THE GREAT BETRAYAL
Payet cries off sick and wants to leave West Ham He’d clashed with Bilic — now there’s a rift with fans
WHEN Slaven Bilic arrived for his press conference at West Ham’s training ground in Rush Green yesterday, it was not the plan to broadcast the Dimitri Payet crisis to the world.
The pair had clashed over Payet’s future earlier in the week, and the player had told Bilic he did not want to play for the club again. Yet to make that public risked creating a rift between the player and the supporters — and potentially making Payet’s long-term position untenable.
In the end, though, Bilic was simply too angry for smokescreens.
The question that provoked his revelation wasn’t even about Payet. No one else in the room knew of the escalation in affairs, not even all the members of West Ham’s media team.
Question: Have you got Scott Hogan? Have you, or have you not, agreed a fee with Brentford?
Bilic: No. Because I don’t see Scott Hogan here. He is not training with us today so . . . Question: Is he close? Bilic: I don’t know. Question: How many overall would you like to bring in?
Bilic: Two or three. But let’s get serious. I have something to tell you. We have a situation with a player. It is Dimitri Payet. He wants to leave . . .
And it went from there. Bilic intimated that Payet was not training, and therefore could not play; he spoke of his anger, of Payet’s lack of commitment. He did not tell the whole story, but he gave away more than was ever scripted. No doubt Bilic was resentful. Payet’s behaviour has placed him in an impossible position, damaging the manager’s credibility with the club.
Bilic was criticised for not starting Payet in the FA Cup against Manchester City, a match West Ham lost 5-0. Now he would be without him against Crystal Palace tomorrow. If he did not provide an explanation it would seem that Bilic had dropped and further alienated West Ham’s best player and the criticism would intensify.
One escape route would be to say Payet had personal issues — not entirely untrue, as this is offered as his motivation for wishing to return to France — and had been given time off to clear his head. Coincidentally, that period would likely chime with the duration of the transfer window after which Payet would have no choice but to return to West Ham’s first team or lose as much as £500,000 in appearance fees.
Then the player reported for training with a back injury. Bilic, already angry, boiled over. Just two minutes before he was due to sit in front of the cameras he told Max Fitzgerald, head of media at West Ham, that he wanted to make a statement on Payet. In the room, media employees in charge of the club’s social media output were given no inkling of what they were about to report.
‘I feel angry,’ Bilic said. ‘This team, the boys, the staff, we gave him everything. We were always there for him. Of course I am feeling let down. I can understand that players are tapped up by clubs. He is not the first or the last but I am disappointed.’
AND with good reason. It is wrong to say that West Ham alone were the making of Payet. He was in Ligue 1’s team of the season for 2012-13 while with Lille, and again with Marseille in 2014-15. In his final season with Marseille before joining West Ham he had more assists than any other player in Ligue 1 and played more successful through-balls than any player in Europe’s top five leagues, bar Lionel Messi.
He first played for France on October 9, 2010, and while he only became a regular last year, he did make a handful of appearances in 2013, 2014 and 2015, too. So West Ham did not turn an ugly duckling into a swan. Bilic did, however, do everything to make what some might term a luxury player into the focal point of West Ham. It was a brave call; one that could have cost him his job, had he got it wrong.
Payet was given freedom that Eden Hazard, for instance, did not have at Chelsea. He was allowed to be an old-fashioned No 10 in many games, with midfield players such as Mark Noble and Cheikhou Kouyate deployed in such a way that much of Payet’s workload was removed. And the players were happy to serve such a talent, too.
The win over Tottenham Hotspur last March was a perfect example of this team spirit, with Bilic playing three at the back and packing midfield to relieve Payet of the task of tracking Mauricio Pochettino’s flying full backs. The game ended in a 1-0 West Ham win to close to within a point of Manchester City in fourth place; times that seem an age away now.
Although he has tweaked his starting position this season — coming in from the flanks in a bid to make him harder to pick up — Bilic remains a huge fan of Payet. He is adamant that, even during his quietest games, West Ham’s best moments still centre around Payet’s invention.
And Bilic was euphoric about his player’s match-winning displays at the European Championship, even though he knew the attention could cause problems for West Ham. That is why he has taken Payet’s change of attitude so much to heart.
The problem, from here, is how Payet recovers his relationship with the supporters, if West Ham stay true to their word and do not sell him in January. It seems likely he will go in the summer, but that still leaves more than three months when he either plays in front of a disgruntled stadium, or idles in the wilderness.
Carlos Tevez enjoyed a happy ending at Manchester City after downing tools — but it did need the club’s first title win under Roberto Mancini to get him there. One could argue Wayne Rooney is still captain of Manchester United, too, after a series of fallings-out — but whether he is a favourite of the fans is another matter.
He has to win the fans back with performances and personality — and driving away from the training ground in a £200,000 Ferrari having left the manager in the lurch against Crystal Palace is not a good start. Of course, this is a bigger problem for the club due to the tension around this season. The London Stadium has been angry at the best of times, with scant excuse needed to get even angrier. There will be those who blame the board, or even the stadium, for this latest debacle. It would never have happened at Upton Park — or if the club had signed better players in the summer. But it probably would.
Payet’s agent used the European Championship to ask for a £40,000 pay rise, not a list of new signings, suggesting his client is motivated as much by economics as aesthetics. The pay rise in Payet’s new contract alone was worth close to £2m over five years.
Also, a look through Payet’s career history suggests this is hardly exceptional behaviour. He ditched Nantes when they were relegated in 2007, was sent to the reserves at St Etienne after agitating for a move to Paris Saint-Germain and agreed terms with West Ham, unbeknown to Marseille. It can hardly be a surprise that he has reverted to type midway through this troubled season.
For Bilic, however, that will not diminish the sense of betrayal. His only hope is that his players wish to prove that Payet’s influence is overstated; even if the numbers suggest that it is not.