West Ham sack Zola

Gah, you beat me.

I think it's a pretty stupid desicion, the players are obviously fans of him, and genuinely wanted to play for him.
 
I am a west ham fan, I never blamed him for the fact that we struggled this season. We had a poor squad last season who arguably overperformed, with a strong defence and Carlton cole hitting a rich vein of form. This season more players were sold and not adequately replaced (notably Collins), Carlton cole has been injured a lot and his form has been patchy, so it was no surprise we struggled. If we don't strengthen the squad and sell key players we will be fighting relegation again.

Probably made sense for him to go though as the board clearlly never rated him.
 
I thought he did an admirable job keeping up a team that was essentially ****ed by the previous owners... he's a likeable guy too, always beaming, so it's a bit sad, if expected.

They better hope they stay up next year too now, or the new owners will look like right tools.
 
Tunney said:
Decent chap, rubbish manager.
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Great chap, great manager.

You only need to see how they played last season and where they finished.

This season, well lets see, they were in massive debt, sold maybe their best defender(look at Villa's record with Collins in the team) and have had a worse injury list than any other club.

Off the top of my head, players who missed a significant number of games who played a MASSIVE part the previous season.

Ilunga, Parker, Cole, Collison, Upson, Noble, Faubert, Zines(i think), Boa Morte. The problem being that Ilunga, Parker, Cole, Collison, Upson were the best players in the team last year.

Now they've also had injuries to, Tompkins, Mido, Behrami(who came back from an AWFUL injury and only hit decent form in the past 5 games).

Basically the whole squad at one time or another has missed more than a few games, with most of the key players missing huge portions of the season.

Arsenal without Gallas, Fabregas, RVP, Vermaelen, Clichy, Song, Arshavin for a pretty large portion of the season is what West Ham had, and more. We've had those players injured and its taken a huge toll, but other than RVP, Fab and CLichy the others played the majority of the season.

Without those injuries they'd have easily had another 20 points, and probably be pushing Everton/Liverpool hard for European places.

West Ham have had a far worse time with injuries than any team and they still survived, maybe only just, but they did. Ridiculous to sack him because more than half the team missed significant portions of the season.

EDIT:- The added problem being, Parker/Faubert/Cole/Collinson played quite a lot of minutes, but it was clear as day that so many games they did play they were carrying injuries, no where near full fitness and extending the amount of time they were injured for.

He had them playing great football last season and in parts this season with a truly crippled team West Ham still looked closer to a proper football team than many others. The problem is who they'll be able to get in to take a crippled team and crippled finances forward, won't produce the good football Zola proved he was capable of when not crippled by injuries. Zola could have done fantastically well for them in a fresh season with most of the injuries behind them, someone else, is likely to suck and go into panick mode buying up crappy "scrappers" and brawl their way into the Championship.
 
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The writing's been on the wall for some time and to be honest im pleased with the decision.

West Ham have played some truly awful football this season. I was at the 3-1 home defeat to Wolves in March and it was a real low point.

Curbishley was rightly berated for playing boring/defensive/safe football as it's just not the West Ham way. However, for all his skill as a player Zola's style of management has been poor. Some of his tactics and substitutions have been questionable and the players have looked unmotivated for most of the season.

Im pleased for him that he managed to keep WH up, he seems a decent bloke and he can walk away with his rep just about in tact. However, I'll be interested to see where he goes from here as I can't see a top club coming in for him. He looks like he could do with a break anyway. :)

Would like to see another man with Chelsea links, Avram Grant as WH's 13th manager :)
 
I'm with you, can't stand how outspoken they were last season. Don't think it helped anything.

Don't think Zola did too badly there. I watched them a few times and thought the at least tried to play tidy football at times. Their squad wasn't good enough and I was speaking to someone who was telling me some of the wages their players were on. Some of them are outrageous and its no wonder they were in such a poor financial state.

I think with the right backing Zola could do a good job in football management. I think he should go down to the Championship though and try to get some experience there. I get the impression he would have been a bit of a pushover to his players. Being popular is great but not so great when you need to control a situation with authority.

Definite potential for him as a manager though, would be unfair to write him off so soon into his managerial career.
 
jakeke said:
The new West Ham owners strike me as being absolutely huge scum bags who I abhor, who's with me?
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+1

Irrespective of their will to sack him, they shouldn't have made it so public from the offset. Poor handling of the situation imo.
 
Kieron Dyer on 80k a week!!!! To lie in bed for 9 months at a time interspersed with 10 minute long runs-in-the-team-before-injury-relapses!
 
Wasn't the new owners primary target when they took over to stay up?

Zola achieved this and got sacked for it...:confused:

Idiots. Who the hell is going to want to go to West Ham?
 
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