Martin Samuel: Zola, nice bloke, but as useful as Bungle in fight to the death

13 February 2010 01:08
The club shop at West Ham United has a turnover in the region of £5million and breaks even. This may come as a surprise. It certainly did to the new owners. [LNB]If a retail premises is not turning a profit this usually means there is a surplus of stock, unsold. In West Ham's case there are approximately 26,000 kits from last season's order of 85,000 piled up in a warehouse. When David Sullivan and David Gold took over, the requisition was already being submitted for next year's kit. The order: 85,000.[LNB]Now the full horror of the last decade of misrule at Upton Park is unfolding, the truth is revealed. It is not, as ever, a parable for all football. It does not epitomise or define the Premier League era. It is a simple tale of a group of people who did not have a clue.[LNB]If the club is on the verge of bankruptcy and the chief executive is earning £300,000 and driving an Aston Martin it says nothing about football and everything about him,and the nature of personal responsibility.[LNB] Bungle wearing a West Ham shirt [LNB]Gold and Sullivan estimate that Kieron Dyer may end up costing theclub £30m for a handful of appearances, and basket case transfers ofthis enormity are understandably eye-catching. Yet the devil is in thedetails. Eggert Magnusson, the former chairman, paid his personalassistant almost double the going rate of most secretarial jobsadvertised in the Cr? de la Cr? section of The Times.Compared to the amount dribbling down the drain courtesy of misplacedfaith in Dyer's fitness, it was chickenfeed, but expanded throughout aclub, and woven into thefabric of the business, it explains why West Ham teeter on the precipice.[LNB]All departments are dysfunctional because of years of inadequate leadership. Any shortcomings on the field are devastatingly mirrored in theadministration. Terence Brown, the former chairman, still commands araft of complimentary tickets, for home and away games.[LNB]One consultant was due a payment of £10,000 for advising on how successfully theclub interacted with its supporters via its website. There is, to date, no evidence ofhow this was achieved in any professionally recognised manner. If there were ideas,proposals, admonishments, they would appear to have been verbal. Maybe theanalyst stuck his head round the door and gave somebody a thumbs-up.[LNB]With hindsight, the biggest misfortune that befell West Ham Unitedwas that the club was not relegated in the season of the Carlos Tevezscandal. It would have been impossible for Magnusson to behave withsuch scant regard for reality in the Championship and many of hisprofligate excesses would have been curtailed. Yet even had he beenunable to make vanity purchases such as Freddie Ljungberg, there wouldhave been a sobering reckoning one day. The Armageddon time that ispredicted if the club is relegated this season would have happened someday. West Ham, as a business, or as a sporting institution, did notinhabit the real world.[LNB] Excessive: Ljungberg departed after just one season - and just two goals - at Upton Park, with the Swede rumoured to have received a seven-figure pay-off[LNB][LNB]Maybe they still don't. Never has the phrase 'too good to go down'been more optimistically misused on a football team than on GianfrancoZola's this season. West Ham went down with 42 points in 2003, thebiggest total of any relegated club since  the Premier League wasreduced to 20 teams in 1995 (next on the list of unfortunates areSunderland and Bolton, who accrued 40 points in 1996-97 and 1997-98respectively).[LNB]   More from Martin Samuel... EXCLUSIVE: Pompey rescue mission - Premier League set to hand out lifeline11/02/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: When celebrity exiles try to lord it back home11/02/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: Judge Rio on what he does now, not what he did then07/02/10 Chelsea 2 Arsenal 0: Deadly Didier Drogba rifles Blues to the summit as John Terry stands tall to wreck Gunners' title bid07/02/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: Never mind morals, sacking of Terry was stand for England05/02/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: Role models? Try using your own moral compass04/02/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: Cool Capello is worth so much more than our berk of a Sports Minister02/02/10 Martin Samuel: Captains lead by example... so John Terry must go now before he's pushed by Fabio Capello31/01/10 VIEW FULL ARCHIVE To put this into perspective, the same points total last season wouldhave given West Ham a 13th-place finish, eight points clear ofNewcastle United. This season, at the current aggregate of points pergame, West Ham are on course to reach 33.25. The lowest points totalrecorded by a team stayingup in a 38-game Premier League season is 34 by West Bromwich Albion in 2004-05. The signs are not encouraging. Even a purely subjective analysis of the two eras would suggest trouble ahead.[LNB]The West Ham team that went down in 2003 was a different class from the one fighting relegation now, and included David James, Glen Johnson, Trevor Sinclair, Joe Cole and Jermain Defoe, most of whom would walk into the current team (James and Rob Green might battle it out; the rest, no contest).[LNB]Yet the new owners are growing increasingly frustrated at being told that this will not be a relegation season.[LNB]There is a point at which positive self-belief meets complacency and the pair have dined on expenses at West Ham for too long.[LNB]Perhaps the dose of reality Sullivan introduced by talking of 25 per cent wage cuts in the summer was ill-timed, but the problem is one of extremes; West Ham has shifted from a land of plenty to one of austerity with no middle ground.[LNB]Showing the strain: Zola[LNB]It is also a complication that to even half-question Zola's ability toretrieve the situation feels a little like taking a pot-shot at Bambi.He was such a lovely footballer and is such a nice man. Everyone saysit, even the new regime. There is a universal will for him to succeed. And yet does Zola know what is required to keep a team in this division?[LNB]Sullivan mentioned the dreaded name this morning, comparing Zola to Ossie Ardiles, another of nature's gentlemen and a wonderful player, who as a manager seemed as well equipped for a duel to the death in England's top division as Bungle from Rainbow would be in a cage fighting arena.[LNB]Zola introduced three new strikers in the transfer window to a squad that has kept two clean sheets in all competitions since August, when he sold central defender James Collins to Aston Villa. [LNB]West Ham keep it tight away from home, only letting in two goals more than Manchester City, but the record at home is poor: 20 conceded in 11 League games, the worst ratio in the division.[LNB]On Sunday, Zola was at Chelsea to watch the match with Arsenal and was warmly greeted by many who saw him in the press room. He was smiling and charming, as always. Meanwhile, on a television in the background, Birmingham City were mounting the fight back against Wolverhampton Wanderers that stopped West Ham slipping from 18th to 19th place and enduring a thoroughly miserable weekend, considering the defeat at Burnley and the fact that Hull City had, against the odds, beaten Manchester City.[LNB]Yet West Ham play Birmingham tonight. So, if Zola was out watching football, why at Stamford Bridge and not St Andrew's? No doubt there will have been West Ham scouts present in the Midlands, no doubt tapes will have been studied and preparations made this week, but if David Moyes, the Everton manager, whose team are now safe, bothered to make the trip to Chelsea in advance of their visit to Goodison Park, is Zola truly so insightful that he could learn nothing from seeing Birmingham, first-hand?[LNB]Or is he, like the rest of them, merely convinced that West Ham are too good to go down, which is why they will need 110,000 replica shirts next season. Hurry, while stocks last.[LNB] Gianfranco Zola hits back at West Ham co-owners David Sullivan and David Gold over wage cut revelations West Ham players face massive wage cut to avoid financial 'Armageddon'Dyer straits! Five starts, no goals...and Kieron will cost West Ham £30million![LNB] Capello is just getting on with his jobOne of the arguments against Fabio Capello's decision to remove John Terry as England captain is that he has not solved the problem. [LNB]The line of reasoning goes like this. If the issue was that Terry had lost the respect of the dressing-room and, certainly, of his team-mate Wayne Bridge, then taking the captaincy away merely tinkers with this complication rather than resolving it. [LNB]The only way it will be dealt with is if Terry is eliminated from the squad entirely. This weakens England's World Cup chances, however, which is why nobody in their right mind advocates it. Therefore, why do anything at all? This is window-dressing, not real action.[LNB]Pragmatic: Capello[LNB]Like the accusation that Capello has introduced a moral code by stealth and has made Rio Ferdinand, Terry's successor, vulnerable to calls for his dismissal over any minor indiscretion, it has a certain logic but falls down on one important fact: Capello does not care.[LNB]He does not care how the soap opera between Terry and Bridge plays out from here, as long as both men are prepared to act in a professional manner while on England duty. He does not care that Ferdinand is currently serving a four-match ban or what he got up to on holiday 12 years ago. [LNB]He does not believe he has set a precedent over Terry, but that he responded to a unique situation that had become unmanageable and was therefore in danger of harming the team. By comparison the fall-out from here is minor and of no concern, the equivalent of those noisy neighbours Sir Alex Ferguson said could be drowned out by turning up the television.[LNB]And Capello is right. Already what this time last week was a saga of national importance has been reduced to very English twaddle. I caught a glimpse of GMTV on Monday where two bozos on the sofa appeared to be discussing the very deep messages posted on the T-shirt of Toni Poole, the estranged wife of Terry. 'I love the chaos,' it read on the front of her top. 'I hate the confusion,' it stated on the back.[LNB]Cos-bloody-mic, as Rodney Trotter would say. The sound was down, so it was impossible to know what was being considered but from the expressions on the faces it did not look as if these were professors of linguistics coolly pointing out that, in this context, the words chaos and confusion are as near in definition as to be interchangeable, and therefore the statement is contradictory and completely meaningless. [LNB]'Now what exactly is Toni trying to say and to whom?' asked one blogger as news of this momentous pronouncement sizzled around the electronic media. This is where we are at now. Capello would not even know this world of cobblers existed.[LNB]If Bridge turns up to play in the friendly with Egypt in March there will be much fun interpreting his interaction with Terry. Do the men acknowledge each other on the training field, do they exchange glances, or passes, or handshakes when the match is over? There will be much working of dressing-room contacts, too. What was the atmosphere like? How did the players react to Terry? What was it like between him and Ferdinand? All twaddle, though, isn't it? All irrelevant to Capello. [LNB]The English love a bit of scandal, love a bit of gossip and with little to excite them about the match - a home friendly against unspectacular opposition - they will resort to titillating diversions which will leave the coach unmoved. [LNB]If Terry and Bridge end up brawling in the penalty area, then Capello gets involved; if a journalist is dispatched to Wembley to bring psychological meaning to the movements of two footballers observed for 45 minutes from 60 yards away, then why should he care?[LNB]Similarly, those that have detected inconsistency in the appointment of Ferdinand, based on past indiscretions or his current suspension for violent conduct, are missing the point, too. As of Sunday in Warsaw, Capello had not yet spoken to his new captain to inform him of the decision.[LNB]He simply assumed that, as Terry was captain and Ferdinand vice-captain, now Terry had been sacked, Ferdinand would presume his promotion. A red card for Manchester United is undesirable, but not exceptional, and certainly nothing that would compromise his status with England. [LNB]Again, it would not enter Capello's mind that it would be a concern for some. He does not think that way. We can read the tea leaves or the T-shirts; he just gets on with the job.[LNB]Contact Martin at: m.samuel@dailymail.co.uk [LNB]  

Source: Daily_Mail