Liverpool and Man United favourites head contenders to replace David Moyes at West Ham
He’s delivered silverware after a wait of more than 40 years and a couple of hugely respectable league placings but David Moyes and West Ham has always felt like a little bit of a marriage of inconvenience. He’s not a manager whose football aligns with the way West Ham think of themselves, his tactics will never be entirely embraced by many and it is increasingly doubtful whether they now get the best out of a squad increasingly unsuited to his methods.
The Hammers have gone along all right for much of this season, at one time taking up residence in the top six to go with serene progress in Europe. That this never prompted any significant talk of a new contract for Moyes feels quite significant.
And now things have taken a marked turn for the sh*t as well as the dreary, with a 6-0 home defeat to Arsenal surely the nadir. You can’t imagine it gets any worse from there.
But does it get meaningfully better? Is it really now at a point where it might be best for everyone to call it a day? If not now, then surely the summer when Moyes’ contract is up.
West Ham’s timing might be out, though. Going to be some pretty handy jobs up for grabs this summer, and a great many names on this list of the current top 10 contenders for the West Ham job on oddschecker is headed by the favourite to be next Manchester United manager and the favourite to be next Liverpool manager. Hmm.
10) Jose Mourinho
You have to admit it would be nothing if not funny to bin off Moyes in large part due to grumblings about his tactics and then bring in Mourinho. On the plus side, should at least be able to quickly form a bond with the fans over a mutual loathing of Tottenham.
9) Mark Noble
Certainly ticks the ‘DNA’ and ‘Knows The Club’ boxes on any West Ham job spec. He is currently sporting director at the Hammers and it’s not hard to envisage a scenario in which he takes temporary charge like some kind of modern-day Trevor Brooking, but anything more than that would seem one heck of a leap.
8) Marcelo Bielsa
We’d be up for this one. An endlessly fascinating and fascinated coach, there is definitely crossover here with West Ham’s self-styled ‘academy of football’ aesthetic and it would just fundamentally be good fun to have him back squatting on buckets in the Barclays.
7) Gary O’Neil
Spent two-and-a-half years at the club as a player and currently impressing everyone while making his way up the Premier League managerial food chain. It’s not an entirely ridiculous idea but hard to see West Ham fans who yearn for more being entirely happy with a manager whose reputation is growing but being built on firefighting rather than glass-ceiling-smashing qualities.
6) Paulo Fonseca
Was Tottenham’s top choice for a while in the doomed summer that ended with Nuno and certainly plays a type of football West Ham fans could more readily get behind than Moyesball no matter how effective it may have on occasion been for them. Newcastle and Aston Villa also considered Fonseca before landing on Eddie Howe and Unai Emery respectively, and the Lille manager does feel like he sits somewhere close to the very top of untainted managers the Hammers could theoretically lure.
5) Steve Cooper
Would probably do absolutely fine at a club whose transfer policy is very slightly less madcap than Nottingham Forest’s, but is he an enticing enough name to make the leap from the safety of Moyes worth the gamble? Not sure.
4) Michael Carrick
Another former Hammer making his way in management, and he’s impressed plenty with his Middlesbrough team. No surprise based on the sort of player he was to see he has an aptitude for the job, but West Ham as a first (permanent) top-flight gig would be a big punt from all concerned.
3) Will Still
The 31-year-old Football Manager prodigy is a West Ham fan and at some point some team is clearly going to unleash an avalanche of content about just who is this Belgian-born, English-parented oddity by giving him a Barclays gig. We would still be quite surprised at this point if it were West Ham, but let’s see.
2) Xabi Alonso
Ah, that’s adorable, it really is. Second favourite? How on earth is he second favourite for the West Ham job? There are genuine and significant doubts about whether he’d even want to walk away from the good thing he’s got going at Leverkusen to be the next Liverpool manager. With the very greatest of respect, he’s not going to West Ham, is he? ‘Stranger things have happened,’ you might say. Yeah? Name one. Exactly.
1) Graham Potter
Now that seems like a much better fit. Could be scuppered by Manchester United, sure, but if they either stick with Erik Ten Hag or look elsewhere then this is an option that would appear to make a lot of sense for everyone. West Ham are a big enough club that it certainly wouldn’t be a demeaningly large backward step for a manager who nevertheless really should have to make one after what went down at Chelsea. And West Ham, for all their qualities, are not going to attract an elite coach with no baggage. But they absolutely could rehabilitate one whose Brighton work saw him firmly on the watchlists for every member of the Big Six.
