What Price Curbishley

[NinjaYid]

Most of the sports pages today are predicting Alan Curbishley will be sacked as West Ham manager following our 4-0 thrashing of his miserable lucky heather salespeople over the weekend.

But I remember - just after Santini (remember him?) stormed off in a huff, and then again when Jol was a walking dead man - how the chorus went up from the little Englanders: "We don't need some foreigner running Spurs! We want Alan Curbishley!"

I've still got water on both knees from all the prayer time I put in pleading to God not to let that happen.

So, I don't expect much of a response, but I want to ask: anybody out there honest enough to hold up their hand and say:

"Yeah, that was me. I was wrong. Curbishley's a bell-end fit only for the Chumpionship and Ramos is a f***ing wizard. I was talking a lot of jingoistic bollocks."

Well? Or has a mist of collective amnesia descended?

 

[BoringOldFan]

Weren't the West Ham fans singing "You're getting sacked in the morning"?

Either way - General footy :wink:.

 

[hellava_tough]

NinjaYid - you must be very proud of yourself.

:roll:

 

[NinjaYid]

Is that an admission of sorts, helluva_tough?

Because yeah, I'm pretty chuffed that we didn't get Curbishley in.

And there's an awful lot of people in East London who wish they hadn't either.

 

[Michey]

But I remember - just after Santini (remember him?) stormed off in a huff, and then again when Jol was a walking dead man - how the chorus went up from the little Englanders: "We don't need some foreigner running Spurs! We want Alan Curbishley!"

Thank god i missed that discussion. Could have been very

 

[Bronno]

I'm not a fan of Curbishley, but he really did turn Charlton into a very useful little team, promoted to Premiership and an established side (finishing higher than us on a couple of occasions). Got relegated when he left. Then he joins a West Ham side that looks certain for relegation, keeps them up and in his first full season has them in the top half of the table after losing their best players, whilst being several points ahead of us again.

Is he really that bad? West Ham could do a lot worse, and probably will. (Glad things turned out as they did though, Ramos et al).

 

[Bill_Oddie]

Curbishley has taken West Ham to their level. Possibly a bit over. The only problem is that he has spent a trillion dollars and is paying average players monster wages in doing so.

For me, that is more the fault of the board than Curbs though. He just asked for the players. Levy would never have sanctioned half the ridiculous transfers that Eggy did.

 

[yanno]

Curbishley has taken West Ham to their level. Possibly a bit over. The only problem is that he has spent a trillion dollars and is paying average players monster wages in doing so.

For me, that is more the fault of the board than Curbs though. He just asked for the players. Levy would never have sanctioned half the ridiculous transfers that Eggy did.

I agree. But, for me, Curbishley has to share the responsibility because so many of those overpaid mercenaries also happen to be sicknotes (Dyer, Parker, Upson, Ljungberg, Bellamy etc), and this was known before he signed them. And he payed far too much for distinctly average players who are walking Red cards such as Lucas Neill and Boa Morte. (Or did he inherit Neill and his ridiculous wages? I can't remember.)

After our match at the Spammers, when Ramos ended up playing a 3-4-1-2 with Zokora as the spare CB, Lennon at RWB, and Berba in the hole, Curbishley said in his post-match interview that he had no idea what formation we were playing in the second half. Which makes him an incompetent laughing stock in my eyes. The fact that an EPL coach could come out and admit that he couldn't work out the opposition formation and didn't even have the brains to send one of his coaches to the stands to tell him is breathtaking.

Luckily, Don Juande Ramos very quickly learns exactly what the opposition are up to, and that will give us an advantage in nearly every match we play.

 

[hellava_tough]

Is that an admission of sorts, helluva_tough?

How did I know you were going to say that.

I apologise. My initial comments were a bit cheeky.

Not only did I want Curbishly in, I wanted him to sign a £1'000'000 a week contract until 2050 and partake in carnal acts with me.

:hump:

That would have made my summer!

 

[SpurSince57]

And he was a candidate for the England job… :rofl:

 

[hellava_tough]

And he was a candidate for the England job… :rofl:

:rofl::rofl: And so was McClaren.

Oh. Wait a minute...

 

[Bill_Oddie]

Absolutely agree with that yanno. I should have added a caveat to my earlier post that I would rather attach rabid, hungry gerbils to my testicles than have Alan Curbishley at Spurs.

Having said that, Lucas Neill was one of my biggest desires and I would have paid a fair slice of cash to bring him to Spurs. He was bloody awful on Sunday though. No comparison between him and Hutton.

 

[Kendall]

to be fair to him, yes he has spent a lot of money, but they're all bloody injured.

they'd be doing better if they had faubert, upson, bellamy, dyer, bowyer, ashton et al on a regular basis

 

[Bill_Oddie]

But, as yanno said, they were all injury prone before they went to the Hammers. Yes, we signed Woodgate, but we have other CBs and we knew he would miss some games so have been able to rest him as we have alternatives without injury problems (well, some).


I'm just wondering if the Bar-codes wouldn't give their eye-teeth for a manager who could get them stable in mid-table right now... :wink:

 

[SpurSince57]

From the Grauniad Rumour Mill:

Step forward, then, Alan Curbishley, the modern manager par excellence. Curbishley has recruited a whole host of statistics in support of his theory that West Ham aren't nearly as bad as their recent run of three consecutive 4-0 defeats would suggest, pointing out that the Hammers' average league position over the last 20 years has been 13th and that, notwithstanding their present travails, they have accumulated 61 points from their last 38 games. Bless.What really makes Curbs stand out from the pack, though, is his ability to connect with his emotional side. "When fans moan at me and get on my back, how do they think I feel?" he whines in his Daily Express column this morning. "Don't they just stop for a moment and consider how hurt my players and I are?" Er, no, probably not. "Last season all I read was negative stuff, a lot of rumours and speculation. It's what I will get from now on."
Rumours and speculation? Now there's a man who not only speaks the Mill's language, but shares its gift for prophecy. For lo and behold, this morning's papers are full of rumours and speculation - in particular, about West Ham owner Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson replacing Curbishley with Slaven Bilic this summer. Bilic, the managerial mastermind who famously outwitted, er, Steve McClaren to guide Croatia to this summer's Euro 2008 finals, is top of Gudmundsson's wish-list should the Hammers continue to founder.
A crowd favourite in his playing days at Upton Park, Bilic favours an attacking style of play and is known to harbour ambitons of managing in Blighty. He won't be going anywhere until after Euro 2008, but the clock looks to be ticking on Curbishley's reign; watch this space.

 

[yanno]

Bill_Oddie - agreed. It's acceptable to take a calculated risk on one or two sicknotes spread across the squad. To sign an entire hospital ward, on ridiculously overinflated wages (with no pay-as-you-play clauses in sight), smacks of rank bad management.

Someone at the Spammers surely should have uttered the immortal words of Roberto Duran (during his fight with Sugar Ray Leonard): "No Más".

I also couldn't believe Curbishley's post-match interview, where he stated that his half-time rant at the referee in the tunnel was because of the freekick Berba won for the first goal, which he felt wasn't a foul!!!!!! Talk about trying to distract attention from Anton Ferdinand's total inability to mark his man, and the fact that Boa Morte is too stupid to realize that you shouldn't carry on kicking the opposition in the gonads when you've already got a yellow card.