Slaven Bilic finds himself in a familiar position as he looks to save his job at West Ham against Tottenham... again
Bilic's contract runs out at the end of the season and it is unlikely he will be at the London Stadium beyond that
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The last time Slaven Bilic saved his job as West Ham manager, he had to beat Tottenham to do it. It was less than five months ago, on 5 May, when West Ham effectively killed Spurs’ title challenge on a raucous Friday night at the London Stadium. It was one of those Bilic performances where every man plays above himself and they floored a team who were 28 points ahead of them.
West Ham had been thinking about sacking Bilic and had already sounded out David Wagner and Marco Silva. But David Sullivan was reluctant to sack his man, not least because he did not want to pay the estimated £3.5m cost of paying off Bilic and his coaching staff.
So after West Ham beat Spurs, Sullivan chose to stick with Bilic, allowing him to go into the final year of his contract. There was even some surprise in Bilic’s own coaching staff, where the expectation was that they would leave.
A few months on, little has changed. West Ham are hosting Tottenham again on Saturday lunchtime. Bilic is still fighting to save his job, after a poor start to the season. Tensions between him and Sullivan have now spilled into public, over the entertaining but unedifying William Carvalho saga. And the question is whether Bilic can turn it all around again, stringing together the results to save his team and himself?
To look at West Ham’s record against Spurs would be to inspire confidence in their chances. The 1-0 win in May was impressive, of course, and so was the 1-0 win at Upton Park in March 2016. Spurs were absolutely flying but Bilic tripped them with his own intense 3-4-2-1 system, making Spurs look flat and tired and seriously derailing their title run. It remains the greatest single managerial performance of Bilic’s time here.
Even when West Ham went to Tottenham last year, when everyone else was getting trampled over there, they were 2-1 up in the final minutes only to lose 3-2. Speaking at his press conference on Thursday, Bilic said that his side tend to play up to these occasions.
“We always put in a special kind of performance,” Bilic said. “We all remember those performances, the fans and the players, and everyone involved talks for months after the games. It gives you good memories and a good pattern to repeat what you have done against that team. You are not asking or when the players think about their tasks, you are not asking them to do what is on paper, they have done it already.”
But this is ultimately Bilic’s problem as West Ham manager. They can get up for a big occasion against a good team – although do not forget the home hammerings they took last year from Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City twice – but those are not the games that determine seasons. West Ham’s record in the low-pressure matches is what drags them down in the table. Last season they lost at home to Watford and Southampton and drew at home with Middlesbrough, Stoke City and West Bromwich Albion.
That contrast, good against Spurs, patchy against the rest, gets to the heart of the issues with Bilic’s management. He is arguably the most intelligent, charismatic and persuasive manager in the Premier League. His great strength in the job, as he showed with Croatia, is motivation. Here, during the 2015-16 season he harnessed the emotional power of the final days of Upton Park to guide West Ham to a seventh placed finish, that could even have been higher.
But the problem with motivational power is that it wears off. The basics of any team – structure, identity, a plan – have to endure regardless. The evidence of Bilic’s West Ham is that those basics barely exist. When Arsenal won 5-1 at the London Stadium last season, one of their players remarked afterwards that West Ham were the worst-organised Premier League team he had ever faced. The coaching staff at another big team have West Ham marked as tactically the worst side in the division.
More than two years into the Bilic reign, this can only come down to one man and his methods. The players admire Bilic as a person and mentor, but there is unease about a lack of detailed, specific tactical work. There were moments last season when players felt they needed more in-depth video sessions, and they rewarded instead with longer motivational lectures.
Charisma and character get you far in football, but only so far. West Ham finished seventh the season before last but it is difficult to see how they can get anywhere near that this year. It is just as hard to envisage Bilic getting a new contract and staying beyond this season. The only question left is when he goes. Whatever happens against Tottenham tomorrow.
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