Gutless, heartless, spineless, call it what you want but Sullivan and Gold must act: Zola’s time is up
Jacob Steinberg
The smile has been permanently wiped off Gianfranco Zola’s face.
Standing on the touchline during West Ham‘s stunningly inept defeat to Wolves last night, drenched by the east London rain and his hand covering his mouth in shock, he cut the figure of a man who has finally run out of ideas.
It was sad to witness him appear so broken, but football is a ruthless business, and West Ham cannot afford to be empathetic.
The owners, David Sullivan and David Gold, must act. Zola’s time is unfortunately up.
Gutless, heartless, spineless, call it what you want, West Ham’s performance last night was surely the nadir. Patience has snapped and while at times the atmosphere at Upton Park threatened to turn poisonous, with supporters angrily chanting, “You’re not fit to wear the shirt” and Carlton Cole reportedly separated from a confrontation with one fan, mostly there was an air of resignation about the place. After Wolves scored their third, empty seats seemed to outnumber those who bothered to stay to the bitter end.
They’d seen it all before; Wolves were fitter, hungrier and physically stronger than West Ham, and the outcome was utterly predictable. Indeed the same had been true when Bolton Wanderers visited at the beginning of March. The only difference was they left with two goals, and Wolves with three.
West Ham’s season, coincidentally, began away to Wolves, who were playing their first game back in the Premier League after their promotion. On that day though, the gulf between the two sides was cavernous, West Ham exhibiting a class that was too much to handle for the callow newcomers.
Zola’s side easily emerged with a 2-0 victory that could have been by four or five, and it was one that presented them with quiet optimism and Wolves with no illusions about the size of the task ahead.
Fast forward to March, and that particular match hardly seems believable. Wolves, having handed West Ham a thundering humiliation they are unlikely to forget for a while, are tentatively planning another year in the top flight.
West Ham, meanwhile, are lucky that Portsmouth have been docked nine points, and can only hope that Burnley and Hull City, as appears to be the case, are even more shambolic than them.
That is a dangerous game to play and as West Ham, immediately above the bottom three, are a mere three points better off than the pair, their prospects are decidedly perilous.
In several games this season, West Ham have been guilty of playing as and when it suits them, brief bursts of inspiration mostly being surrounded by slack-jawed, ambling incompetence.
Yet against Wolves, they didn’t even manage that. Instead they were thoroughly outplayed, outfought and outthought, from the moment Kevin Doyle beat Matthew Upson to a header to set up a chance that Kevin Foley cracked against the bar to when Ryan Jarvis scored the third goal on the hour.
The emphasis Zola placed on this game had only increased the pressure.
Five defeats in a row include comprehensive beatings at the hands of Arsenal (reduced to 10 men for over a half), Chelsea and Manchester United, encounters which Zola effectively wrote off by playing weakened sides, resting the likes of Cole and Scott Parker. That in itself is a cowardly act and it only served to ratchet up the importance of the games against Bolton and Wolves - and West Ham comprehensively lost them too.
Defeats are part of football, but not like this. Not to Wolves at home. Not by three goals to one. Not when Wolves had not scored three goals in a game all season, not when nothing less than a win would do. Not when there are games against Everton, Fulham, Liverpool and Manchester City still left to play. Not when “financial armageddon” has been predicted by Sullivan should West Ham be relegated.
If Zola at least appreciated the vital nature of last night then, he had clearly forgotten to tell his players, who approached their opponents with about as much enthusiasm as Wayne Bridge would greet rooming with John Terry.
Perhaps one day details will emerge of a murky cash bonus delivered to the West Ham player who could give possession away on the most regular basis, a prize eagerly contested by Radoslav Kovac and Valon Behrami, who might as well have been wearing sunglasses and holding a white stick, so often did he pass without even a cursory glance as to the ball’s destination.
The players must, of course, take their share of the blame. If nothing else, they are supposed to be professionals, and should be able to pull off a simple short corner routine, a challenge that was beyond poor old Alessandro Diamanti in the opening exchanges.
Upson, the captain, was playing alongside two youngsters in defence but when one of them, James Tomkins, made the mistake that led to Doyle’s opener, he offered no words of consolation. Upson may start in England‘s defence at the World Cup this summer, a sentence that should send a shiver down the spine of every patriot in this country.
And yet, Zola is ultimately responsible. No one else made the inexplicable decision to start Benni McCarthy, who moves about as freely as a dehydrated whale but played as if he had downed several more drinks, ahead of Guillermo Franco.
Franco, one of the few with any intelligence, made his point by scoring an excellent consolation in stoppage time. As ever, West Ham were shapeless in formation, one-dimensional and tediously one-paced. Not once did they manage to get behind the Wolves defence, a truly damning indictment of any team.
There is no satisfaction to be garnered from the conclusion that, nice man that he is, Zola is not good enough to manage West Ham. Perhaps he falls alongside Glenn Roeder, the last man to take West Ham down, in the file marked ‘Good coach, Bad manager’.
On the most basic level, Zola’s principles of playing attractive football suit the club well, but his attempts to implement them made him appear an idealistic fool at best, and pig-headed at worst.
The foolish 4-3-3 formation used at the start of the season lacked either the personnel or clarity required to carry it off, and after ditching it eventually, confusion reigned with a different line-up concocted on a weekly basis.
The current strategy worked very briefly until its limitations - a lack of pace and creativity - were found out both by better teams and by those more ready for a scrap.
With that in mind, Stoke City arrive at Upton Park on Saturday. They are an even more physically demanding bunch than Bolton and Wolves, and it is doubtful West Ham’s delicate souls will be up to the challenge.
Whether Zola is the one leading them as they tip toe into battle is another question altogether, and one that may shortly be answered for us by Sullivan and Gold.
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