Will Sam Allardyce become the seventh manager to be sacked during current season?

As Manchester City strolled to a comfortable 6-0 victory in the first leg of League Cup semifinals against West Ham United, the question arises whether we will see Big Sam at The Boleyn Ground come the month of May.

Nobody actually believed in some miracle at Etihad as The Hammers were bound to 18/1 odds ahead of the game. The bookies turned to be perfectly right but it did not make life easier for travelling West Ham supporters. They saw thirteen goals in their team’s net inside seven days, including two from relegation rivals Fulham and five from a Championship side Nottingham Forest. To make things worse, West Ham are in deep striking crisis and the only goal in 2014 came from Jussi Jääskeläinen’s assist.

Big Sam is now out of FA Cup, three points away from safety in Premier League and would probably prefer not to start a return home leg against Manchester City in Capital One Cup. All of the six Premier League managers who had been shown the door by the New Year had better records and would have been sacked long time ago had they shown similar results as West Ham. Still, Sam Allardyce seems to have gained an incredible safety margin and backing of the board.

He admitted, though, that his side are in deep trouble and he will have to do extremely well to get out of it:
“You can’t keep losing football matches as a manager, that’s for sure.
“We know the reasons why, but even those reasons will not save you in the end.
“We must not lose confidence in our ability to get out of this hole we’re in at the moment.
“We’re going to start getting ready for Cardiff on Saturday and digging ourselves out of the bottom end of the Premier League.”

One of the reasons for Allardyce still being employed at The Boleyn Ground is his lucrative contract that would assume huge pay-outs in case of his sacking. As strange as it sounds, the manager is in the top-10 world best-paid managers. But most importantly, is there a better crisis manager available in the market who would commit to saving the drowning Hammers? Saturday game against Cardiff, who have already changed the manager, will tell us more.

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