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You couldn't make it up...sadly though at West Ham you don't have to, because every day seems to bring more shambolic nonsense.

You couldn't make it up...sadly though at West Ham you don't have to, because every day seems to bring more shambolic nonsense.

Martin O'Neill says no, so a board who were intent on sacking Avram Grant weeks ago because results were so bad, end up with a half-hearted commitment to the manager.

Half-hearted because it came on the end of a brief, terse, club statement supporting Karren Brady and threatening to uncover the mole at Chadwell Heath who leaked even more allegations about our part-time vice chairman to the media.

And there's the threat of legal action against the Mirror. Strange that our leaders seem more concerned with discovering the mole at the training ground rather than finding out which muppet it was who leaked the O'Neill story not only to Sky but also the national media - because they all had the story - on Saturday morning.

That wrecked any chance of O'Neill taking the job, the last thing he wanted was for folk to think he'd been talking to the board while Grant was still employed. The unwritten no-no of the managerial industry.

Saturday's farce clearly upset the players, left a 32,000 crowd confused and concerned, and a manager hung out to dry.

Players don't need many reasons to blame others for a bad performance, and that is just what we got. A much-weakened side totally outplayed in front of a TV audience.

Maybe that performance convinced O'Neill he was making a mistake. Who knows?

Neill is notorious for being very careful and not wanting to take risks that would damage his career CV. He's had countless job opportunities over the years, Liverpool as well as Leeds, and pulled away from them. Just why he'd take on West Ham
- despite a reported ?3m bonus for avoiding the drop - is anyone's guess.

Now the board are threatening legal action over the allegations that texts were sent to players regarding Grant's future. Martin Lipton wrote that in the Mirror and Matt Lawton in the Mail, although the Mail carefully avoided putting a name to the texts in print.

It's a lot easier to show which mobile sent messages than it is to prove who actually pressed the keys!

I would describe Lipton and Lawton as respected former colleagues of mine, who are not prone to making things up. And you can bet the Mirror 'legalled' the story carefully.

What is needed now is for Brady to prove she was not responsible for anything, and to also distance herself from suggestions she was involved in Saturday's debacle, in some way.

She may well be totally innocent, but fans need to see her credibility restored, and quickly before her position becomes untenable.

Now we are left with a squad, dysfunctional at best, angry with the way their manager has been treated. Sadly, in all this, there's not been a twitter of how badly us fans are being treated, but nobody seems to care about the paying customers who have loved our club all their lives, and how let-down we feel by this circus.

And while I'm on the subject, I really don't want to see a mid-range agent like Barry Silkman - who seems to have so much say in what happens over transfers - being sought out by Sky as some sort of club spokesman while he's at the races.

Silkman, I believe, is an associate of the people who handle Grant's career, who in turn are close to the Chelsea hierarchy and Roman Abramovic. As Grant has said of late: 'don't worry about me, I'll be OK'. Too right he will be, whatever happens at the Boleyn.

Grant now has public sympathy, as well as the media's. And our fans feel likewise as they see another manager being treated in the same way as Zola was.

So now, a manager many felt should have been sacked in November for poor results, has won the fight for the high morale ground even if he has only won three of our last 16 league games and picked up 15 points from the last 48. Scoring just a goal a game on average.

That is why he was going to be sacked in the first place, but our rulers cannot even get that right. He was for the chop, it should have been done quickly not the painful way we have been witnessing.

And even more worrying is that there are rumours now that Grant has been put under intense pressure by the club of late, almost inviting him to quit. That may or may not be true, but we are left with a manager who on current form is taking us down, cup results should not mask this situation.

The board may be right, any many would agree in their assessment. But they have embarrassed the fans and turned the club into a laughing stock trying to achieve their objective. As I said, you can't make it up.

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