We all know that the main talk of the town at the moment in Stratford is the future of Slaven Bilic, with hordes of fans calling for his dismissal just three games into the season.
However, it’s now time to look at the reasons why the current crisis on and off the field isn’t the fault of our Croatian manager and that you may have to look higher in the West Ham United pecking order to find out where the blame actually lies.
With regards the torrid start to our Premier League campaign, the Croat was more than thrown in the deep end with the playing the first three league fixtures away from home.
The first visit of the season was to Old Trafford, where any side could be excused for losing 4-0 against a Manchester United that has started this term in such blistering form was a messy start to the season.
However, the whole club was let down by the actions of Marko Arnautovic for his first-half dismissal which was completely out of Bilic’s hands against Southampton.
In fact, his half-time talk seemed to do the trick as he fought back to almost nick a point at The St Mary’s Stadium.
With a strong starting Xl fielded at Whaddon Road in The Carabao Cup, a real cause for concern would have been a defeat at the hands of Cheltenham Town. But, we breezed to a 0-2 victory and dodged a metaphorical bullet in Gloucestershire.
While the 3-0 drubbing that followed at St James’ Park was rightly deemed as totally unacceptable, it is fair to say that Bilic has been thrown a considerable amount of curve balls, not only this season but throughout his time in East London.
Take this summer, for example, David Gold and David Sullivan do claim that they have secured Bilic’s top four targets but have clearly left the Croat with an insufficient number of first-team players, 21, our lowest ever of the Premier League era.
To add to this, Sullivan himself is being accredited with throwing Super Slav under a bus in a metaphorical sense, after he revealed that the gaffer was offered the services of Grzegorz Krychowiak and Renato Sanches on Deadline Day before refusing them.
Furthermore, the board has also been accused of fabricating accounts of Sporting Lisbon accepting an offer for William Carvalho when the deal was too late to be completed. Yet another ploy to divert blame from themselves.
It is also worth remembering the incredible first season that the former Croatia national team manager enjoyed at Upton Park, where we challenged for Champions League and racked up our highest ever Premier League points total.
Another point supporting Bilic in this much-debated argument is the amount of pressure he was under last season as we finished in a respectable mid table position.
With the stadium move, the painful Payet saga and the unrelenting injury plague that struck us throughout the campaign, Super Slav still managed to guide us to a position that was just one point off Southampton in eighth place.
So, with what was inevitably going to be a very tough start away from home for Bilic to the 2017/2018 season now over, we can now enjoy the liberty of playing games at home.
However, as we move into what will be one of the biggest months in the club’s history, I urge my fellow Hammers to stop jumping on the Bilic Out bandwagon and divert your negativity to the West Ham United hierarchy.
If you want to have your say on the Bilic debate and the current situation in Stratford, please do head over to @MooreThanAClub on Twitter to get in touch.