Even when his teams do well it is someone else who deserves the credit. When they fail it is his fault. He is the manager who is only there on the bad days, never on the good. It is a curious phenomenon that Grant receives so little praise for a string of impressive achievements.
Avram Grant’s individual record can go one of either two ways this season. The West Ham boss could take the East Londoners into the Championship, lose his position as manager of the club, and be condemned as the luckiest manager in English, no, world football for his repeated ability to pick up jobs at teams who are oblivious to his inability to hone a team capable of, well, any fight, cohesion, skill etc.
Or, alternatively, he could keep the club up against the odds. In which case he would be condemned as the luckiest manager in English, no, world football for…(you see where I am going with this).
It is a curious affliction of the British media that Grant is unable to be praised for any success. At Chelsea the Israeli took a club who had never got past the Champions League semi final to a penalty shoot out in the final against Manchester United. And they would have won it had John Terry opted to let one of his more composed and technically competent team mates take the fifth penalty, rather than putting vanity before the team. And they lost the title to United by a point, despite the appalling start to the season the team made under Jose Mourinho. Indeed, Grant picked up more points per game than the Portuguese. Yet that year, apparently, the players guided Chelsea. The players were the ones who bravely picked up the managerial and organisational vacuum and guided themselves to the near miss of what would have been two glorious triumphs.
Yet, after Grant’s departure from the club, and the arrival of World Cup winner Luiz Felipe Scolari, the same players who had so bravely, valiantly and intelligently taken themselves to the brink of glory without a competent manager stepped aside and did precisely nothing to repeat the form of the previous season as Scolari failed to adjust to managing in the Premier League.
To put it another way, the idea that Grant was some kind of overseeing bystander in Chelsea’s near misses that season was total and utter rubbish, probably pedalled by one of the player’s clever PR advisers, feeding the press that his client was really the one pulling the strings.
Then came the disaster of Portsmouth. The club went down in a firestorm of debts as their financial excesses caught up on them and drowned them. But Grant guided them to the cup final. What could explain his ability to take Portsmouth to this FA Cup final, following the near misses of the previous campaign with Chelsea?
Luck, obviously. An easy cup draw and fortune smiled upon the Israeli, who was salvaged by the gods smiling benevolently on the hapless one.
Now at West Ham, having narrowly avoided the sack in January, Grant has guided the team out of the relegation zone with an impressive run of form. What is the cause of this renaissance? Scott Parker, Wally Downes or Thomas Hitzlsperger, depending on who you listen to. Or Stoke, if you choose to believe the ‘I can’t believe they turned down Demba Ba’ theists.
And this is all ignoring his record with Israel, whom he took to within goal difference of the World Cup in a group involving France, Switzerland and the Republic of Ireland, all of whom have considerably larger pools of talent to select teams from. And they went unbeaten throughout the campaign against these sides. In effect, it was a goal from Thierry Henry against the Republic of Ireland which meant that it was France and Switzerland who went to the World Cup, rather than Israel and Switzerland.
It is time to correct this journalistic oversight. Avram Grant is probably the most underrated manager in the Premier League. His record at Chelsea compares favourably with all but Guus Hiddink and Jose Mourinho, who are two of the world’s very best coaches. And even Mourinho could not take Chelsea as far as Grant could in the Champions League, and actually beat Liverpool in a semi-final.
Grant has been forced to deal with an unfavourable hand at West Ham. He has a squad which is possibly the worst in the league. When you are faced with having to play Luis Boa Morte on a regular basis, that speaks volumes for the lack of quality in the team. And he has also been forced to field Freddie Sears, who whilst promising, has had three loan spells with Championship sides in the last two years and scored a grand total of zero goals. The value of the squad is little more than £25 million, and half of that is Green and Parker.
This is a club who have been abused by irresponsible Icelandic owners just as bad as those who wrecked and doomed Portsmouth. It is a club who paid extortionate amounts of money to players like Lucas Neill and Freddie Ljungberg, who were contributing almost nothing to the team. They are still recovering from the financial excesses of the Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano period under Alan Pardew and Alan Curbishley.
Take out Green, Matthew Upson, Parker, Mark Noble and Hitzlsperger, and West Ham’s squad would not look out of place in the Championship, and probably then the bottom half. It is a remarkable testament not just to Grant, but to the spirit and resolute character of a limited squad, as well as the Israeli’s coaching team, that they even have a remote chance of avoid relegation. That they are competing with teams of considerably larger resources and far stronger squads around them is an excellent achievement for a team who have managed to skate on melting ice and stay afloat. And as their manager, Grant should take the most credit for this feat.
