In today's Evening Standard, Ken Dyer, who normally gets his West Ham facts right, writes that the West Ham board have given Slaven Bilic four games to save his job. He has been told that results must improve in September, with three home matches against Huddersfield, Spurs and Swansea (plus a League Cup tie against Bolton) and an away match at West Brom.
In defence of Bilic, he's not been able to field a full team yet. Players returning from injury like Antonio, Kouyate and Lanzini will benefit from getting some game time at Newcastle and a two-week international break. Winston Reid and even Andy Carroll might be back for Huddersfield. It also has to be remembered that new signings Hart, Zabaleta, Arnautovic and Hernandez have had only had three games (two for red card Arnie) to learn how to play in this team.
But what I do want to see is some evidence that Bilic knows how to organise a defence. He inherited a fairly solid back four from Sam Allardyce, but last season saw us looking shocking defensively and ten conceded in three games this time tells its own story. There's a lack of pace at the back and perhaps it's time to turn to a five-man defence again so teams can't get behind us. While creatively we have to find a way of feeding Hernandez with chances.
Slaven clearly feels we need a new defensive shield in the form of William Carvalho. If Carvalho doesn't arrive then Kouyate and Obiang might be a better bet than the promising young Declan Rice and 30-year-old Mark Noble.
The other thing we need to see is a lot more desire from the team. The board were apparently alarmed by what they saw on Saturday, and rightly so. The players now need to do what Newcastle did, close down the opposition relentlessly and show they want to play for the manager.
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