Letting Go of Big Sam Is a Potentially Huge Mistake for West Ham United

For a manager with such undeniable pedigree and a consistent record of solidity in a profession where success is so famously fickle, Sam Allardyce must consider himself very unlucky.

What he achieved with Bolton Wanderers on a shoestring budget ranks among the very best managerial accomplishments that the Premier League has seen, but since then he has been beset by misfortune.

He lasted a matter of months at Newcastle United, falling victim to the club’s famously impatient board. He returned to Lancashire with Blackburn Rovers and looked to be building on a solid foundation having saved them from relegation before again being sacked in extremely harsh circumstances—Sir Alex Ferguson called the move “absolutely ridiculous,” per BBC Sport.

Now Allardyce’s time at West Ham United has drawn to a close. Unlike the bolt from the blue that was his sacking at Blackburn, his parting of ways with the Hammers has been on the cards for some time, fuelled by vociferous fan protests about the style of football Allardyce specialises in and a poor second half of the season.

Once again, it’s difficult not to feel sympathy for Allardyce.

He has done everything expected of him by the West Ham board, having gotten the club promoted from the Championship and then established them once again as a solid Premier League club. He has even made a concerted effort to play a brand of football more easy on the eye.

In fact, much of the pressure Allardyce has found himself under in recent weeks has ironically stemmed from how successful he was early in the season. Having dealt well in the summer transfer market, Allardyce’s charges were situated in the Champions League qualification positions at Christmas, a performance beyond the wildest dreams of even the most optimistic patrons of the Boleyn Ground.

Injuries to major players such as Diafra Sakho have taken their toll on the team’s form, and they eventually finished the season in a still-respectable 12th position. However, West Ham’s red-hot start to the campaign raised expectations to unrealistic levels, and despite his attempts to acquiesce to the requests for more aesthetically pleasing football, Allardyce was the one to shoulder the burden.

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The Hammers faithful would do well to look at how Allardyce’s former clubs have fared since his departure.

Newcastle went through three managers—Kevin Keegan, Joe Kinnear and Alan Shearer—in the one-and-a-half seasons after Allardyce left before being relegated, having been mainstays in the Premier League since 1993, per the Guardian. Blackburn suffered a similar fate, being relegated in their first full season after removing Allardyce.

Even Bolton—whom Allardyce left rather than being sacked by—struggled to replicate the success he had left a blueprint for and eventually succumbed to relegation in 2012.

It’s important to point out this isn’t a case of Big Sam’s presence destabilising clubs or wanton financial mismanagement—it’s one of him simply being a very good manager and clubs not realising what they had until it’s gone.

With West Ham’s move to the Olympic Stadium at the start of the 2016/17 season representing a significant financial commitment—£15 million for stadium conversion work, £2.5 million per year for rent as well as a share of catering income, per the Guardian—securing their Premier League status is even more imperative for the Hammers than most clubs.

With all of this in mind, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the club’s decision to not renew Allardyce’s contract was a matter of last resort, with his performance levels so abhorrently bad that owners David Gold and David Sullivan simply had to act.

That simply hasn’t been the case. Instead, Allardyce’s removal is largely a result of his refusal to completely abandon pragmatism in the name of pursuing the telling ambiguity of the “West Ham way.”

While the club’s fans are perfectly entitled to want West Ham to be run in a certain manner, using this unknowable, indefinable criteria as a barometer of a manager’s abilities is unfair and simply unworkable in the modern game.

Wanting winning football, played in an attractive, passing manner by a team consisting of youth academy graduates is by no means unique to West Ham fans, but the dismissal of a manager at the behest of fans who fail to see the inherent impracticalities of such a demand in the modern game is reckless to say the least.

Allardyce’s wages were a stick used to beat him with frequently, but the £3 million he earned annually, per Metro, was a small price to pay for Premier League safety. Beyond that, the idea that he is merely a Premier League survival gun for hire is inherently wrong. He proved repeatedly at Bolton his ability to take a team to the venerated “next level” but has simply been denied the opportunity to repeat his accomplishments since.

Perhaps the club truly believe that another coach could get them there faster—they do have the financial base to make a consistent challenge for the Europa League positions.

However, with so much at stake with the move to the Olympic Stadium and the failure of Big Sam’s former clubs to cash in on the steady progress they were making in an attempt to expedite the process could prove immensely short-sighted.