It seems to me that at West Ham United, fans, board, managers, coaches alike, could all learn something from Pep Guardiola. I seem to remember him conducting an interview with Skysports earlier this year (17th Feb), following the sale of Cole Palmer to Chelsea.
The thrust of the article was: If a player wants to leave, he gets sold. As Pep said: “how can you get the best from a player if he is unhappy?”.
West Ham fans are all counting the cost of two huge losses of discipline. Neither are isolated incidents – as portrayed by the players or their representatives during appeals – but the latest in a series of disloyal antics which seem to be tolerated by the club.
Edson Alvarez has constantly appeared in media in Mexico coquettishly suggesting he might head off to another club whilst fighting in the pitch for his national team, amassing yellow card after yellow card for West Ham and two sendings-off this season already.
Mohammed Kudus appears to have created dressing room bust-ups with his head coach, endless social media spats when on international duty and gets himself sent-off for what would be a laughable kick-slap routine were it not letting his team-mates and the club down with a five game ban. Then we hear his ‘I want to go to Liverpool’ bleat- allegedly- having been rumoured to have tasked his agent to move him on somewhere else.
Well, how about this for a radical suggestion. Sell them both in January.
Reward the discipline of the other Hammers’ squad members who avoid picking up dumb cards and suspensions for petulance. Get the trouble makers out and use their funds to rebuild our squad with our new head coach in January. These aren’t isolated incidents.
Alvarez’ second sending off inside six weeks for an utterly dreadful, brainless tackle shows – as is clear from his stats alone- he is a liability. Kudus wants to leave and has fallen out with the head coach. Anyone arguing to keep him at the club is missing the point that he has an £85 million release clause and will be off to a top six-type club in June anyway.
Between the two, that’s probably something in the order of £130 million worth of income from the January window. That buys a lot of talent.
Guardiola again:”People have to come here with passion, with love, to want to play and be happy to be here. I apply that to myself. If I am not happy, I will not be here. It does not matter about a contract”
Doesn’t the Payet experience tell us that want-away or troublesome players are better moved on at decent sale price rather than vainly hoping to cling onto them whatever damage they create in the dressing room -or however much they damage their own value in the transfer market-in the meantime?
