Sam Allardyce suffered defeat in his first game in charge of West Ham United, narrowly losing 2-1 to Swiss side Young Boys. The respectable result was the culmination of a hectic day three of the pre-season tour in central Switzerland, which saw the squad conduct two training sessions ahead of their opening Uhren Cup fixture.

Sam Allardyce is often mocked as a manager with ideas above his station, writes Paul Doyle in this morning's Guardian, so it perhaps surprised his detractors when he agreed to descend to the Championship to take charge of West Ham. True, he was unemployed until the relegated east London club came calling, but for a man who was once interviewed for the England job and who last year suggested he could win doubles with Real Madrid or Internazionale every season, if only they were savvy enough to look beyond his reputation and hire him, there must have been a temptation to wait for an offer from a better-placed club.

Tottenham Hotspur and Leyton Orient face a crucial week in oppostion to West Ham's Olympic Stadium move, writes Paul Kelso in this morning's Telegraph. The clubs will discover within days whether their challenge to United's tenancy of the Olympic Stadium has been successful after a High Court judge spent the early part of this week considering their case.

Only at West Ham United could the much heralded launch of the the new home and away kit- complete with countdown clock scheduled for 9.30 tomorrow morning- be scuppered by an enterprising Hammers fan who had the genius insight to type '2011/12 kit' into the search engine on the new online site. I mean seriously, doesn't every e-commerce package have a fail-safe time and date release mechanism that should make this kind of slip impossible?

A Saturday evening in 1991 and Sam Allardyce is tramping the streets of Limerick with a priest. They are searching for local businessmen willing to help pay the wages of Limerick City footballers. It is difficult finding the £100 a week that keeps Allardyce's better players happy and it is a routine that manager Allardyce and the club chairman, Father Joe Young, will repeat through the season.

Manchester City, Blackburn Rovers, Wigan Athletic and Sunderland are all that now stand between West Ham United and oblivion, writes Jamie Jackson in today's Guardian. Six years after Alan Pardew guided the East End club back into the Premier League, Avram Grant has four games to prise his side off the bottom of the table, starting with Sunday's Eastlands meeting with Roberto Mancini's fourth-placed team.