Slaven's dogged attitude to management

Good interview with Slaven Bilic in the Daily Telegraph last weekend in which he compared managing West Ham to buying a dog. When asked about the risks of possibly tarnishing the fans' memories of his West Ham playing career, Bilic replied: "When you are buying a dog you find like this – ten reasons not to buy it. Because you can’t go out more, if you are travelling it’s a problem, he’s going to pee there and there until he learns. He’s going to bite your cat, he’s going to leave your place smelly. But there is one reason that’s good – he loves you, he loves you. He gives you love. Every time you come home it’s like it’s the first time he’s seen you… So like this with West Ham. There was, there still is, and it’s always going to be (a risk).”

Interesting analogy, particularly when you remember Mad Dog Martin Allen. Think we've all felt at times that West Ham was a mutt who had done something unpleasant in our driveway… though the lads deserve an extra portion of Winalot after Saturday's victory.

Slaven also spoke a lot of sense on not complicating the game with philosophies and methodologies: “So I can use those scientific words every day and people will probably think ‘oh, yeah’. But I prefer to talk simply. Because for me football is a very simple sport. But people are trying to, for some reason, and obviously because there is so much money in it, make it like ‘big-time complicated’." Click on the link to read the whole interview.