When the subject of hiring Eddie Howe, Kieran McKenna or Thomas Frank comes up, the immediate response from sneering neutrals is to label West Ham United fans fools of the most deluded kind.

To ask, in a mocking tone, why managers with a Premier League pedigree would ever consider joining a club sitting eighth in the Championship table? On another miserable Saturday night, Jamie O’Hara earned his talkSPORT bucks as he laughed off suggestions that Eddie Howe could take over from Nuno Espirito Santo.

Indeed he has. But, like Manchester United, the allure of taking control at a sleeping giant, awakening the beast from its slumber, and being forever known as the man who turned around one of English football’s great overachievers will appeal to a lot of managers who – let’s be honest – have egos large enough that they would back themselves to succeed where so many have failed.

Antonio Conte is reportedly desperate for the Old Trafford gig. Hammers News have been told that Craig Bellamy would be tempted to leave his beloved Wales for a return to East London.

And you do not achieve as much as Eddie Howe has done – Howe ended Newcastle’s 70-year domestic trophy drought and brought Champions League football back to St James’ Park – without an unshakable confidence in your own ability.

Yes, West Ham United are eighth in the Championship. But it is partly because they are eighth in the Championship that the Hammers job – in November 2026 – still feels like such a plumb number.

West Ham United is still an extremely attractive job

Lest we forget, this is a team captained by Jarrod Bowen. West Ham have two of Leeds’ title-winning stars in Joel Piroe and Manor Solomon. Arne Engels is the Championship’s most expensive-ever player. Taty Castellanos is an Argentina international who scored six Premier League goals from January to June last season.

Edvin Austbo, Divine Mukasa and Mohamadou Kante are brimming with potential. Mads Hermansen and Kyle Walker-Peters have been promoted out of this league before. Timeless Tomas Soucek is still as potent a goalscorer as ever.

With a squad as strong as this, it is almost inconceivable that West Ham would not play a major role in the automatic promotion battle.

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chillout

Anyone but Nuno. He was never a fit.

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antonymmartin84

Kieran McKenna for me. I loved the brand of football he had his team playing at Ipswich and he always made a real effort to connect with the fans, and to get his players to do the same. We haven’t had that at West Ham since Moyes

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If indeed the likes of Eddie Howe or Thomas Frank are open to a return to management – Rob Edwards, promotion-winner with Luton Town, has his sights fixed on a fresh start – the appeal of West Ham is obvious.

‘New-manager bounce’, plus a forward-line that would strike fear into every Championship backline on paper, could be a lethal combination. This is not a squad in need of an overhaul. It’s a squad chock-full of elite talent for this level of football.

On paper, securing promotion with Bowen, Piroe and Solomon would not look like too much of an achievement. It’s hardly Edwards winning the play-offs with the unfancied Hatters. But given how poorly the Hammers have started in the second tier – West Ham are on track to record just 77 points, 18 less than the title-winning average – if a new manager was to turn things around, as they should without too much difficulty, they’d be seen as the man who saved West Ham’s season. Rather than the man who achieved what really should be par for the course, for such a talented roster.

Amanda Staveley sees the Hammers as a club with huge potential

Though Amanda Staveley was blocked in her attempts to take over the London Stadium outfit recently, her view is one that many in football will share.

Like Newcastle – Staveley helped bring Saudi Arabian investment into a club whose soul had been crushed by Mike Ashley’s penny-pinching – she and husband Mehrdad Ghodoussi see West Ham as a club with a bottomless supply of untapped potential.

“We really want to be buying or going in and investing in a club again very soon, hopefully,” Staveley told Spears a few months ago.

“Both my husband and I, we’re attracted to building a business where we can take a brand that isn’t doing so well, a club that isn’t performing well and get it on the right road and bring that [club] forward. And there are very few clubs that tick that box.”

Hammers News later revealed that Staveley was ‘blown away’ by the support shown by the West Ham fans. Over 50,000 season tickets were sold after relegation. This is a huge club with a strong if disillusioned fanbase desperate to love again and repair those broken hearts.

This is a club with a 60,000-seater stadium. A club with a squad so talented that most Championship managers would bite your arm clean off at the elbow for even a shred of.

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cumberworth57

With a decent manager with this squad we should walk this division but he is clueless, no leaders, and defensively embarrassing, we have no style of play and I don’t believe the players are with him

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Howe, Frank or McKenna – likely to form part of any post-Nuno shortlists – would not necessarily view West Ham as the eighth-best side in the Championship. Instead, a Premier League team in-waiting. A rusted old convertible that just needs a bit of pimping and a fresh coat of paint, especially if someone as ambitious as Staveley gets her claws into the club in the relatively near future.

Sunderland secured European qualification in their first season back after nearly a decade away. Leeds already look like an established top-flight outfit. Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth continue to show what can be achieved with a modern outlook and good people in the right roles. Frank worked wonders at Brentford, and Howe once had Newcastle putting four goals past Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League.

West Ham are a club begging for the same kind of love an attention. If they get it, the sky is the limit, let alone the automatic promotion positions.