West Ham have sacked Nuno Espirito Santo and are in advanced talks with Scott Parker, who could be confirmed as head coach before Wednesday night's trip to Cardiff City. Mark Noble, Steve Potts and Gerard Prenderville take the team in the meantime. Assistant head coach Rui Pedro Silva and goalkeeper coach Rui Barbosa have left alongside Nuno.
The club's statement talked about a thorough review of the start to the Championship season and the need to keep objectives on track, which is the usual language for a board that has looked at the table and not liked it. West Ham are eighth, six points behind leaders Middlesbrough and four off second-placed Swansea. They have won two of their past six and lost their last two at home, 3-2 to Southampton and then 3-1 to West Bromwich Albion on Saturday.
Why the patience ran out
Nuno, 52, was kept on after relegation last season partly because of his record getting Wolves out of this division, and for a while in September it looked justified. West Ham won four in a row, scored 16 goals, hammered Wrexham 6-0 and went top. Since then there have been two league wins, one of them 6-0 at a Lincoln City side reduced to nine men, the other 1-0 at Swansea, with draws against Millwall and QPR either side.
BBC Radio London's Phil Parry points to a specific pattern: slow starts. West Ham have conceded first in four of their past six Championship matches and taken two points from them. The suggestion around the club is that the side has not adjusted to the tempo of second-tier football and is still too ponderous before the interval.
What Parker would inherit
Relegation forced a summer of selling. With losses of more than £104m on the books, West Ham raised roughly £150m by letting Mateus Fernandes, Crysencio Summerville, El Hadji Malick Diouf, James Ward-Prowse and Freddie Potts go. Some of that went back out again: a Championship record £22m to Celtic for Arne Engels, a reported £12m on the Norwegian winger Edvin Austbo, plus free transfers for Joel Veltman and Manor Solomon.
The returns have been thin so far. Engels has three assists and no goals in 12 appearances. Austbo has two goals and two assists but only two league starts. Tomas Soucek missed the first two months with an ankle injury. What has stayed, though, is a spine that should be too good for this league, with Jarrod Bowen, Soucek and Konstantinos Mavropanos all still at the club.
A familiar face and a hard number
Parker made 129 appearances for West Ham across four years as a player, won their player of the year award three times, and was named Football Writers' Association player of the year in 2011 while there. The hierarchy, according to BBC Sport's Simon Stone, believe he understands the club and is someone the supporters will get behind. More to the point, he has already done the specific job being asked of him three times over, at Fulham, at Bournemouth and then at Burnley, and he has been out of work since Burnley went down last May.
If he takes it, he becomes the fourth permanent manager at London Stadium since David Moyes left in May 2024. Julen Lopetegui lasted six months. Graham Potter lasted eight and left with the team 19th. Nuno survived relegation and then eleven games of the season that was supposed to fix it.
The number that explains the urgency is the estimated £200m in lost revenue that comes with being out of the Premier League. One season down there is painful. Two would reshape the club. Parker's job, whatever else is said at the unveiling, is to make sure there is only one.
Club context: Nuno Espirito Santo, 52, sacked by West Ham on 3 November 2026 after overseeing last season's relegation and a start that leaves the club eighth in the Championship, six points behind leaders Middlesbrough. Scott Parker, out of work since Burnley's relegation in May, is in advanced talks and could be confirmed before Wednesday's game at Cardiff City. He has won promotion from the Championship with Fulham, Bournemouth and Burnley.
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