BILIC’S LATE ESCAPE
Boss lives to fight another day after brilliant last throw of the dice
THEY booed at half- time, they booed again at the restart and they booed louder still when Slaven Bilic made a pair of substitutions near the end.
Given what followed, the West Ham manager might have felt entitled to shout a little something back at the final whistle.
Instead, he clapped them. And more than that, he told them they were ‘right to boo, we deserved it’.
When it was put to him that it was the kind of booing that can get a struggling manager the sack, the Croatian simply shrugged.
He is surely aware there is a chunk of the West Ham support that would welcome a change, but he saw no point in gloating about the obvious, which is that his substitutions — the ones that had been jeered — won this match.
It was Arthur Masuaku and Diafra Sakho that rescued the situation and an otherwise turgid match, having come on for Andre Ayew and Javier Hernandez with 12 minutes to go and then linked up f or t he winner at t he death. Masuaku did the hard work down the left and Sakho buried the cross, quite possibly saving Bilic’s job in the process.
‘I would rather make a decision and risk booing than do nothing — that is not what a manager should do,’ he said.
But he knows the uncertainty won’t go away, t hat once t he drumming starts it rarely stops.
‘Of course the speculation is not very pleasant but all I can try to do is win games and we’ve done it today,’ he added. ‘It was not in a great style but th e way we approached the game was as a must-win, a six-pointer.’
With it, West Ham jumped out of the bottom three and up to 15th and Swansea took their place.
The latter deserved a draw, but they also deserved the rollicking they got from Paul Clement, which centred on their utter failure to create chances. It is best shown by the fact they have had only 11 shots on goal all season — the worst tally in the Premier League.
Selling Gylfi Sigurdsson has left them without a meaningful way of getting into the opposition area and this was a game when the weakness was glaringly obvious. Indeed, only Wilfried Bony and Martin Olsson went close, and both shots were from outside the area. In balance, Clement has built Swansea’s best defence for several seasons, but a toothless attack will give them terrible problems if it persists.
Clement was furious, saying: ‘It’s a hard feeling to know we’re going away with nothing. The least we deserved was a draw, though I can’t say we deserved to win — we didn’t create enough.
‘We have to create more chances and score more goals. It’s really frustrating. We’d get into the last third and then do a hopeless ball into the box.
‘ The front players have to do better. I’m concerned.’