Roeder Out

‘WEST Ham fans are notoriously loyal to the team and the club itself is notoriously loyal to its managers.

Hit the Roed, Glenn – and don’t you come back

But something is going to have to give sooner or later because Hammers fans are furious with what has been going on at the club in recent months.

Chairman Terry Brown is the target of most of the vitriol, but manager Glenn Roeder is a more likely casualty.

Most fans were sceptical about Roeder when he was appointed, but he did much to silence them by taking the club to seventh place in his first season in charge.

However, all the fears resurfaced last year when he seemed incapable of reversing his team’s appalling run of form in the first half of the season.

That he regularly fell out with Paolo Di Canio does not make him unique, but bust-ups with Sebastien Schemmel and David Connolly make one question Roeder’s man management skills.

And his performance in interviews, in which he bridles at any semblance of criticism, suggests Roeder has too thin a skin for top-flight management.

Of course, while West Ham keep winning, fans can overlook many of their manager’s shortcomings.

However, from the evidence of Saturday, there will be plenty of occasion to berate Roeder as a coach.

The defence was as mind-bogglingly appalling as it was for most of last season, conceding a goal after only 90 seconds and giving Preston plenty of hope thereafter.

A manager can only do as well as the material he has to work with, but it is increasingly apparent that Roeder has no idea how to organise the back four to give some semblance of order.

Anton Ferdinand looked out of his depth at right back and Tomas Repka is as much of a liability as he ever was.

The problem with a dodgy defence is not only in the amounts of goals it actually concedes, but in what it does to a team’s confidence.

Conceding soft goals like West Ham did on Saturday demoralises your own team and gives heart to the opposition.

All teams who come up against West Ham this season will always think they have a chance of getting a couple of goals.

If Roeder can’t sort it out on the training pitch, he needs to sort it out in the transfer market. If he can do neither, he needs to hand over to a man who can…

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Posted: 12th, August 2003 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink