Slaven Bilic’s training methods have come under further scrutiny after West Ham United’s manager accepted that he cannot hide from statistics indicating his players are failing to run enough during games.
While Bilic retained his job following talks with the West Ham co‑owner David Sullivan after the home defeat against Brighton & Hove Albion last Friday, figures showing his team have covered the least distance and made the fewest sprints in the Premier League this season have lent weight to concerns about a lack of intensity in training.
There is a feeling within the first team that they were not worked hard enough in pre-season and that it is too late for them to drastically increase their fitness levels with the season in full swing. Bilic, who is under heavy pressure before Wednesday night’s Carabao Cup tie away against Tottenham Hotspur, spoke about the need to add more dynamism to his team at the end of last season, but his admission the numbers are not lying offered an alarming insight into West Ham’s disappointing start to this campaign.
“You are looking at the stats,” Bilic said. “Many times you don’t need the stats to have a feel of the game. Very rarely they are not as your feeling is. Especially at home, our numbers of running is not what it should have been.
“In general it is OK but we need to do more running that counts and that is high‑intensity running and sprints. We need to do more of that. We are fit, we are training. We are measuring them in training. It’s good. But sometimes it doesn’t happen.”
Bilic explained that the stats had been slightly skewed by the size of the London Stadium. “If you compare with our opponents, they are not very different,” he said. “You can compare the West Ham v Brighton game with the Liverpool v Spurs game, there is a difference. But between West Ham and Brighton, there is not a huge difference. The ball in play at our stadium is less than it is at smaller stadiums. There is not such a big difference between us and our opponent when we play them or when we played away at Burnley.”
Although the defeat against Brighton left West Ham out of the bottom three on goal difference, Bilic believes he still enjoys the support from the board and insisted that he has not considered resigning. “I never walked away in my life. There is no problem with my motivation and dedication for the club.”
With Bilic’s contract up at the end of the season, West Ham have shied away from sacking him on several occasions in the past year, but their relegation fears will grow if they lose at Crystal Palace on Saturday. Bilic was asked if he considers himself fortunate after seeing Everton fire Ronald Koeman on Monday.
“A lot of people think I should consider myself lucky,” he said. “But a lot think differently and that I deserve to be here. The only way that I can turn it in that direction is if we start to get better results.”