more than enough to see off a miserable and forlorn Everton side<\/a>.<\/p>\nThings already looked bleak for Lampard with beloved Everton owner Farhad Moshiri choosing, entirely at random we\u2019re sure, this particular away game to attend his first Everton match in 14 months, hovering around the London Stadium like the grim reaper. He would later, bafflingly, claim that sacking Lampard was not his decision.<\/p>\n
It certainly wasn\u2019t a harsh one. Defeat at West Ham meant a run of one point in seven games for the Toffees, including an absurd five defeats in six-pointers against direct rivals in what was at the time a packed relegation battle.<\/p>\n
El Sacked? Lampard was gone within 48 hours, which does seem to be the accepted polite timeframe for these matters. Even other bastard owners aren\u2019t quite at Mr Marinakis levels.<\/p>\n
Moyes insisted he felt he still had the board\u2019s backing regardless of the outcome here, and would of course go on to lift the Conference League trophy five months later before stumbling through one more season of gripes and grumbles about his playing style that do now sound quite funny, all things considered.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
El Sackico: Lopetegui\u2019s West Ham 0-0 Dyche\u2019s Everton, November 2024<\/p>\n
The key element here was timing. Obviously timing is vital to all Sackico dubbings, but there are few more perfect times for them than the last fixture before the November international break. The two weeks to either stew or act in what does represent the last reasonably dignified time to make a move that can actually turn a season around rather than focus entirely on merely averting disaster.<\/p>\n
Change course during the November interlull and there is some potential for the new man to get a kind of mini pre-season in with whatever handful of players remain at the club rather than gallivanting off around the world, and it does allow some time to forge coherent and constructive plans with which to attack the January transfer window.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the last time in the season when a managerial change can look like a considered rather than panicked decision, really.<\/p>\n
The \u2018careful what you wish for\u2019 warnings were already echoing around West Ham heads, with their supporters\u2019 really quite reasonable retort that replacing Moyes with Spanish Moyes was not in fact what any of them had wished for falling almost entirely on deaf ears.<\/p>\n
The game itself was beyond wretched. A genuine contender in any worst Premier League game of all time list. A grimly won point apiece kept both teams out of the bottom three but with neither any conviction nor much dignity.<\/p>\n
El Sacked? Both men survived the interlull, although it would later emerge that both clubs had given serious thought to making a move during that break.<\/p>\n
Both of them probably should have done so. The axe fell on both in the space of 48 hours less than two months later.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
El Sackico: Lopetegui\u2019s West Ham 2-0 O\u2019Neil\u2019s Wolves, December 2024<\/p>\n
There are patterns, aren\u2019t there? Certain familiar recurring elements to a proper slice of Sackico action. Nuno. West Ham. Wolves. Jarrod Bowen. It\u2019s all linked. It\u2019s all a conspiracy. We\u2019re through the looking glass here, people.<\/p>\n
This might actually be the apex Sackico for containing all the format\u2019s most vital elements. West Ham v Wolves on a Monday night with both teams in DESPERATE NEED of a MORALE BOOST and looking to EASE RELEGATION FEARS. Classic Sackico fare.<\/p>\n
Wolves were, as is customary in the first half of any Premier League season, deep in the relegation soup down in 19th. West Ham were five places better off, but unrest was bubbling in equally customary fashion as nervous glances were aimed over shoulders.<\/p>\n
West Ham won the game 2-1 with second-half goals from Tomas Soucek and Bowen (!) either side of a Matt Doherty equaliser for the beleaguered visitors in a bad-tempered game that ended with Mario Lemina brawling with Bowen and losing the captaincy as a result.<\/p>\n
El Sacked? O\u2019Neil managed to hang grimly on for one more week before a home defeat to Ipswich and more daft ill-discipline \u2013 Rayan Ait-Nouri was sent off after the game, while Matheus Cunha\u2019s total headloss entered legend \u2013 spelled the inevitable end. Lopetegui struggled forlornly on for another month before being put out of everyone\u2019s misery.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
El Sackico: Nuno\u2019s West Ham 1-2 Dyche\u2019s Nottingham Forest, January 2026<\/p>\n
Here was a perfect fixture to highlight the sheer insanity of this season\u2019s managergeddon-based antics.<\/p>\n
Nuno Espirito Santo had started the season as Forest manager, of course, but now found himself at West Ham taking on his former club, who had by this point already appointed and sacked his replacement, Ange Postecoglou, with time enough for his replacement Sean Dyche to also start coming under pressure.<\/p>\n
When the Hammers took a first-half lead it really did look like Dyche might become the third Forest manager binned off this season by cartoon supervillain Mr Marinakis. But a stirring second-half fightback against, it must be said, a dispiritingly moribund West Ham took Forest to a crucial victory.<\/p>\n
As Forest eased away from the bottom three, West Ham found themselves ever more deeply mired inside it with the chance of escape looking bleaker than ever. It was the lowest moment of West Ham\u2019s season, prompting the inevitable paraphrasing of Homer Simpson at his inspirational best: \u2018So far. Lowest moment of the season so far.\u2019<\/p>\n
El Sacked? TBC. Nuno has, against the odds it must be said, somehow survived and made it as far as the next Sackico. We\u2019re fascinated to see how many he can emerge from. Tottenham this weekend is one, obviously. Sunderland definitely isn\u2019t, and it is probably too early even for Chelsea to be considering sacking Liam Rosenior just yet, so it\u2019s not until Burnley in the first week of February that the next possibility comes along.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Man United three days after that, and we\u2019re all in for a lot of fun if that has Sackico status. With all due respect to Nuno, it does feel like even looking that far ahead is at the giddier end of optimistic.<\/p>\n
As for Dyche, he\u2019s just about fine again for now. But how safe can any manager ever truly be in Mr Marinakis\u2019 lair? No obvious further upcoming Sackicos on his schedule, although we will make what is now an only slightly mischievous note next to the game with Crystal Palace on February 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another weekend, another Sackico. We went way too early last week by suggesting that West Ham v Forest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,16411,1523,585,818,2638,17165,1614,85,29761,10988,13852,1529,1530],"class_list":["post-419615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-everton","tag-f365-features","tag-front-page","tag-home-page","tag-nuno-espirito-santo","tag-popular","tag-premier-league","tag-sports","tag-thomas-frank","tag-tottenham-hotspur","tag-uncategorized","tag-west-ham-united","tag-wolves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}