His Name is Zola

When Lou Macari took over, for his brief stay, at West Ham, he was asked by a journalist how he felt taking over at a club which had only had five managers in nearly one hundred years and which traditionally had promoted from within. He looked at the reporter, paused for effect, and replied: "Well it hasn't brought them much success has it?"

I thought about Macari when reading some of the comments posted by Hammers fans in reaction to the resignation of Alan Curbishley and the subsequent appointment of Gianfranco Zola as manager. The reactions, rather predictably for a club whose supporters club has a cabinet full of awards from the League of Miserabilists, were mixed and extreme. They varied from the "another nail in the coffin for the club I love, it's nothing to do with the East End anymore," via, "He's just another member of the Italian mafia connection," to "does he know what he's let himself in for?"

My own personal feeling has nothing to do with his lack of East End roots, the name of the club he played for in West London or the fact that he hasn't in the past expressed any desire to be manager of the club. My one big reservation is that he lacks experience of managing at any level. On a short list that included, for the purposes of interview, John Collins and Roberto Donadoni what was it that Zola had that the other two didn't? I suspect that his lack of experience is the key, one of the quotes I saw this weekend was that he will fit-in to the Continental model that West Ham are keen to introduce at the club, that of football director and manager. This means that he won't ruffle feathers, unlike Collins who has experience of playing abroad and Donadoni, who has the small matter on his C.V of managing Italy - Zola's qualification, as a coach, is helping out with the Italian Under 21's.

There are of course football managers who have been successful in making the single giant leap from player to manager at the top level: Jurgen Klinsmann, Mark Hughes, Kenny Dalglish, but the game is littered with memories of great players who failed at the highest level: Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Alan Ball - to name three of the '66 Squad.

Zola will have his work cut out at West Ham and he doesn't have the luxury of being able to learn his trade away from the glare of the public. The team looks like it can implode at any minute, too many players lack consistency and there doesn't appear to be any cohesion in which way the club should be going. That said we do have a good 'spine' to the team: Green, Upson, Noble and Ashton - on the downside we have Parker, Bellamy, Dyer and Bowyer who, apart from being a quartet of Newcastle rejects, probably haven't completed a full season between them at the highest level, couple that with the ongoing saga of Matthew Etherington's gambling debts and I'll settle for 10th place again!