Embattled Roeder won't resort to ranting and raving

The West Ham crisis: Manager stays cool in the cauldron

If tea-cups are thrown or curses screamed in the West Ham United dressing room this afternoon, the most likely perpetrator will be the team's captain, not the manager. Paolo Di Canio and Glenn Roeder – both of whose futures at Upton Park remain unknowable – care deeply about the club, but have very different ways of showing it.

The contrasting approaches will be on public display against Leeds United today, and were on show to a rather smaller audience at the ground on Friday lunchtime. First, there was an extraordinary episode in the main car park, in which an excitable Di Canio, in full training kit, appeared to be persuading the French midfielder Laurent Courtois, who was in civvies, with car key in hand, that there was still work to be done before going-home time. With much arm-waving and shouting, watched by the rather embarrassed Titi Camara and a security man, the argument was eventually won and all three players returned inside.

The mind went back to an interview with Di Canio in the morning newspaper: "There is only one way for this club to improve and that is for everyone to work and work on the training ground. The culture at the moment is not right and the club is suffering."

An hour later, Roeder was as calm and cerebral as ever, in dealing with the day's media interviews. Wholeheartedly credited by Joe Cole and others with bringing greater discipline and organisation to West Ham, he is at the other end of the emotional scale to Di Canio, but argues strongly that this does not signify any lack of passion or desire: "I played for one or two managers who have to be nameless that used to jump up and down, win, lose or draw, at half-time and at full-time and I never had any respect for those people. They didn't make any sense when they ranted and raved, they just made themselves look stupid and it went in one ear and out of the other.

"I don't know how you can get an accurate assessment by leaping up and down all the time. The game is played at such a pace that you need to concentrate on it to take in what is happening. Foreign coaches like Gérard Houllier, Arsène Wenger and Sven Goran Eriksson are not ranters and ravers, but they've all been incredibly successful."

Can it be that easy to stay controlled, when 35,000 are making their feelings known and points are slipping away, as they have been at Upton Park this season? "I think that's me by nature. I played like that. The players will tell you that I have my moments and if I need to raise my voice, it's not a problem. But when you keep it to rare occasions, it has a better effect. Maybe it sometimes sends out the wrong signals to your own supporters, that you're a bit too laid-back. But what I'm saying to them is that I'm also angry and frustrated when things aren't going well."

Five home defeats, on either side of a goalless draw against Manchester City, indicate how badly they are going at the moment, last Wednesday's loss to Oldham Athletic in the Worthington Cup representing a new low. Roeder stayed back at Upton Park until the early hours, reviewing the nastiest of videos.

Di Canio was missing on that occasion and will be welcomed back all the more warmly today for having been an inspirational part of three successive away victories at Chelsea, Sunderland and Fulham. How much longer he will be around remains impossible to say, though the end of the season might well be the time to say "ciao". The Italian had no luck in trying to impose a deadline of the end of October for West Ham to make their intentions plain; the club's managing director, Paul Aldridge, merely told him that they were not in a position to offer a new contract at the present time.

Roeder's diplomatic interpretation on Friday was that January was the earliest that negotiations might begin, aware as he is that from the new year foreign clubs can talk to players out of contract in June and sign a pre-contract.

The point appears to be that a team still in danger of heading for the Nationwide League in two months' time would not want to take on the burden of a new contract at some £40,000 per week, especially if it meant that another of the club's younger England players would have to be sacrificed.

"Glenn Roeder realises I help him a lot," said Di Canio. The manager admits: "He's a very, very big player for us, especially in the situation we're in, where you want people who don't play with fear."

They are playing with fire down by the Boleyn. Arms waving in the penalty area or arms folded on the touchline, it needs to be doused soon.