Has time run out for football’s nicest guy?

THINK Italian manager and the dapper Roberto Mancini springs to mind; an elegant fellow who can even tie a blue and white scarf round his neck with panache.

Then there is Fabio Capello, the Godfather type. Who would dare make an enemy of a man with such a reptilian stare, a man who summons errant millionaires to his headquarters to humiliate them like naughty schoolboys?

Gianfranco Zola, it has to be said, fits into neither category. His diminutive figure is hardly enhanced by the cut of his West Ham tracksuit and as for being a mafia don, he’s just too damned smiley.

There’s little chance of his enemies finding horses’ heads in their beds. The Nicest Man in Football is more likely to put a hot water bottle in, and change the sheets.

And he’s too honest for his own good as well. Any other manager, and especially a grizzled old campaigner, would have grumpily rebuffed all questions about his future after Ricardo Fuller’s solo strike consigned West Ham to their sixth straight defeat.

Zola is currently back in his native Sardinia mulling it all over, having admitted he might well be the Upton Park problem that needs fixing. Coming from anyone else that would be tantamount to a waving of a white flag. But with Zola it was just another moment of pure honesty.

Some would argue that such a saintly soul cannot hope to flourish in the ‘greed is good’ atmosphere of the Premier League and they could well be right. West Ham, with three current England internationals and one hopeful of a recall, find themselves out of the relegation places simply because Hull City have conceded more goals.

West Ham’s co-owners David Sullivan and David Gold pride themselves on being owners who rarely sack managers but my, they don’t half undermine them, as a certain Mr S Bruce, formerly of Birmingham but now of Sunderland, might tell you.

Sullivan opened his mouth before February’s visit of Birmingham, suggesting the players might like to take a pay cut. That actually worked as a 2-0 win followed but this week’s public diatribe, in which Zola and his charges were labelled “appalling”, “shambolic” and “disorganised” merely pushed the manager to the brink.

Which may well be exactly what had been intended of course.

But there is a flipside to such a coin. What manager in their right mind would want to work for such an owner? Slaven Bilic has already ruled himself out of the running, as have Graeme Souness and Glenn Hoddle

On any other day it would be Fuller we were all talking about, although Stoke players rarely capture the headlines in a positive way. The Jamaica international hadn’t scored too many before Saturday, not in the Premier League at least, and nearly didn’t make this one because he had been suffering from food poisoning.

On he trotted – no pun intended – in the 67th minute and two minutes and two seconds later the ball was in the West Ham net, with Manuel da Costa, Scott Parker and finally Matthew Upson having been left in his wake. What a goal.

Contrast that with the miss Mido conjured up when the score was 0-0. Carlton Cole had a shot, Thomas Sorensen parried and there was the Egyptian right in front of goal to despatch the rebound.

Except that he didn’t. The ball rebounded off his knee and as it disappeared to a less important portion of the pitch, the striker toppled to the turf.

Sullivan had also been said to have branded the players “fat, lazy and useless” in the aftermath of Wolves’ 3-1 win in midweek, which kicked off all this controversy.

That’s a little unfair on Mido. He wasn’t lazy as he tried to help out in defence at times, until Upson ordered him elsewhere in no uncertain terms.

Only Zola could have been nice about the miss though. “He told me the ball was bouncing too high and he couldn’t get it under control,” he said.

MATCH RATING: ** – Let’s face it, Fuller’s goal stood out like a gold ring in a dung heap. Mido’s sorry miss much earlier was more in keeping with an afternoon that left little to savour.

REFEREE: Andre Marriner (W Midlands) 7 – The man in the middle attracted no attention whatsoever and that’s the way it should be. Felt the need to book just two players, which again was fair enough as though this was a physical encounter the official was always in control.