Good morning everyone.
The international break is over and we are happy to be returning to Premier League action at Hull City this afternoon.
I want to wish the 2,463 West Ham United fans travelling to Hull a safe trip and I hope we can send you home happy with an important three points.
I was asked a lot about my job as manager of West Ham on Thursday in my press conference and I was happy to speak about it because I enjoy it. Of course, there is pressure to win the next game all the time, and I know we have not won in our last five matches, so we want to win today.
As a manager, if you look at your next three games and get three points out of nine, you are always three or four points short of something – of winning the league, or being closer to Champions League places, or to being higher up the table, or to getting out of trouble – so it’s the same everywhere.
The season is so long and very few clubs don’t come into a zone of turbulence over the course of it, because we are talking about nine months, 38 games or whatever.
The job of a football manager is like any job, in some respects. It has a lot of craziness but a lot of positives. You have more days that you’re up for it than days when you don’t want to do it, and if the balance is like this then you are happy with your job.
It’s like life. You have great things and you are doing things you love to do. And as a Premier League manager, I have the buzz of matches in the most-competitive league in the world.
It’s not an ordinary job, though, because you can’t leave it at the office and go home and do something else without thinking about it. But, I’m sure, like when journalists have good subjects to cover, they too can’t leave it at work!
There are very few jobs that aren’t responsible jobs and that you don’t think about outside of the workplace.
Football is a simple game with many variations, but to manage a football team is a very complex job. I love it, though.
I did law at university, of course, but my first love is football and it has been my whole life, first as a fan, then as a player, then as a manager, and I am still a fan of football. For me, it’s the best thing to be involved in.
When you add on top of that that I am the manager of a great club in a great league, of course I have to enjoy it!
I know our fans enjoy football too, because I see it every match and every day with their passion, their loyalty and their love for this club.
Today, we hope to reward those qualities with a victory that will be very important to us.
Come on you Irons!
Slaven Bilic