge that the chances of that were remote. Big clubs, and clubs with big ambitions, are chasing different candidates now.

"I wouldn’t want to do anything until next season, and it would depend if anything interesting comes up," Redknapp added. "I’d like to go somewhere where I’ve got half a chance of doing something.

“If it wasn’t in the Premier League, I’d want to go to a club that could get promoted."

Since Redknapp was released by Spurs and Manchester United called time on the David Moyes experiment, managers of the biggest clubs have invariably shared the same qualities: tactically well-regarded, cultured, happy working within a management structure—and, as often as not, foreign.

That is now being reflected lower down the table, too. If newspaper reports are to be believed, QPR chased the likes of Rafa Benitez and Paul Clement when they parted ways with Redknapp, two very different types of coaches. They eventually settled on Chris Ramsey, a coach who used to help set questions for the Football Association coaching licence exams. He literally wrote the textbook on tactics.

Ramsey fits a new profile of English coaches: one the likes of Alan Irvine and John Carver, who have moved into management after long, often well-regarded careers as the second or third in command. Some of them have gotten jobs through convenience, others as boards look for a coach who will accept more training ground responsibility and less transfer market influence.

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Yet their track record remains suspect—Irvine was a failure, while the jury is out on both Carver and Ramsey—suggesting the likes of Allardyce should not be discarded, or discounted, so quickly.

Nevertheless, if West Ham do go in a different direction—and at this moment it would seem likely they will if they can snare the right candidate—Allardyce will surely not have to wait long to receive an offer to come back into management.

It just won’t be at a club of similar or higher standing. Allardyce is perhaps set to discover that, regardless of his achievements, his face just does not quite fit anymore.