Overdue Bil

> Tactically inept and without a plan, West Ham should have sacked Bilic long ago – now Moyes is their prize

spark the players into performing above themselves. It certainly helped, too, that they had one brilliant player in Dimitri Payet who could win games by himself.

West Ham’s seventh-place finish in 2015-16 was an achievement of sorts but it was all downhill from there. The problem is that Bilic is a short-term manager and soon enough the effects of his charisma and intelligence started to wear off. Players will not be in awe of a manager forever. But when that power dissipated, what was left in its place?

Bilic’s West Ham never played with any real identity or structure, or any sense that they were improving towards some idealised standard of performance. Even on their good nights – the two famous 1-0 wins against Tottenham – it felt as if Bilic had happened to land on the right plan and had got his players up for the occasion.

But they were the exceptions, rather than the rule. And while the wins over Tottenham were sweet, West Ham could only watch as Mauricio Pochettino’s Spurs launched two consecutive title challenges while Bilic’s side did nothing of the sort.

Of course there are other reasons which made Bilic’s life difficult. The move from Upton Park to the London Stadium sucked much of the energy out of the club and he was always dealing with haphazard recruitment and an old, tired, bloated squad. And yet he was not entirely innocent in all this. He pulled out of a move for N’Golo Kante in 2015, or for Kelechi Iheanacho this summer when they desperately needed a striker. And it was Bilic who prioritised the signings of Gokhan Tore from Besiktas on loan and then Marko Arnautovic this summer.

By the time David Sullivan was publicly undermining Bilic this summer over the failure to sign Renato Sanches or Grzegorz Krychowiak, as part of the ludicrous William Carvalho saga, the writing was on the wall.

It was only Sullivan’s unwillingness to pay off the last year of Bilic’s contract, and that 1-0 defeat of Spurs in May, that kept Bilic in the West Ham job this summer. At the end of last season West Ham had been asking after David Wagner and Marco Silva about replacing Bilic. But they waited too long and are now left with David Moyes. It is the price they must pay for leaving this decision far too long. – The Independent