”From what I’m hearing” - Alan Pardew drops huge West Ham claim involving Nuno & Scott Parker | OneFootball

Could the Hammers be making a change in the dugout?

West Ham United will be playing Championship football for the first time in 15 years next season, and there's already conjecture about who will be leading them into this fresh challenge.

In the end, the fact that matters were out of their hands proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for the Hammers.

They kept their end of the bargain on the final weekend of the Premier League season with a convincing 3-0 win against Leeds United at The London Stadium, but they also needed results elsewhere to go their way in order to stay up, and Spurs' 1-0 win against Everton was enough to condemn them to their first season of Championship football since the 2011-12 season.

The post-mortems are already beginning on a disastrous season for the Hammers, whose decline since winning the Europa Conference League in 2023 season has been marked.

They started the season with Graham Potter in charge of the team, but he was sacked and replaced by Nuno Espirito Santo at the end of September. The Portuguese manager, however, was unable to arrest the club's slide down the table and there is already intense speculation over whether he will still be with the club by the start of the 2026-27 season.

Could Nuno be leaving West Ham? Alan Pardew issues claim on Hammers boss

Speaking on talkSPORT following confirmation of West Ham's relegation to the Championship, former Irons manager Alan Pardew revealed that he has heard rumours that Nuno Espirito Santo might not be the club's manager by the start of next season.

"The interesting thing that I'm hearing which is strange noises from sources close to me that Nuno might not be there, not in the form of being sacked because I think he's tried to do a decent job, and he's had a good go at it in this second part of the season," Pardew said.

And Pardew has also been hearing one name coming up as a potential replacement for Santo in the eventuality that he does leave the club - and he's very familiar to the club.

"But maybe it'll suit all parties for him to go and get someone with experience of the Championship like Scott Parker, his name keeps coming up, and that's not from one source, that's from three or four sources," Pardew added.

"I was interested to see what Nuno said today. I can't imagine he'd give anything away."

Pardew added that he doesn't necessarily feel that West Ham will have an easy ride of things in the Championship next season, too.

"Interesting times at West Ham, in terms of how they're going to play out a very interesting agenda," the ex-Hammers boss stated.

"Obviously the clubs who get relegated are the favourites, but there's always a surprise package, usually three or four. And they're very difficult for the relegated teams to get past."

"As Coventry have proved, they have a spirit, they know the division, they've had a good go at it the year before, they have that experience, they have good talent in the team and they're hard to beat, and if you get three teams who can do what Coventry have done, then the relegated clubs are in big trouble."

Scott Parker has a lot to recommend him as a manager in the Championship

Scott Parker could be a good fit for West Ham United, should the position of Nuno Espirito Santo become untenable following the club's relegation from the Premier League.

Parker himself had a disappointing season as the manager of Burnley, who finished one place off the bottom of the table after recording just four League wins all season, resulting in him being sacked at the end of April with four matches still to play.

But Parker does have much to recommend him for this particular position.

He has taken three clubs - Fulham, Bournemouth and Burnley - into the Premier League from the Championship, making him something of a specialist in getting teams promoted from this particularly treacherous division. And as well as that, there is a West Ham connection, with Parker having made 141 appearances for them in all competitions between 2007 and 2011.

As Leicester City and Southampton have found out in 2025-26 though, getting promoted straight back to the Premier League isn't necessarily straightforward, and West Ham's decline in recent years, from winning silverware to relegation, draws some uncomfortable parallels with that of a Leicester City team who were among the pre-season favourites to win promotion but who ended up getting relegated into League One instead.

And while Scott Parker has much to recommend him in the Championship, the same could be said for Santo, who arrived at Wolverhampton Wanderers at the end of the 2016-17 season after they'd just finished 15th in the table and took them up as champions at the first attempt, before taking them to two consecutive 7th-placed finishes in their first two seasons back in the top-flight.

Whether Parker or Santo are in charge by the start of next season, the challenge awaiting them should not be underestimated. West Ham will have the substantial financial advantage of parachute payments from the Premier League, and their huge stadium will give them an extra leg-up in terms of revenue.

But expectations at The London Stadium will be sky-high following relegation, and the club has been a very unhappy place for much of the last couple of seasons. Succeed, and West Ham's manager next season will have a shot at earning a place in their hall of fame. But any West Ham manager who doesn't start 2026-27 strongly may well find that patience around the club is in extremely short supply following a season which fell miles short of the club's expectations, last time around.