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I've not always been critical of him, especially at the start of the season, when at times I even praised him, but it's impossible to watch us recently and not be completely disillusioned with his whole approach. The whole West Ham Way thing is important for some fans and irrelevant for others but I'd say a majority of even those who couldn't care less about it have had enough of him now. So yeah, in that sense, the 50+1 idea would be great. It would've certainly meant we'd have never appointed him to begin with.
As for what West Ham fans think the club is meant to be, I'd say a majority accept we're a yo-yo team but expect to be entertained with 'good' football and maybe have an occasional cup-run. Sam is all about safety-first and tends to dismiss the kind of flair players the supporters have generally always seen as being a key part of the club's identity, through the training methods entrenched in our academy that go back to the 50s. I don't hate Andy Carroll and actually think he's a decent player (and more versatile than Sam allows him to be) but his appointment under Sam represented a real abandonment of that idea.
The joke about West Ham for years was that they were this really cultured football team that usually lost and certainly didn't have much chance of winning anything significant. It was like an in-joke (like the lyrics of the Bubbles song) but a lot of mostly younger fans just want results now - and to be fair, the way the game's gone, it's pretty much understandable. But apart from at the start of this season (and getting us promoted out of the Championship), Sam's style has proven neither entertaining or successful.
Less important, but maybe significant for some fans, is Sam's utter arrogance. Mourinho gets away with it cos his results back it up. Sam's don't. This is the man who's on record saying he's better suited to managing a club like Real Madrid or Barcelona than a mid-table one in the Prem league - which let us not forget, he came within a whisker of getting relegated last season. He'll get another position after West Ham because he seems like a safe pair of hands and that's more important than it's ever been for a lot of clubs, but he's currently the 13th highest paid manager in world football. Shouldn't a club expect a bit more for that kind of money? Would I sack him now, before the end of the season? No. Would I renew his contract when it ends at the end of the season? Also no.
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