WHU hat Pause, bei Rapid geht’s los!
In der englischen Premier League erleben wir gerade die erste „winter break“ in der Form, dass an diesem und am vorangegangenen Wochenende jeweils nur eine halbe Runde gespielt wird. So sollte sich für alle Klubs eine spielfreie Woche ergeben – dieses Wochenende unter anderem für West Ham United, das allerdings schon am kommenden Mittwoch das Nachtragsspiel gegen Financial FairPlay-Übeltäter Manchester City hat. In Österreich dagegen ist endlich die lange Winterpause vorbei und die Bundesliga startet wieder! Der SK Rapid spielt am Sonntag.
Die Frühjahrssaison in Österreich begann gleich mit einer Riesenüberraschung: am Freitag Abend fügte der LASK den bisher unbesiegten Salzburger Bullen die erste Niederlage zu, noch dazu in deren eigenem Stadion, in dem Red Bull bisher 8 von 9 Meisterschafts-Heimspielen in dieser Saison gewonnen hatte. Aber es war eine Sensation mit Ansage, denn der LASK hat im Winter keinen Spieler abgegeben, während sich Salzburg ohne Haaland (zu Borussia Dortmund) und Minamino (zum FC Liverpool) erst wieder finden muss. Und der LASK ist außerdem das beste Auswärtsteam: man hat nun von 10 Auswärtsspielen zehn gewonnen!
Die österreichische Meisterschaft bleibt also heuer spannend und vielleicht wird RB Salzburg doch nicht zum siebenten Mal hintereinander Meister! Der LASK, der wirklich eine tolle Saison spielt, auch in der Europa League in die KO-Phase aufgestiegen ist (wie im Vorjahr der SK Rapid!), war das letzte – und bisher einzige – Mal im Jahr 1965 österreichischer Meister. Cupsieger waren die Linzer damals auch.
Im Dezember war ich selbst mit zwei Kollegen auf der Linzer „Gugl“, die ganz in der Nähe der Kanzlei liegt, und war begeistert von dem tollen Auftritt des LASK gegen Sporting Lissabon: mit einem 3:0 sicherten die Linzer sich den Gruppensieg in derEL.
Kommende Woche starten die Schwarz-Weißen nun mit dem Duell gegen AZ Alkmaar in die nächste Runde der Europa League. Und am 4. März spielt man im österreichischen Cup-Semifinale wieder auswärts gegen RB Salzburg. Aus dem Cupbewerb sind übrigens alle Wiener Klubs bereits im Herbst ausgeschieden, das zweite Halbfinale bestreiten Austria Lustenau und Wacker Innsbruck aus der zweiten Liga.
Rapid ist im September in einem dramatischen Match, das wir als „vorgezogenes Finale“ bezeichnet haben, durch ein Tor von Minamino in der letzten Minute der Verlängerung im Allianz Stadion mit 1:2 gegen RB Salzburg ausgeschieden. Rapid-Japaner Kitagawa schoss Rapids zwischenzeitlichen Ausgleich und verletzte sich in diesem Spiel. Trotz der Niederlage feierte der Rapid-Anhang die Mannschaft, die aufopfernd gekämpft hatte, mit einem minutenlangen „You‘ll never walk alone“. Der emotionalste Moment des Fußballherbstes!
Am Sonntag bin ich nun endlich wieder dabei im West-(Allianz)Stadion, wenn Rapid die Frühjahrssaison angeht: mit einem Sieg gegen den Tabellenletzten Wattens soll es, wenn es nach Rapid-Trainer Didi Kühbauer geht, einen positiven Start geben und mit einem Sieg könnte der Rückstand auf die Tabellenspitze von bisher 12 auf 10 Punkte vermindert werden.
Da dann in der Meister-Runde der besten sechs Klubs ab Mitte März die Punkte geteilt werden, könnte man vielleicht sogar im Titelkampf wieder mitmischen! Während LASK und Salzburg noch eine Tripel-Belastung durch Cup und Europa League haben, kann sich Rapid allein auf die Bundesliga konzentrieren. Aber auch WAC, Sturm und Hartberg liegen vier Runden vor dem Ende des laufenden Durchgangs nur einen bzw. vier Punkte hinter den Grün-Weißen.
„Hier regiert der SCR“, das sollte in dem 2016 eröffneten Allianz Stadion, in dem Rapid noch immer nicht zur alten Heimstärke zurückgefunden hat, endlich wieder Standard werden! In „St. Hanappi“ und auf der Pfarrwiese war Rapid stets eine Macht, aber obwohl das neue Stadion als „grüne Hölle“ für Rapids Gegner konzipiert und beworben wurde, ist bisher eher die eigene Mannschaft den Erwartungen an einen neuen Höhenflug im neuen Stadion nicht gerecht geworden. Seit man das anstelle des Hanappi Stadions errichtete, in Ost-West-Richtung gedrehte Allianz-Stadion mit der mächtigen Stehplatztribüne für den „Block West“ im Süden als Heimstätte hat, wurde Rapid nur 5., 3. und 7. in der Meisterschaft. Seit mehr als einem Jahrzehnt wartet man auf einen Titel (2008 unter Peter Pacult war man das letzte Mal Meister). Dabei wäre im Neuen mehrstöckigen VIP-Klub so schön feiern!
Und so enthält die von Andy Marek – der am Sonntag das letzte Mal als Platzsprecher fungieren wird – jüngst präsentierte Rapid-Chronik Band III (2009-2019) das erste Jahrzehnt (seit 1899-1909) ohne Meister- oder Cuptitel des SK Rapid! (Wobei der erste [nieder-] österreichische Meistertitel erst 2011/12 vergeben wurde – an den „Sportclub Rapid“.)
Zwar musste der SK Rapid auch nach seinem 25. Meistertitel (1968) 14 Jahre bis zum nächsten Gewinn der Bundesliga (1982) warten, aber während dieser „Meisterschafts-Durststrecke“ gelangen immerhin die österreichischen Cupsiege 1969, 1972 und 1976, während man 2017 und 2019 in Klagenfurt, dem vielleicht noch schöneren neuen Stadion, jeweils gegen RB Salzburg nur den Titel „Cupfinalist” nach Hütteldorf zurückbrachte. Realistisch betrachtet wird es auch heuer nix mit einem Titel, aber die „Zwanzigerjahre“ haben ja gerade erst begonnen.
Auf geht’s Rapid: Kämpfen und siegen!
Free at last
Die neue Predigtserie in der ICF Wien befasst sich mit dem 1. Buch der Könige und dem Zusammenhang von schlechten Früchten und Mängeln an unseren geistlichen Wurzeln.
„Ein guter Baum trägt gute Früchte, ein schlechter Baum trägt schlechte Früchte“, sagt Jesus (Mt 12,33). Es sind unsere schlechten Verhaltensmuster, die immer wieder dazu führen, dass unser Tun keine guten, sondern schlechte Früchte bringt. Auch wenn wir uns bemühen, die faulen Früchte auszusortieren und nur glänzend rote Äpfel in unserem Obstkorb zu haben, fallen doch immer wieder verdorbene Äpfel von unserem Baum. Der Grund ist, dass wir die geistliche Dimension unserer Misserfolge oft nicht beachten.
Die geistliche Dimension können wir uns als die Wurzeln unseres Baumes vorstellen. Nur wenn von den Wurzeln genug gute Nährstoffe über den Stamm in die Zweige zu den dort wachsenden Früchten gelangen, werden in der Baumkrone gute, rot glänzende Äpfel wachsen. Diese geistliche Dimension darf nicht übersehen werden.
König Ahab im 1. Buch der Könige etwa war nicht unbedingt böse, aber er war passiv und ängstlich und ließ geschehen, was seine Frau Isebel ausheckte. Die aber war die Tochter eines Fürsten, dessen Volk dem götzendienerischen Baalskult anhing, und so kam es auch unter den Juden, dem auserwählten Volk Gottes, zur Baalsverehrung. Aus seinem Geist der Passivität und Angst heraus gebot Ahab, obwohl er König, ein Nachfolger von König David war, diesem grausamen Götzenkult mit seinen Menschenopfern keinen Einhalt. So verleugnete das Volk Israel den „Ich bin der ich bin“, Jahwe, den Gott Abrahams, Isaaks und Jakobs.
„Gott hat uns nicht einen Geist der Furcht gegeben, sondern einen Geist der Kraft, der Liebe und der Besonnenheit.“ (2. Tim 1,7)
Wäre dieser göttliche Geist in Ahab wirksam gewesen, so hätte er anders gehandelt, nicht zugelassen, dass auf Veranlassung seiner Frau Propheten getötet und im Baalskult Kinder geopfert wurden.
Um schlechte Verhaltensmuster zu überwinden, müssen wir uns bewusst machen, dass Jesus uns liebt und wir Ihm immer vertrauen können. Wenn Gott unser Fundament ist, wird aus seinem Geist Kraft, Liebe und Besonnenheit fließen und unser Verhalten bestimmen. Wir können frei werden von schlechten Verhaltensmustern. Und unser Baum wird Gott gefallen und immer mehr gute Früchte tragen!
No Game on Sunday, no PL in 2020/21?
Due to adverse weather conditions West Ham’s away match at the Etihad against Manchester City has been postponed. Now West Ham’s “Winter Break” – the first of this kind in Premier League history – begins and that means that their next match will not be played before Monday, 24 February, when designated PL champions Liverpool are going to host the Hammers. Much in contrary to the Reds which can be all but sure to win the league, now 22 points ahead of Manchester City with 13 games to play before the end of the season, the Irons are desperately fighting against losing their place in the Premier League.
The break gives us the opportunity to look back if the change of manager at the turn of the year has brought an upturn in fortune for West Ham. Unfortunately the results have not improved so far, and David Moyes hasn’t won any league game since the victory over Bournemouth in his first game in charge.
Matt Law in the Telegraph wrote that West Ham must fear to be running out of time in their battle for survival. It’s over five weeks since David Moyes returned to West Ham United with the bold claim that winning is “what I do” as the club attempted to avoid dropping into the relegation zone.
Just one Premier League win, in his first match back in charge against Bournemouth, and six games later, West Ham are in the bottom three with Moyes now admitting “you would kill me with the results.”
Five points from his first six league games is one worse than the previous six under sacked manager Manuel Pellegrini, who managed two victories, against Chelsea and Southampton, during that time.
Yet despite his poor win percentage, it seems Moyes will be judged from here on in after West Ham signed Tomas Soucek and Jarrod Bowen at the end of the transfer window and this week added coaches Kevin Nolan and Paul Nevin to his backroom team.
Despite a backdrop of fan unrest which will lead to new actions of protest aimed at David Sullivan and David Gold, the co-owners, and Karren Brady, the vice-chairman, Moyes remains positive that he can deliver what he had claimed to do best and win enough games to keep West Ham up.
“You would kill me with the results, but I feel we’ve played much better,” Moyes said. “We’ve been worthy and closer to more points than what we’ve had. We’ve not got them and it could be costly because of that. We’ve got to turn that quickly into results.”
Four more victories?
Moyes believes four more victories over the course of the remaining 13 games, six of which are at the London Stadium, should be enough to see West Ham safe. The task looks harder than it initially sounds, when supporters consider the team have won only four times in the league since the end of August.
“I’ve always looked at the win column and to stay in the Premier League you need to get 10 wins,” Moyes said. “That’s my amateur mathematics. But if you get 10 wins you tend to get enough draws to get you 38, 39 points by the end of the season.
“I look at the win column and I’m really only looking at the next game. You’ve got to pick up what you can on the road and make your home wins really important.”
With a little help from …
As if to illustrate, perhaps, just how desperate West Ham and Moyes are becoming for victories, the Scot suggested that the supporters annoyed with the running of the club could also channel some of their anger towards trying to influence referees.
“All I’m saying is, as team manager, I could do with their help, especially in the home games,” Moyes said. “We need them to challenge decisions, to question what’s going on, to support the team.
“I just feel we’re getting the wrong end of things and I need to try to turn that into more positives if I can. How can I do that? Maybe the supporters could help us persuade people’s thinking.”
It might not only be Premier League survival West Ham are playing for over the final 13 games, as Moyes conceded the future of Declan Rice, whom he described as being the best holding midfielder in the country, is also at stake.
Moyes appeared to suggest Rice could leave, whether or not West Ham go down, by saying: “Quite often in the story of building a football club, you have to sell. You may have to do it. It’s just the way on the journey. I hope it’s not the case with Declan, but I said the same with Wayne Rooney, said the same with Joleon Lescott.
“The team still got better because we were able to make sure we got the right people in and make sure we got the right resources in; make sure we were signing the right players to replace them. And if that ever came around [Rice going], I’d hope we will be able to do it. I hope it doesn’t come around.
“It’s the last few months [of the season] and we need Declan to be right on it and show everything he’s got. In my mind, at the moment, he is arguably the best holding midfield player in the country, and the best thing about Declan is he is young and he will get better.”
West Ham certainly need to get better, however hard the next two trips might be.
And it could be Kevin Nolan, West Ham’s skipper about seven years back when West Ham succeeded in their attempt to gain promotion in the first season after their relegation to the Championship, who helps the Hammers’ revival. Nolan together with Paul Nevin has joined Moyes’s coaching staff at West Ham recently.
Nolan, 37, scored 31 goals in 157 appearances for the Hammers between 2011 and 2015, before player-coach roles at Leyton Orient and Notts County.
Paul Nevin, 50, coached at Brighton, Fulham and Norwich before joining the England coaching staff until June 2019.
“Both have a wealth of experience in the game,” said manager David Moyes.
“I’m sure they will make a very positive contribution between now and the end of the season.
“Kevin obviously knows the club very well having played here previously, while Paul’s coaching pedigree is excellent.
“It has taken some time to finalise the coaching staff, but I wanted to make sure I brought in the right people to help us, and both Kevin and Paul are fantastic additions.”
Both have joined Moyes’ staff initially until the end of the season. West Ham are 18th in the Premier League before commencing with their winter break until 24 February, searching for four more victories at least …
West Ham’s Premier League fixtures until the end of the season
Manchester City (A – postponed), Liverpool (A), Saints (H), Arsenal (A), Wolves (H), Spurs (A), Chelsea (H), Newcastle (A), Burnley (H), Norwich (A), Watford (H), Red Devil’s (A), Aston Villa (H).
Good News on Brexit Day #2
Der Post vom letzten Samstag ist nun auch auf dem West Ham Blog West Ham Till I Die veröffentlicht – mit einer durchaus interessanten Diskussion zum Thema EU und UK in den “comments” !
Good News on Brexit Day
For me Brexit isn’t good news at all. I always was in favour of Remain and of a second people’s vote, but the answer was “We already had one”, and Boris would “get Brexit done”. Now as of 1st of February, the UK really is no longer part of the EU. Will Britain now get great again? Sorry, it will not. So the only good news from London this Friday was the signing of an other new player for West Ham United.
An updated version of this post has been published at West Ham Till I Die on 5 February 2020
In the brilliant book “Rule Britannia. Brexit and the End of Empire” the authors argue that the vote to leave the EU was the last gasp of the old empire working its way out of the British psyche, fuelled by an unrealistic vision of Britain’s future. I wish the UK well in the upcoming negotiations with the EU, but I fear it will be a tough match and in the end the outcome will not be satisfactory. Well, that reminds me of how things panned out at football club West Ham United after leaving the Boleyn (which by the way happened at the same time as the referendum whether to leave the EU).
With the move from Upton Park to the Olympic Stadium the West Ham faithful were promised golden days ahead, the Board was even talking of Champions League football within some years. But now we’ve got the second relegation battle within three years.
Even when the owners, after fan protests inside and outside the unloved new stadium, finally decided to invest a notable amount of money into the squad and hire a decent manager in 2018, it seems we were deluded in some way.
It was not only me who thought that with Manuel Pellegrini, a very successful manager with his former clubs, who had got the job in 2018 and was the highest paid gaffer in West Ham’s history, a “revolution” would start and bring success to a club where fortune’s had been hiding for much too long.
Pellegrini’s first season wasn’t bad. After a slow start with four defeats the players seemed to understand the new way of attacking play the Chilean tried to instil, there were glimpses of a fine style of play dubbed the “West Ham way” in former times, and a number of good results with a lot of goals scored were achieved. Sometimes it seemed the squad had developed a formerly unknown “winning mentality”, and they accumulated more wins in a single month than ever before in Premier League history in December 2018. And last season even I was lucky enough to attend four consecutive wins on my travels to the London Stadium (Burnley 4-2, Crystal Palace 3-2, Arsenal 1-0 and Southampton 3-0).
When the Irons started very well this season, things looked bright and again it wasn’t just me who thought that West Ham had one of the strongest squads in recent history this term and that they would go on to finally win something after many, many years without silverware. This year it is forty years that the Hammers have won the FA Cup, it’s “time to be great again” this season, isn’t it? That’s what we thought after the 2018/19 “transitional season”, which now would surely be followed by one more step forward for the Club.
And, after an inevitable defeat to Manchester City in the first game of the new season, things really seemed to turn out very well for West Ham when they had a run of six games in which they remained unbeaten with three wins in the Premier League and one in their first game of the League Cup. What a promising start into this anniversary season that was, 40 years after the Irons’ last win of the FA Cup!
But then our seemingly talismanic goalkeeper, Lukasz Fabianski, the fabulous shotstopper and Hammer of the Year 2019, got injured, and West Ham suddenly found itself in a downward spiral which Manuel Pellegrini was unable to stop. His substitute goalie Roberto who had been brought to West Ham by Pellegrini and his director of sports Husillos, instead of former fans favourite Adrian, proved completely unable to cope with the task of playing in the Premier League. He was a factor of highest uncertainty that also unsettled the defenders in front of him. With West Ham’s defence a complete shambles the Hammers shipped goals after goals! Four goals were conceded from minnows Oxford United, and West Ham’s exit from the League Cup against this third tier opposition was followed by a dismal run of seven league games with Roberto without a win. At last Pellegrini decided to hand the club’s third keeper his Premier League debut, and David Martin found himself between the sticks against Chelsea.
It was a dream start for the 33 year old, son of former Hammers center back Alvin Martin: He kept a clean sheet at Stamford Bridge, helping West Ham win 1-0 away against the Blues. He broke into tears after the final whistle and then sprinted up the stairs of the away stand to celebrate the win with his father, West Ham legend Alvin Martin, who was a member of West Ham’s Cup winning team of 1980.
But it was a short-lived upturn in West Ham’s fortunes, followed by just one win within the next five games. Pellegrini seemed utterly clueless, he looked an old man in the dugout who had completely lost the dressing room, being unable to coach his team, and making strange substitutions which nobody could understand…
Instead of a step forward the Club now made one back, fired MP after an other defeat to Leicester City by the end of December, and reappointed David Moyes who had saved the Hammers from relegation in 2018. Then the Scot had not been found good enough to remain the Club’s manager and had been replaced by Chilean high-calibre manager Manuel Pellegrini.
Moyes’s start into his second reign at the London Stadium was all but perfect with a 4-0 home win over fellow strugglers Bournemouth, but the shape of the squad he inherited is simply not good enough to restart a season which really has been a desaster so far. The FA Cup win at Gillingham was followed by a league defeat at Sheffield United (with a controversial VAR decision when West Ham’s equaliser in the last minute of the game didn’t stand because of Declan Rice’s completely unintentional and unavoidable handball in the build-up to the goal). The Hammers couldn’t climb up the table, and now they find themselves as seventeenths just above the relegation zone, separated from the eighteenth only by goal difference. They have also been eliminated from the FA Cup by former Hammers coach Slaven Bilic’s West Brom.
With a very bad home record this season we have to fear the worst when this Saturday’s must-win game against Brighton is played at the London Stadium where the Hammers have won only three games out of thirteen so far this season.
Therefore the West Ham faithful hoped that “transfer deadline day” which coincided with Brexit Day had to be a day to provide some hope Hammers who had only welcomed Czech midfield player Tomas Soucek (24) from Slavia Prague within this window so far. And it really went down to the wire: just minutes before deadline West Ham got their second new player, bringing in versatile attacker Jarrod Bowen from Hull City
23-year-old Bowen, who scored 54 goals and added 14 assists in 131 matches for Hull, has signed a contract until the summer of 2025.
Manager David Moyes said: “I think he could be a big success. When you score goals like he does, and in the numbers he does, in the Championship, it will give you a great chance of scoring goals in the Premier League.”
Well, that was good news from London at last. I hope more good news will be coming today when West Ham United play Brighton & Hove this afternoon!
Interesting FA Cup Draw for WHU
West Ham have been drawn to face Slaven Bilic’s West Bromwich Albion in FA Cup fourth round.
David Moyes‘s men will take on the Baggies, now managed by former Hammers manager Slaven Bilic, at London Stadium on the 25th of January, 3 p.m.
West Ham booked their place in the competition’s last-32 by defeating League One Gillingham 2-0 at Priestfield on Sunday.
On Monday evening they were drawn against Championship promotion-chasers West Brom, who saw off fellow second tier side Charlton Athletic in their third round match.
Slaven Bilic managed the Hammers in their last season at the Boleyn Ground and their first season at the London Stadium, but was sacked in autumn 2017 when West Ham was dragged into the relegation battle. He had to give way for David Moyes who saved West Ham from the drop, but wasn’t considered the right man to reach “the next level” and was replaced by Manuel Pellegrini at the beginning of the 2018/19 season. However, now Moisy is back to stop the Hammers’ free fall in Pellegrini’s second season, and the Scotsman has delivered two wins on his first two games back at West Ham, and recently has declared that for him “the FA Cup is joint equal with making sure we’re as high up the Premier League as we can.”
Moyes said that the Hammers “need to do everything we can to get through in the Cup” and that he would love to reach the final this year as he did with Everton in 2009, when the Toffees eventually were beaten 1-2 by Chelsea.
Slaven Bilic has been out of the game since his departure from West Ham, until he took charge at the Hawthorns last summer. He has enjoyed a superb start to life in the dugout at the Midlands club, who currently sit second in the Championship table.
That’s really going to be a very interesting encounter at the London Stadium on the weekend of 25 January 2020!
Happy Start into New Year for Hammers and Moyes
David Moyes – a manager who seems nobody wanted … But his West Ham return got off to the best possible start as captain Mark Noble with two goals helped his side to an emphatic 4-0 victory over Bournemouth.
The owners didn’t reckon David Moyes to be good enough to take the Club “to the next level” just 18 months ago, and refused to extend his short term contract after he had led West Ham to Premier League safety at the end of the 2017-18 season. But on Sunday they reappointed the Scotsman to replace the sacked Manuel Pellegrini in order to stop West Ham’s free fall under a manager who had not seemed capable anymore to turn around West Ham’s season.
And in Moyes’s first game the fans saw quite a different kind of West Ham: though sticking by and large with the players who had performed so poorly under Manuel Pellegrini, the team looked far better organised and much happier to be playing under the new manager. After a slow start Captain Mark Noble opened the scoring inside 20 minutes with the help of a deflection. The skipper geed up the crowd as the match got back under way, signalling to them to ramp up the volume, and they did exactly that when Sebastien Haller‘s sensational bicycle kick doubled the Hammers’ lead just 7 minutes later.
Noble scored his second in the 35th minute from the penalty spot after being brought down by Harry Wilson, before Felipe Anderson, scoring hits first goal since April, completed the rout in the second half.
The emphatic victory over a completely out-of-form Cherries team was West Ham’s first win at home for more than three months, their last victory at the London Stadium being the 2-0 over Manchester United on September 22.
The fans in the London Stadium enjoyed “the best atmosphere in a long time”, appreciating that “every single player put in a shift, fighting for every ball and pressing” as @hollseey put it on twitter.
This perfect start for Moyes’s second spell at the east London Club lifts them out of the relegation zone, with Bournemouth slipping down the Premier League table into 18th.
The 4-0 is West Ham’s biggest Premier League win since November 2007, when they beat Derby 5-0 at Pride Park. It’s the Hammers’ biggest home win in the competition since September 2005 (4-0 v Aston Villa).
The Hammers’ next games will see them travel to Gillingham in the third round of the FA Cup on Sunday (18:16 GMT), followed by a league trip to Sheffield United next Friday (20:00 GMT).
-> Watch West Ham’s goals here!
Happy New Year 2020
Psalm 1
Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.
“The key to lasting – and ultimately eternal – fruitfulness and vitality lies in your relationship with God. As you seek to follow ‘the way of the righteous’, you are assured that the Lord himself will watch over you (v.6).
“Lord, thank you for your wonderful promises as I resolve to make a regular habit of delighting in your word and meditating on it.”
“Bible in one year” by Nicky Gumbel, HTB
Back to square one: Moyes is the “new” manager!
West Ham United have quickly found Manuel Pellegrini’s successor in appointing his predecessor: On Sunday, less than 24 hours after Pelle’s sacking the Club confirmed that David Moyes has returned to West Ham as their new manager to succeed Manuel Pellegrini.
Moyes has signed an 18-month deal and begins work immediately ahead of the New Year’s Day fixture with AFC Bournemouth at London Stadium.
Joint-Chairman David Sullivan said: “David proved in his short time with the Club (18 months ago) that he was capable of getting results and we believe that he will start moving the Club in the right direction.”
The Scotsman first came into the east London managerial position after Slaven Bilic’s resignation in autumn 2017 and led West Ham to a safe finish of the 2017-18 season, transforming Marko Arnautovic from an unlucky winger into a proliferous central striker in the process.
Moyes then was found unfit by the board to help West Ham reach “the next level” and his short-term contract was not extended beyond the end of the season. Instead Manuel Pellegrini was appointed of whom we thought that his reign would be the start of a “revolution” and bring back attacking football dubbed as the “West Ham way”. That has worked for some time during his first season, though there also had been some slumps and consistency was lacking. But then Pellegrini turned out to be a “one trick pony” and he proved unable to instil new confidence into a Club that was in downfall from the beginning of October until now.
This time David Moyes was hired not only until the end of the season but on the basis of an 18-months-contract. Let’s wish him well and hope he will be able to strengthen the squad in the January transfer window. However, when Moyes said last night that he rated the current squad even higher than the one he oversaw in 2017-18, this could be a hint that he won’t have enough funds to do big business in the window. Two years ago his recruiting of striker Jordan Hugill did not prove a success, so let’s hope his decisions will be better this time.
But first of all Moyes quickly has to instill new confidence in to the frustrated squad to bring West Ham back to winning ways. We’re desperately in need of points to avoid dropping further down the table, as the Hammers are sitting just one point above the relegation zone.
Moyes said that it felt “fabulous to be back”: “I’ve missed being here because I really enjoyed it and I feel like I’ve got unfinished business, so I can’t wait to get started.
“I’m feeling very proud that I’m back here, but more importantly I’ll be looking to see what I can do, what improvements I can make and how we can get some wins.”
Come on you Irons!
Pellegrini sacked
The “Pellegrini Revolution” has come to a premature end, but it’s been overdue: After a fourth home defeat in a row the West Ham Board have finally come to the decison to thank Manuel Pellegrini for his service and part company with the manager who had seemed completely clueless how to turn around West Ham’s fortune recently. West Ham captain Declan Rice said the frustration of the squad was “10 out of 10”, blaming a lack of confidence for his side’s slide from fifth in the table at the end of September to the cusp of the bottom three. Pellegrini has left the Club with immediate effect.
The following statement was issued after another home defeat on Saturday evening with West Ham losing 1-2 to Leicester:
Joint-Chairmen David Sullivan and David Gold, along with the Board and everyone at West Ham United, would like to place on record their thanks to Manuel for his service over the past 18 months.
Mr Sullivan said: “It is with great disappointment that we’ve had to make this decision. Manuel is a gentleman and it has been a real pleasure to work with someone of his calibre.
“However, it has become clear that that a change is required to get the Club back on track in line with our ambitions this season. We felt it was necessary to act now in order to give the new manager as much time as possible to try and achieve that goal.”
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