West Ham were meant to walk the Championship - so what's gone so wrong that Nuno Espirito Santo needed to be sacked?

Nuno was initially appointed at West Ham on September 27, 2026, two weeks after being sacked by Nottingham Forest, who he led to a seventh-placed finish in the Premier League in 2024-25 - their highest finish since 1994-95. He inherited a confidence-stricken squad in east London that had fallen to 19th in the table under Graham Potter, and couldn't deliver a new manager bounce, going winless through his first four games at the helm.

The Hammers then lost only one in six, before a run of three successive defeats that left them third-bottom by the end of December, and five points from safety. However, any notion of axing Nuno at that stage was dismissed, and the club gave the ex-Wolves boss their full backing in the January transfer window.

Star midfielder Lucas Paqueta departed for Flamengo, but Valetin 'Taty' Castellanos, Pablo Felipe, and Adama Traore all came in to try and pull West Ham out of danger. None of those signings worked out, though, as Argentine striker Castellanos and Portuguese forward Pablo both struggled to adapt to English football, while Traore offered nothing in the way of end product. Chelsea loanee Axel Diasi was the only new face to impress in defence, but his presence alone was not enough to save the Hammers.

In addition to his poor judgement on transfers, Nuno's rigid tactics, baffling selection calls and over-reliance on Bowen also greatly contributed to West Ham's failure. And yet the club decided to stick by him once their relegation was confirmed.

"The football operation always has to be our first priority and the planning for next season started as soon as the final whistle sounded on Sunday," West Ham said in an official statement after the final day of the season. "We held meetings with head coach Nuno Espírito Santo early this week and are pleased to confirm that he has expressed his continued commitment to the club - as we have to him. Nuno made it very clear that he is highly motivated for the challenge of guiding West Ham United back to the top-flight at the first time of asking. That must be the unquestionable goal for next season.

"Nuno has spent one previous year in the Championship and it was an outstanding success as he secured 99 points to win the title with Wolverhampton Wanderers in 2018. While the ultimate outcome on Sunday was a painful one, the board of directors believe that there have been broader signs of improvement and progress in recent months, and we want Nuno to continue developing that progress.

"A total of 25 points taken from our final 17 Premier League matches equated to 1.47 points per game - a ratio that would have resulted in a seventh-placed finish across the full season. Furthermore, we feel the clear improvement in squad mentality and togetherness since January, leading to that upturn in performances and results, makes him the right man to lead us forward."

The contrast between that statement and the one West Ham issued on Tuesday morning to confirm Nuno's exit, and that of his assistant Rui Pedro Silva and goalkeeper coach Rui Barbosa, was striking. That statement read: "Following a thorough review of the start to the Championship season, the board of directors believe that a change is necessary at this time in order to ensure that the club's objectives and expectations remain on track."

West Ham have only played 16 games in all competitions so far this season, so on the surface it looks like a dramatic U-turn, but most die-hard fans wanted Nuno out in the summer. They were devoid of any identity on the Portuguese' watch, and he never settled on a best starting XI. His inability to maximise the effectiveness of the most expensive squad in the Championship ultimately forced the board into action.

A stuttering start to the season served as a sign of things to come; the Hammers blew a two-goal lead to draw at Burnley, and lost at home to Charlton before playing out a 1-1 stalemate with Watford. Carabao Cup wins over Portsmouth and Southampton notwithstanding, it was a hugely disappointing month.

The players were booed off by the travelling fans at Vicarage Road, and targeted Nuno with chants of: "You're getting sacked in the morning." Responding to the vitriol in his post-match press conference, Nuno said: "The fans are the most important part of our club and I respect them so much. I understand everything. I just ask again: keep believing, keep trusting us, keep going and we’ll try to revert it.

"We have three games, we have two points, (so) who’s happy? But me, I believe. I trust my boys, I work very hard with them. We are building a team and things will change. I’m positive."

Nuno initially got the response he wanted. West Ham opened their September schedule with a 4-2 win over the manager's former club Wolves, before beating Derby and Bolton 3-0 and 3-2, respectively to reach the Championship summit. They then inflicted Wrexham's heaviest league defeat in 22 years on the Red Dragons, running out 6-0 winners at the London Stadium in what was arguably their best display on Nuno's watch.

Four days later, however, the Irons were dumped out of the Carabao Cup by Fulham, and proceeded to slump to draws against arch-rivals Millwall and QPR. The performance against QPR was particularly concerning, as the Hammers didn't register a single shot before Bowen's 70th-minute equaliser. Bowen also missed a stoppage-time penalty, but QPR fully deserved at least a point from the contest.

Subsequent away wins at Lincoln and Swansea eased some pressure on Nuno, with West Ham hitting six goals again in the former fixture, only for a 3-2 loss at home to Southampton to bring him crashing back down to earth. The Hammers went two goals down inside the first 12 minutes, and to make matters worse, James Ward-Prowse ran the midfield for the Saints on his return to the London Stadium.

"We started not the way we wanted and we conceded," Nuno admitted. "We were looking at the situations with hesitation, bouncing balls, too many chances for Southampton to have a second phase, third phase and achieve a goal." This was by no means a one-off, as it marked the ninth time in 15 games that West Ham had conceded first.

Former Tottenham and Wolves midfielder Jamie O'Hara aptly summed up West Ham's biggest issue when responding to a fan praising their second-half performance against Southampton, saying on talkSPORT: "You are too good of a football club to be sitting back, waiting, and letting teams come to the London Stadium and roll you over in the first 15 minutes. You've got the best squad in that division. You should be blowing teams away, not giving them a two-goal head start and making excuses about how well you played once the game was already dead and buried."

The exact same thing happened against West Brom at the weekend when Felix Horn Myhre netted in the 20th minute, catching West Ham cold on the break. Bowen levelled via a deflected strike before the break, but the Hammers collapsed defensively again in the second half, with the Baggies capitalising on errors from Airidas Golambeckis and Morato to seal the victory.

After four home games without a win, and three ending in defeat, the writing was on the wall for Nuno, and he knew it: "This is the reality: we can only change this if we win games. When you lose at home to Charlton, Southampton and West Brom, the only solution is to improve our game. There is pressure every day. We have conceded six goals at home in two games and we have to fix it. That cannot happen."

It probably won't under the man expected to replace Nuno, Scott Parker, because he is better equipped to make West Ham the Championship heavyweights they should be. The former Burnley, Bournemouth and Fulham boss has achieved promotion in each of his three seasons as a manager in the second tier, and captained West Ham as a player, so he already knows the club inside out.

The appointment should go down well with supporters, too, as the Hammers will be much harder to beat under Parker. However, cleaning up the mess left behind by Nuno will take some doing, especially on the recruitment front.

"He [Parker] was a very, very good player and a very astute manager, I think. So I think it’s a great fit for West Ham," former Hammers boss Harry Redknapp said on talkSPORT. "I think the first thing he needs to do, though, [is fix the squad] I’ve been looking at this West Ham team recently and I went to the club at 14, I joined West Ham and I looked back all those years. I think this would probably be the worst group of players I’ve seen at West Ham in that time. So he hasn’t got an easy job on his hands. Take Bowen apart, the rest of the squad there are very few players there that would have got in too many West Ham teams over the years."

The fact that West Ham are even in this position just three years on from their historic Conference League triumph under David Moyes speaks to the chronic mismanagement that has taken place behind the scenes. Trusting in Nuno so blindly has left them needing to hit the reset button, and the hope now will be that Parker can bring back the stability that was taken for granted in the Moyes era.