Bright lights suit Big Sam

West Ham 2 Wigan 0

The West Ham manager has carved out an impressive career since starting off his post-playing days at Limerick in 1991, but his reputation as a coach who extols the virtues of the long-ball game has often overshadowed his ability.

Now, however, after bringing West Ham back into the top-flight last season via a play-off final and all but ensuring their status there for another season after reaching 42 points on Saturday with a comprehensive 2-0 win over Wigan, Allardyce says, possibly with a hint of sarcasm, that his PR makeover is down to his move south.

“It’s better being in London, isn’t it? It’s what everybody has told me all my life, ‘If you want to shine, shine in London because you’ll get more recognition than anywhere else’,” Allardyce said.

“We’re in the big city so they can come and watch us whenever they want to. We’re here for everybody to see.”

The view from Upton Park is now a handsome one with Allardyce reiterating after Saturday’s triumph that he is ready and willing to sign a new deal that will keep him in east London for another season and he claimed the three goals and two assists on-loan Liverpool striker Andy Carroll delivered in his last four league outings would bolster West Ham’s chances of signing the €41m forward.

But the 58-year-old played down his personal role in restoring West Ham to the pedestal their ardent supporters believe the club deserves, instead crediting his players for their part in a fruitful return to the Premier League.

“I’m enjoying it, I’m not shining,” he said.

“I just enjoy the work that I do and the fact that we’ve done everything I wanted the players to do this year up to now.

“With four games to go, we are 10th in the Premier League and we have never been lower than 12th for the entire season. It’s a measure of our achievement in our first year back in the Premier League.

“Wigan have been here seven years in the Premier League — seven years and they’re still struggling again just to stay out of the relegation zone. We’re in year one and we’re 10th. The players are shining, not me.”

Kevin Nolan grabbed his 100th career goal to ensure maximum points for Allardyce’s side after Matt Jarvis’s first-half cross evaded teammates and opponents alike to open the scoring. And Allardyce, a champion for statistical analysis in the modern game, is only too aware how lethal winger Jarvis can be from the flanks.

“ProZone has stats showing the level of the quality of his crossing,” he said. “It shows that, not only does he put the most crosses in, he puts the best in. I’ve been jumping on the back of that with Andy Carroll, Kevin Nolan, Ricardo Vaz Te, Joe Cole, Jack Collison and people like that and saying, ‘you should be getting more goals’ because we’ve been short of goals.”

The strike was Jarvis’s second for West Ham since he joined them last summer from Wolves and he believes his new team have proved they are worthy of their place among the elite.

“It is a very good points margin we have got and we will be looking at going into the last few games to go as far as we can,” Jarvis said.

“We can look at it that we had a fantastic start to the season, really put our stamp on it and it got us right up the league. We have been able to try and build on that and get as consistent as possible and we have shown that we can do it away from home now.”