Zola sacked as West Ham boss

He may be popular but the club have sacked the coach after narrowly avoiding relegation from the Premier League.

Gianfranco Zola spent 20 months in charge of West Ham.

When your boss describes your work as "shambolic and pathetic" it is time to look for a new job. That blunt message hit Gianfranco Zola straight between the eyes after his West Ham team were embarrassed at home by Wolves in a vital English Premier League relegation dogfight seven weeks ago. A limp 3-1 defeat that night was the fifth in a sequence of six consecutive losses for the east London club and Zola was on borrowed time from then onwards in his first managerial role. Yesterday his time ran out as the Italian, enormously popular with his players and idolised by the Upton Park fans, was given his marching orders by the club's relatively new owners. Less than 48 hours after completing a difficult second season at the cash-strapped club which ended with his team five points ahead of third-bottom Burnley, Zola became the latest casualty of one of the toughest businesses in sport and added weight to the long-held belief that nice guys do not make for successful football managers. It is hard to think of a more appealing personality in the English game than Zola, who became an instant hit in that country when departing his homeland in 1996 to accept an offer from Ruud Gullit to sign for Chelsea. Even a winning goal for Italy against England in a World Cup qualifier at Wembley the following year failed to diminish his popularity and it did not prevent him being voted Footballer of the Year by England's sports writers. Eyebrows were raised when in 2003 he topped a poll among Chelsea supporters to find that club's "best ever player". That accolade, helped by the fact that he was in the team at the time unlike heroes of yesteryear such as Jimmy Greaves, Ron Harris, Bobby Tambling, Peter Osgood, Peter Bonetti, Ruud Gullit and Gianluca Vialli, was further testimony to cult figure status. Now, sadly but unsurprisingly, he has to start rebuilding that reputation, a victim of the desire of new co-owners David Gold and David Sullivan's burning desire to make a swift impact at the club they took over from Icelandic control. Gold, who announced yesterday's sacking, can disarm any protesting supporters by pointing to the glaring statistic that Zola was the most unsuccessful manager in West Ham's history as far as results go. Zola oversaw only 23 victories in his 80 matches in charge - a record which is marginally worse than Glenn Roeder's 31 per cent winning record. In his defence, however, Zola could point out that he arrived at the club just as the financial bubble was bursting and inherited a squad of players on salaries disproportionately higher than those at rival clubs among the Premier League makeweights. It would be untypical of Zola to present excuses for this rare blot on an impressive career resume. He will take that endearing smile to some other welcoming destination and, in all probability, earn the affections of those he seeks to please while the stagnating Hammers look for his successor. The list of potential replacements is already a lengthy one with the smart money on Avram Grant, whose Portsmouth team were one of the three who saved West Ham from relegation - albeit under a crippling nine-point handicap for entering administration. Slaven Bilic, a former playing hero of the club but now the coach of Croatia, is another being strongly tipped for the vacancy, along with Mark Hughes, who was considered unfortunate to lose his job at Manchester City in December. [e-mail]