CONGRATULATIONS to West Ham United on finding a way to break new football boundaries.

Just when you thought you had seen it all, the Hammers decide to take the concept of ‘the dreaded vote of confidence’ in a beleaguered manager to a whole new level.

Maybe it is the close proximity of Walford that has inspired the East End club to think it is necessary to increase the level of drama in their day-to-day dealings, but this week’s shabby treatment of Avram Grant would probably have been ruled out of the soap’s script for being a bit too far-fetched.

Any manager whose team is languishing at the foot of the table and showing few signs of turning their plight around will not be so naive as to think they are safe as houses in their position.

At this juncture their biggest fear is the ‘chairman’s vote of confidence’ – soccer’s equivalent of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in’s ‘Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award’ – at which point they can be sure their days are numbered despite the board’s public proclamation that the club are not about to make any changes.

However, West Ham have decided that particular move is now just ‘tres passe’ and instead have gone for the far more avant garde ploy of giving their manager the assurance they are ‘100 per cent’ behind him despite having appeared to already have actively tried to replace him.

To be fair to owners David Sullivan and David Gold they did not go on record over the situation despite reports in the Sunday papers, but on Tuesday the Hammers were forced into a climbdown as they decided to give Grant a formal vote of confidence after reportedly being thwarted in their efforts to lure Martin O’Neill to Upton Park.

Reports have suggested that former Aston Villa and Celtic boss O’Neill had been lined up for the job and that it was he who refused to take the manager’s role because Grant had not been removed and he was not about to take someone else’s job while they were still in it.

So now Grant finds himself in the extraordinary position of having been publicly endorsed as the man to save the Hammers from relegation, while being all too well aware that was probably not what was being planned by the club less than a week ago.

But then Grant will probably just shrug his shoulders and get on with the job until the next twist in the soap-style plotline that appears to be the story of his professional life.

Let’s face it, when you have managed a club in such turmoil as Portsmouth last season and enjoy both the high of an FA Cup final and the low of a relegation that was pretty much unavoidable, and after taking Chelsea to their only European Champions League final and prolonging a fight for the Premier League title to the last game of the season only to be sacked, there really can be little else left that will surprise Grant – apart perhaps from discovering he is Dot Cotton’s love child!