West Ham began 2014 second from bottom in the Premier League. In less than 10 months, they have exchanged the relegation zone for the Champions League places. Sam Allardyce celebrated his 60th birthday among the elite.
It is a remarkable revival. Had many of the West Ham fans got their way, Allardyce would no longer be employed at their club. A manager whose appeal long lay in his ability to avoid relegation was told in May by the club’s powerbrokers that results were no longer enough in themselves. He had to ally style with substance, excitement with efficiency. It is an achievement he has managed.
Yet the methods are as instructive as the outcome has been entertaining. Deprive most clubs of their captain and their record signing and their form would decline.
West Ham’s results improved when both Kevin Nolan and Andy Carroll were sidelined. Now Nolan is fit again and on the bench. West Ham have been weaned off their dependence on an overly-direct game, aiming at the expensive target man Carroll and his sidekick Nolan, who provides proof a good finisher need not necessarily be a good footballer.
In their place, they have more pace and more potency. Strikers Enner Valencia and Diafra Sakho have brought a different form of directness. Each has aerial ability – this is still an Allardyce team, after all – but they offer greater movement, just as the midfield is more inventive.
Now West Ham have scored as many goals as Manchester United and more than Liverpool or Arsenal. Some – Valencia’s howitzer at Hull City in particular – have been great goals, too. With the aid of a shift in personnel, West Ham have been reinvented.
Saturday’s meeting with Manchester City would once have been seen as a clash of philosophies, pragmatism against purism. Not any more.
Outsiders have given the new attacking coach Teddy Sheringham much of the credit when perhaps Allardyce deserves rather more. It transpires that either you can teach an old dog new tricks or that he can learn them himself.
He has radically reshaped West Ham. Despite a dogmatic fondness for variants of 4-5-1, he has abandoned his favourite formation. He is deploying twin strikers, something he has rarely done in the Premier League, and while the midfield diamond has become a vogue formation this season, none have played it as effectively as West Ham.
September’s brilliant dissection of Liverpool was a case of Brendan Rodgers being hoist by his own petard, being beaten by astute use of a system he revived. It was a reminder of Allardyce’s tactical nous.
Finances help, too. West Ham have been well funded by mid-table standards. They spent around £25 million (Dh147m) in the summer, mainly on attack-minded players. Even the two defenders, full-backs Aaron Cresswell and Carl Jenkinson, provided goals at Burnley last Saturday with their crossing.
Their three forward additions include Mauro Zarate, a genuine No 10 to provide an inventive alternative to Nolan, Valencia and Sakho. The latter has equalled a club record by scoring in five consecutive Premier League games, which would be more impressive were the other to have achieved it not the widely derided Carlton Cole.
Yet perhaps the greatest change is apparent in midfield. Cheikhou Kouyate and Alex Song have added physicality, but with quality. Diego Poyet and Morgan Amalfitano are more technical, the sort of signings Allardyce has rarely made in recent years. The key, though, has been Stewart Downing, the winger converted to operate at the tip of the diamond.
Three weeks ago, Allardyce suggested he is the in-form midfielder in the Premier League. If that sounded hyperbolic, few others are playing better.
Nor are too many teams in better form than West Ham. The one caveat is that, Liverpool apart, their three wins have come against Crystal Palace, QPR and Burnley. Yet the brand of football is such that Allardyce’s critics have been placated.
“We have discovered the ‘West Ham Way’,” co-owner David Sullivan said recently. Strangely, it has been the Allardyce Way, too.
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