West Ham United have had three managers since May 2024. The latest, Nuno Espirito Santo, joined in September 2025 and was understood to have spent much of Monday with the owners discussing the future, which most took to be his future.
Sack the coach is the standard reflex of owners seeking to distance themselves from the consequences of appointments they made. The real architect of West Ham’s demise and the focus of dissent is, of course, chairman and joint owner David Sullivan.
Nuno inherited a mess and could not clean it up. Any culpability that might attach surrounds a 10-game winless spell in the middle of the season when form fell away, plus judgement that persuaded him the gamble was worth taking in the first place.
Out-of-work coaches are like actors who convince themselves appearing in adverts for washing-up liquids are a legitimate gig. Desperation is the mother of acceptance. Of course I can fix your club Mr Sullivan. Julen Lopetegui and Graham Potter? Pah. It will be different this time.
It rarely is. Nuno is not Pep Guardiola or Luis Enrique. Neither is he the bloke who spent £40m on Maximilian Kilman, or £27m on £30-year-old Niclas Fullkrug. On a four-year contract. He was, however, the assessor who rightly judged them beyond use.
