West Ham Utd 2 Barnsley 0:MARTIN O'NEILL and Sam Allardyce head the list of possible replacements for Avram Grant, whose tenure as West Ham United's manager could be ended this week by the club's board, possibly ahead of tomorrow night's League Cup semi-final against Birmingham City.
The co-owners, David Gold and David Sullivan, have yet to hear from O’Neill. While it is unclear if the Northern Irishman, who walked away from his position as Aston Villa manager in August, would be interested, Allardyce wants a quick return to management following his dismissal by Blackburn Rovers last month but may have to be content initially with a contract until May.
West Ham have been bottom of the league for most of the season, and Grant believes that some within the club have begun to undermine him by briefing to the media that his job is in the balance. After Jonathan Spector and Frederic Piquionne gave West Ham an easy 2-0 victory over Barnsley that took them into the fourth round of the FA Cup, Grant spoke out regarding the whispers now emanating from those around him. The Israeli also claimed he knows who is briefing against him.
“I don’t want to think about this. I want to do my job,” he said. “Of course, I know where the rumours come from and I know there’s people trying to hurt the club. But if I put my energy on this it’s no good. I want to put my energy on the team and the players. I can solve it but not now.”
How can he prevent players being influenced from the speculation deriving from the club?
“This is the main problem. We need to create stability. When the rumours are coming from inside the club it doesn’t create much stability,” Grant said. “But everyone has shown a great commitment. I’ve got great staff here.”
Ahead of Barnsley’s visit to east London Grant had discovered that Karren Brady, the vice-chairman, had revealed in her newspaper column why the deal to bring Steve Sidwell from Aston Villa had fallen through. She wrote: “I had to tell Steve that for various reasons – none his fault – we had changed our mind about signing him on loan. This was a filthy task but in the end it was decided that with 13 midfielders and most of the injured about to return we couldn’t promise him regular first-team football and he’d hardly be in a better position than at Villa.”
Asked about this, Grant said: “I didn’t read the column so I don’t know what she said. Maybe I will have a column in a newspaper and say what I think. All the things I have to say to the people at the club I say to them directly.”
