Owners must take a back seat if Zola is to guide West Ham out of the woods

1:58pm Thursday 11th February 2010

By Ross Davies

GIVEN the doomsday prophecies that provided the depressing backdrop to West Ham’s match against Birmingham City on Wednesday, it is a miracle the players in claret and blue managed to drag themselves onto the pitch, let alone produce one of their best performances of the season to record a victory that may be the turning point in a so far disastrous campaign.

Talk of Armageddon, massive pay cuts and revelations that there will be plenty of comings and goings this summer will have been enough to force many players into hiding. There would have been few surprises had Gianfranco Zola sent out a search party only to find his troops rocking back and forth in a darkened room.

Instead, every member of the Hammers’ squad reported for duty as usual and delivered in magnificent fashion.

So what was it exactly that inspired such a rousing display? Was it the threat to their pockets? Or that their future at the club was cast in doubt? No. It was their manager. A man deemed as ‘too nice’ by co-owner David Sullivan this week, Zola found himself under intense pressure to produce three points against Birmingham.

The off-field shenanigans had clearly left a lasting impression on his players, for there was only one thought in Alessandro Diamanti’s mind when he curled home a sublime free-kick to hand his team the lead on the stroke of half-time. No sooner had the Italian wheeled away after the ball had hit the back of the net than he was sprinting over to his boss, screaming ‘that’s for you’ in his native tongue before he and four of his team-mates piled on top of Zola.

It was a touching moment that sent a loud message to Sullivan and his business partner David Gold in the stands that, while they may be reluctant to publicly back their manager, he retains the full support of the players he leads.

West Ham were terrific. They hassled and hurried their opponents whenever they were in possession. They attacked with purpose and defended as a unit, delivering the kind of performance that Zola would have so craved.

Perhaps this was Sullivan’s intention all along: to inspire a display that would galvanise the club. If it was, it worked.

Last week I commended Sullivan’s honest approach, revealing the scale of the debt the club face and criticising the ‘greedy’ nature of modern day players. But this week’s outburst was different. In revealing plans to impose widespread pay cuts and trim staff numbers without consulting his manager, he had undermined Zola’s position. By going straight over his head and talking directly to the papers, Sullivan was never going to win any plaudits from the Italian.

Instead we witnessed something nobody has yet seen from Zola...some fire. Clearly irked by his chairman’s remarks, the manager claimed he can be ‘horrible’ but argued that treating people ‘with respect’ would produce the best results. How right he was. His players proved they can respond to his softly-softly approach and their timing could not have been better, the win taking the Hammers up to the heady heights of fourteenth, albeit tied on 24 points with three other sides and just a single point above the relegation zone.

Sullivan may have inadvertently inspired his team to produce this time. But the last thing West Ham need is continuing distractions off the field. Their one goal, the only one that matters, is to stay in the Premier League. So take a back seat and let your manager do the driving.