Yapping Lawton nibbles at Sullivan's ankle

I've just read Lawton's Open Letter to Sullivan in the Independent and I must say it lacks any real bite. I was expecting a pit bull style savaging and instead found only the pathetic yapping of a toy poodle.

If Lawton wants to attack Sullivan then he should hone in on the selling of the Boleyn, not the dismissal of a couple of managers in the space of 12 months. The point is, Grant's most savage critics argue that Sullivan and Gold invested sufficiently in the side for Grant to avoid relegation, and most of the "experts" acknowledge that we were "too good to go down". So Sullivan can hardly be blamed for our relegation nor for dismissing the man who most West Ham fans hold most accountable for it.

Zola failed as a manager; only the blinkered try to argue otherwise; and Grant failed too. And what do you do in football when managers fail? You sack them. Sullivan and Gold are hardly unique here. Indeed Lawton praises the West Brom chairman for offloading di Matteo when it became obvious to him that he lacked the necessary ability to keep the Baggies up.

It seems as if Lawton only understands one solution when a team starts to struggle - sack the manager and sack him quickly. So his logic seems to be that we would have stayed up had Grant been shown the door in January. Well, that didn't work for Hull last year did it? And at least two of Wolves, Birmingham, Wigan and Blackpool are going to survive this year, so sticking with the manager will work for two of them and maybe even three if Blackburn, who changed the manager, drop. So Lawton's logic is fundamentally flawed. And of course, had Lawton been in charge at Manchester United a couple of decades back, a certain Ferguson would have lost his job had his logic been applied!

Lawton's article rambles and betrays churlishness and intellectual snobbery. I hate that saying "You can't buy class" because the user of the phrase assumes he has it when he passes that judgement, and the very use of the cliche betrays a total lack of class. It is piss poor journalism and an insipid "attack".