Saturday 10 March 2012

My Letter To Allardyce

Dear Mr Allardyce,

I'm writing you to show my concerns about our team. Do not get me wrong you are a very respectable manager and have a very good proven track record. Our away form is full credit to this. We have played some fantastic football and have looked extremely dangerous. My concern though is our home form. Do not get me wrong I don't think it's all the team at fault or yourself, I also believe the fans could be partly to blame. Our atmosphere at home games has been practically non existent (if you ignore Millwall and Southampton) unless we score a goal or get a corner.

I feel this atmosphere is having a knock on effect to our players. When the crowd are frustrated and quiet our team appears to panic, we then resort to kicking the ball long to our strikers, which everyone can see is not helping us at all. I feel you need to calm our team down in these situations, remind them of their abilities and make them play a simple pass and move game. The team would then start to dominate games and create more clear cut chances, instead of kicking it long and suddenly see the pressure thrown straight back on ourselves, thus tiring our defenders and making a mistake far more likely.

Please can you remind this to the players and encourage them to try to play like that, I will almost guarantee if we start playing like that more regularly like we have in multiple away games, our fans would begin to pick up and start to get behind the team a lot more at home again. We have no one to blame but ourselves, all of us, not just the players, not just yourself and not just the fans, we are West Ham and we are all United together. I will never ever boo my side, but after the Doncaster match, we kicked the ball long for 70 minutes, despite everyone, including Julian Dicks who was commentating, pointing out this wasn't helping. Also when we got in wide areas our team seemed reluctant to get the ball in the box, this is one more thing I feel should be encouraged. I'm not real football manager, but I find the long ball see's players like Noble, Nolan, Collison and Lansbury all ignored as it is kicked over their heads, when they are the players who can create chances for players such as Baldock, Cole and Maynard. I don't mind what formation we use, but the tactics at home are not helping any of us. I'm certain you of all people can see that and will push our club to play sensibly. None of us expect us to play like Barcelona, but a simple passing game is something that is hammered into our players minds from a young age throughout the academy, this should not be ignored when playing at home in the first team.

I honestly hope you can help bring back these players confidence in playing in front of a home crowd and win over our fans hearts, which I think you will if we start to play sensible football.

Your Sincerely,

James Bannister

PS Good luck in the remainder of the season, I hope we can all pull together and get us back in the Premier League.