#another weird thing: did not intentionally make font bigger.

[bringerofdarkness-fancomic]

Bringer of Darkness: Arc 1, Page 28.

That can't be good....

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Assessing the Bilic years...

I can remember writing a number of post-mortems in the past 20 years. Of Redknapp, Roeder, Pardew etc. Of relegation seasons. The truth is that likely nobody, even those directly involved will ever quite be sure what exactly went wrong in any period - football is too complicated to ever categorically know. So it is with Bilic. He was at the club and then he was sacked - that we do know.

How did Bilic's first season succeed? Maybe that’s the more important question in a way.

Bilic inherited what was broadly a squad that had blown hot and cold under Allardyce’s limited blueprint, and I remember feeling major trepidation over the changeover to any manager - as we know Allardyce's model is one of discipline and physical hard work rather than technique or inspiration. I felt, and still feel, that any successor to any Allardyce side will experience a culture shock when trying to do anything that isn't what Allardyce did. I mention this because I still think it's an issue at the club. Fact is that Reid and Collins are last-ditch blockers and clearers not ball-players. Kouyate is a blood and thunder midfield beast but not a shrewd positional thinker. Carroll as we all know can be played one way - either you hit him high from distance and early, or you don't bother with him at all. These issues do cast a shadow over Bilic's time at the club - they would cast a shadow over anyone's.

But what happened despite these issues was a crazy run of early wins under Bilic, against many of the top sides in the country. I think what is forgotten about that is that this was not only down to Payet, but also Zarate, also known as a mercurial attacking wildcard. Add to that Lanzini's introduction to the league, with Kouyate's lungbusting runs from midfield, and what you have is a wildly unpredictable counter-attacking force. Something about the changing meta in the premiership fit with West Ham (and Leicester's) ability to spring from deep into attack and some indifferent defences among the bigger teams.

In September 2015 this was my assessment - "The big plus is that we're scoring goals. But what worries me is the lack of control - very few matches we have actually really been on top. Against Liverpool we were brilliant, and first half vs Man City we were brilliant - the rest of the time I think we haven't been functioning properly. The side is too top heavy with attacking players who we struggle to feed the ball to because we have no control - I don't think the squad is properly balanced. I think that when the shots stop going in the wheels could really come off - that's my concern."

I think, crucially, it was a lucky run. It was the sort of lucky run you can only get with a manager willing to gamble on attacking football built on fragile foundations. A dour manager would never have even tried it, so if Bilic should be praised for one thing it should be his willingness to take risks!

One thing with Bilic - while I gravely doubt his ability as a tactician, I do not doubt his abilities as a motivator. The team hit the ground running and he was able to marshall that drive over a season. What actually happened was that Payet got injured and Zarate left in January and actually West Ham quickly became a much less dynamic force, but yet with momentum gained they managed to continue to grind out good results albeit in a much less impressive way. While most of the mid-table already had an eye on their Summer holidays, Bilic's West Ham was driving towards an impressive finish and some great memories. But what was it built on? A bit of the defensive organisation left over from Allardyce, some great attacking talent, and Bilic's sheer bravado in putting that on a pitch and challenging it to express itself. West Ham finished 7th but probably came closer to a champions league place than at any time in the premiership era.

But already there were negative issues. Bilic's belief in Antonio as a potential right-back never really saw results on the pitch, the defence was often breached and started to look rather fragile. The midfield mix was incredibly bizarre for so much of that season - often Kouyate would play as the designated DM but frequently make runs ahead of the ball and beyond the striker! Bilic talked about attacking street football and the result might have been occasionally devastating but it was often hard to actually decipher what formation the players were even playing in.

I think what happened since is that teams got used to that approach, saw through it, and the house of cards collapsed. The funny thing about Bilic's stock system is that it can be exploited through the middle or out wide. If you use width then you can double up on flanks where luxury wide players don't always offer protection to full backs. And given Bilic's refusal to play a standard central midfield, you can flood the centre as well. I just don't believe another Premiership team has played as 'open' as Bilic's West Ham in the last two and a half years. Once teams worked that out, the dream was over. And Bilic has simply not offered a convincing alternative to what he initially put out on the pitch - for all his constant tinkering with formations and team selections, the team seems to carry the same basic lack of balance. When he went three at the back the team could keep a clean sheet but had nothing as an attacking force. And everything else has been porous. It's just categorically a dysfunctional unit.

For me, the writing was on the wall in September 2016. A Southampton home defeat was the final straw for me - I simply didn't see an effective way back to any sort of efficiency on the pitch. Where I have to give some backhanded credit to Bilic is that he's battled from that period until today without his team providing any sort of real effectiveness on the pitch, but has got enough results to get through another year with players and supporters and owners broadly onside. In so many crucial games where you might have felt his job was on the line the team came through... just. The Sunderland 1-0. The Burnley 1-0. The Hull 1-0 where they completely battered us. The Palace 3-0. The Huddersfield and Swansea 1-0s this season. It's been an incredible run of tight wins under pressure - that's a happy knack. I think it's weird how this has been interpreted in the media - they ask 'why does Bilic always seem to be under pressure?' but the answer is because he genuinely was under pressure for a long time and managed to successfully fight off those issues for over a year!

The support of Bilic to me is one of the weirdest factors of the whole episode. For me, there have only been a handful of genuinely creditable performances since Summer 2016. It is bemusing how much support Bilic has maintained in this period despite all the poor performances on the field. Was it simply the appealing personality that was such a hit on ITV's football coverage at the 2016 euros? The idea (based on very little in my opinion) that he was 'one of us' ie a West Ham man? Or that the odds were stacked against him because of the move to a new stadium? Or perhaps given the negative criticism of the owners over recent years perhaps he was simply seen as the goodie in the narrative?

I do (contentiously) think a factor that massively helped Bilic stay in the job was the Payet issue. It managed to create a scapegoat for all of West Ham's problems at a time when Bilic was under the most significant pressure. I'm not suggesting Bilic intentionally used it as a diversion, but he did volunteer all the details and aired the dirty laundry in public when other clubs would bury it and solve the issue quietly and efficiently. When the scrutiny should have been heavily on Bilic, it was applied to Payet instead. Of course Payet deserves criticism, but I just don't believe that one aloof player is to blame for all the problems at a club for which the manager should be ultimately responsible. Why was Payet disillusioned? Perhaps it was the awful standard of football we'd played for the previous 5 months?

This season Bilic's luck has finally run out. Playing three away games at the start of the season was obviously a factor. But I must admit that I can't really explain why after a 0-3 defeat at home to Brighton it suddenly seemed like the tipping point where attitudes seemed to wholly change, among fans and media and the owners too. Perhaps if any of those crucial fixtures over the 14 month period had been a 0-3 instead of a 1-0 Bilic might have fallen at any of those points - it's hard to be sure. Certainly we've lost heavily to Liverpool before, and a draw at Palace is not actually that bad a result in the scheme of things. It just suddenly felt like a huge bunch of us just felt it was now time for a change - it's inexplicable really, but I do think that eventually it was just bound to happen.

A lot has been said about the transfer strategy over the last two Summers, and there's no doubt it has been dysfunctional, but I see it less as a cause of Bilic's failure and more of an effect. Yes the 2016 intake was bizarre with multiple players pointlessly bought for the right-wing position that Antonio already inhabits, but I still believe that was a squad capable of much better than what Bilic produced (look at what Zaza and Nordtveit are achieving at other clubs this season). Of course the January intake of Snodgrass and Fonte was incredibly short-sighted, but that doesn't explain Snodgrass's account of the bizarre way he was treated by Bilic. Yes we have ended up with a poor squad, and much of that decision-making is driven by Bilic, but I think the writing was on the wall long before this Summer's poor intake. Whatever your views on the Carvalho transfer, Bilic has had a huge amount of money spent on his squad by the club, and the result is that the squad and the results have got steadily worse - it's simply a losing proposition.

So what went wrong with Bilic? He set up a fragile top-heavy attacking team that was eventually found out. He seemed poor at evaluating his own players and what the team and squad needed to improve it. He seemed very reactionary and rather simplistic in team selection and tactics - if something worked for 5 minutes, he would stick with it until it went wrong. His coaches didn't seem very good at improving players, or working with youth. And over time, his luck simply ran out. I honestly don't believe he's a very good manager at this time - so much of what he's done still seems inexplacable and quite bizarre to me. The regime brought some thrills, but ultimately it just didn't really function very well.