George Overhill

Sat 8 April 2023 9:40, UK

Rafa Benitez and Mark Warburton are both potential West Ham manager options with David Moyes facing the sack after the Newcastle defeat, The Guardian reports.

The 5-1 hammering at the London Stadium on Wednesday (5 April) has seen David Sullivan’s previous backing of the current boss dry up and a loss to Fulham on Saturday is now seen as possibly being enough to spark a change in the dug out.

Assistant Warburton could be left in interim charge if Moyes is removed as there are fears the Scot isn’t getting through to his players, while Benitez is ready to take the job but would want a longer-term commitment than the club are currently willing to provide.

Jacob Steinberg reports for The Guardian that: “West Ham are aware that Rafael Benítez would be willing to step in but they do not want to give the Spaniard a long-term deal. Another possibility is placing Mark Warburton, part of Moyes’s backroom staff, in interim charge.”

He adds of the situation behind the scenes at the London Stadium: “[West Ham’s] awful defending against Newcastle raised questions over whether Moyes’s message is getting through. The Guardian has previously reported that some figures in the dressing room have been expressing doubts over their manager’s tactics.

“The mood has been described as low by well-placed sources.”

Turmoil

The mood can’t be much lower than it is among the fanbase right now, with the final minutes of the miserable midweek match being played out in front of swathes of empty seats in Stratford.

Moyes, for all he has done at West Ham over the past couple of seasons, appears content to dine out on those achievements without showing an urgency to address the current situation.

It has gone long past the point where removing him would be a knee-jerk reaction, and even if the response to the Newcastle result is based more on how the game was lost than the result itself there simply has to be an improvement at Craven Cottage.

If Sullivan sticks with Moyes to the end of the campaign it looks like limping over the line to safety in thoroughly underwhelming fashion is about the best that can be hoped for domestically, and that is far from guaranteed.

Any success in the Europa Conference League will be overshadowed by relegation, and while Benitez seems to be unpopular just about everywhere these days, despite being a Champions League, Europa League, FA Cup and multiple La Liga winner in his earlier career, even he is starting to look like a better option.

Interim arrangements with assistants left in charge don’t inspire a huge amount of confidence when they are part of the current sinking ship so Warburton only makes sense if it is seen as specifically Moyes who is the problem.

But if something doesn’t change on the pitch immediately then it could be about to in the dug out.