Roeder will take it in his stride

13 April 2012

If anyone is in a position to put Glenn Roeder's sacking into perspective, it is the man himself. When you have been what he has been through, when your head has been opened up and a tumour on the brain cut away, it should give you a new outlook on life.

When Bill Shankly famously once said that football wasn't life or death, it was more important than that, people applauded and said how brilliantly perceptive.

The truth is, it was utter nonsense. Nothing is more important than life, as Roeder should now know having been too close to the alternative.

I have a feeling that, however, he won't see it that way.

His pride will be damaged and he will keep asking himself the same question: "How could they sack me after four matches?"

Only West Ham chairman Terry Brown and his board will have the answer to that one.

But it does, on the face of it, seem unbelievable that the club have decided so early in the new season, to part company with Roeder now, having kept faith with him all through a traumatic last season during which the easiest thing to do would have been to make the change.

There are some who will say that this was a premeditated act, that the West Ham board were happy for Roeder to stay in charge during the dark, dismal days of summer when the club were forced to sell their crown jewels or go to the wall. Any prospective manager of substance, goes the theory, would not have countenanced the wholesale selling off of West Ham's players.

So the decision would have been made to keep Roeder as manager until the nasty business was done - and then give him the chop and bring in a replacement.

Feasible but wide of the mark. The alternative is that Brown, following Saturday's depressing defeat at Rotherham, made up his mind on the long journey home that the shoots of regeneration were just not there, that he had to act and act now otherwise West Ham's chances of a quick return to the Premiership would have been seriously compromised.

It does seem inordinately early to have decided Roeder was not after all the man to guide West Ham back to the Premiership but perhaps West Ham's drab display in Yorkshire was just the final straw.

Forget the fatuous diversions about the away dressing-room at Millmoor, Brown would not have been swayed by something so trivial.

Whatever you think about the West Ham chairman, and many have forcibly expressed their opinions, the East London club has been part of his life for well over half a century.

Brown has seen the club both thrive and struggle.

The infamous Bond scheme of 12 years ago will have left its mark and now relegation, with all the trauma involved, will have worn him down.

It could be that he just could not stomach another night of vitriol when West Ham meet Bradford at Upton Park tonight and that he decided reluctantly to give the fans what most of them have always wanted - Roeder's dismissal.

The former Gillingham and Watford manager, in truth, was never popular with the vast majority of the club's fans, who felt he was the cheap option after first Alan Curbishley and then Steve McClaren rejected the chance to succeed Harry Redknapp.

Even when Roeder guided West Ham to seventh place at the end of his first season there seemed to be only grudging and qualified approval.

It is not altogether clear why the supporters never really took to him, after all he was from East London himself although he had never played for the club.

He was criticised for being undemonstrative during matches but Roeder is from the old school and steadfastly refused to pretend to be something he isn't.

He was roundly condemned for not publicly standing up to that loosest of cannons, Paolo Di Canio but Roeder was in a cleft stick.

He needed the Italian to play for him and so refused to be drawn into a slanging match in which there could only be one winner.

Certainly, no one could have worked harder than Roeder. Never entirely happy to delegate, he worked under the old maxim of: 'Don't ask someone to do a job you can't do yourself.'

His illness, following a Premiership match against Middlesbrough in April, was sudden and fundamental.

His return to work, just 10 weeks later, was a testament to the skill of the doctors who treated him and his own resilience.

Roeder has been, if anything, more driven since his return but had to stand by and watch as the club, forced to raise almost £30 million to avoid insolvency, sold their best players one by one.