Monk fishing

The Daily Star printed a story claiming that West Ham are considering Gary Monk as manager. He's clearly a promising young manager, a Londoner and doing a great job at Swansea. But would he really be the answer? He's had one and a half seasons managing Swansea, where he was previously captain and knew the club. He also took over a good side that had won the League Cup and been largely built by Brendan Rodgers and Michael Laudrup. At a new club he might find things more difficult and would we want him to have his first bad patch the season before the Olympic Stadium move? Yes, he'd come cheaper than Big Sam, but we don't want to recruit solely on that basis.

It's worth considering the replacements we might have had had Big Sam gone last year; Malky Mackey, who would have been caught up in a racist/sexist/homophobic/anti-Semitic text scandal and Gus Poyet, who after a great end of season at Sunderland failed to inspire this time and ended up getting sacked. Despite the post-Christmas slump this has been a promising season with better football and some good signings. Allardyce virtually guarantees we stay up next season; any new manager would have to offer an improvement on that.