It’s not a stretch to say that West Ham have been the most disappointing team in the Premier League this season after Manchester United, who already took the big step of firing Erik ten Hag (though they really shouldn’t have gone into the season with him as their manager).
West Ham are a different case, because even though, like Manchester United, they made significant offseason additions after a poor 2023/24 campaign, they already changed their manager in the summer.
The Hammers hoped Julen Lopetegui – formerly of Real Madrid, Sevilla, and Wolves – would be able to turn things around after an uneven second half of the season from David Moyes.
Their decision to move on from Moyes, who was wildly successful earlier in his West Ham tenure, wasn’t a universal one but largely seemed to be accepted by the fanbase.
Instead of being an upgrade on Moyes, Lopetegui has been an unmitigated disaster to this point, and the desire to give the Spanish manager more time is slowly fading into an overwhelming sense of concern that they never should have pinned their hopes on him in the first place.
It’s not easy to part ways with a manager during the season, though, and one of the biggest reasons is the general lack of an immediate replacement. But if Lopetegui continues to lose matches, West Ham may not have a choice but to fire him, reasoning that a new manager couldn’t possibly do worse.
As of right now, here are the top five managers available in free agency who could potentially replace Julen Lopetegui as the next West Ham manager.
Graham Potter
In terms of what West Ham would want as their manager, I can’t think of a single coach who checks off more boxes than Graham Potter, a former Brighton and Chelsea manager.
The less said about his time at Chelsea, the better. Potter was doomed to fail at Chelsea, anointed by Todd Boehly as “his guy” after the American owner came in and pushed Thomas Tuchel out of the club in what was effectively his first order of business.
But Boehly appointed Potter without a long-term plan, and he watched the up-and-coming manager struggle with a haphazardly thrown together squad that seemed more than a little heavy on over-the-hill European footballing veterans (Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Kalidou Koulibaly come to mind).
Chelsea gave Potter far less of a leash than they would later give to Mauricio Pochettino, even though Potter performed better with a worse squad. Before his doomed time at Chelsea, Potter was the first coach who had Brighton on the rise, and Roberto De Zerbi gets a lot of credit for the nucleus and ideals that Potter actually created.
West Ham need someone with innovation and an ability to work with ascending attacking talents, of which West Ham have quite a few names worth watching closely like Mohammed Kudus and new signing Crysencio Summerville.
Potter honestly has a better resume than Lopetegui in coaching anyway, and it raises the question as to why West Ham hired Lopetegui over him in the first place.
Maurizio Sarri
Maurizio Sarri is an even bigger name with a past coaching pedigree at Chelsea and plays even more exciting football than Potter from a purely aesthetic perspective.
In Serie A, Sarri put together two of the most fun teams to watch in recent memory in the Napoli of the mid-2010s and then early 2020s Lazio with the likes of Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, Pedro, and Mattia Zaccagni.
It’s honestly hard to envision Sarri coming back to the Premier League, but we’re talking about a manager who has won this league once with Chelsea and has experience winning Serie A with Juventus, too. (Note that Juve have not won the league since.)
Sarri, though, doesn’t really have the midfield personnel to make things work at West Ham, particularly after they axed set-piece specialist James Ward-Prowse. He wouldn’t have any playmaker to set the tone from the base of the midfield, which was crucial to his success at Napoli and Lazio.
David Moyes
A reunion with David Moyes probably isn’t the best order of business for the club, because if you are going to move on from a beloved manager in the club’s history in order to take a big step forward, the sequel often ends up being disastrous if you then decide to go back in time and rehire said manager out of regret.
West Ham either should have never fired Moyes in the first place or simply hired a manager other than Lopetegui. But nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and Lopetegui is starting to make many fans regret the managerial move.
Moyes may be open to a heartfelt return to the club, and in lieu of better options for both himself and for the club, it’s honestly not far-fetched to envision Moyes coming back to work with an attack that added Carlos Soler, Niclas Fullkrug, and Summerville this past summer.
Daniele De Rossi
Roma firing Daniele De Rossi has to be one of the worst decisions of the year, and it makes the Hammers firing Moyes look far less disastrous by comparison because at least there was a reasonable line of logic behind parting ways with Moyes.
De Rossi got fired for no particular reason, save for the fact that Roma are a poorly run club by the same ownership group that has turned Everton into a laughingstock.
The Friedkins appear hell bent on doing the same to Roma, an even more historic club in the context of European football, and after betraying Jose Mourinho, who made the Giallorossi relevant on a European scale again, they did the same to club legend De Rossi just a year later.
And De Rossi had the makings of a brilliant manager in Rome, too. He took the incredibly difficult job of replacing a literal coaching legend who was beloved by all in the capital and actually improved the team’s results within the same season.
Then Roma ungratefully disposed of him. De Rossi is a lot more promising of a manager than Lopetegui, and if West Ham are going to take a risk on a coach, why not hire De Rossi over Edin Terzic? At least De Rossi never drove away two club legends; he was the one unfairly pushed out.
Ruud van Nistelrooy
Former Manchester United assistant Ruud van Nistelrooy is one of the greatest Premier League strikers of all time, and everyone around the Red Devils seemed to think he was the future coach of the club and arguably a better immediate presence than Erik ten Hag anyway.
With Ruben Amorim available and now the manager, Van Nistelrooy had to be sacrificed so that the Sporting CP hire could 1) Bring in his own guys and 2) Avoid clashing with a strong, talented, up-and-coming manager.
Van Nistelrooy isn’t proven as a manager by any means, but he’s earned a shot. And with his reputation as a player, you have to figure his first job will be a big one in the Premier League.
It was interesting how West Ham went from Moyes to a much more defensive manager in Lopetegui, even though there was a sense that they needed someone new and exciting to help get the most out of an attack playing below its talent level.
Then West Ham went ahead and made a bunch of attacking signings in the summer, only to watch Lopetegui flounder when it comes to actually utilizing them properly.
Imagine Van Nistelrooy working with Summerville, Kudus, and Jarrod Bowen. There is so much to learn from RvN, who is one of the most positionally intelligent strikers and technically gifted finishers in the history of European football, having excelled for both Manchester United and Real Madrid.
