West Ham appoint Nuno after sacking Potter

West Ham have appointed former Nottingham Forest manager Nuno Espirito Santo as head coach after sacking Graham Potter.

Nuno, 51, has signed a three-year contract with the Hammers and will take charge of his first match on Monday away at Everton in the Premier League.

Potter was dismissed on Saturday morning after only eight months in charge, with the club 19th in the table.

Nuno joins West Ham after being sacked on 9 September by Forest, who he guided to seventh in the Premier League last season – their highest finish since 1994-95.

“I am very pleased to be here and very proud to be representing West Ham United,” he said.

“My objective is to work hard to get the very best from the team and ensure that we are as competitive as we possibly can be. The work has already started and I am looking forward to the challenge that is ahead.”

Nuno joins West Ham shortly after a 21-month stint at the City Ground, where he was sacked only three games into this season.

He took his first training session in east London on Saturday afternoon before the club’s match at Everton on Monday.

West Ham said Nuno will be assisted in the interim by academy coaches Mark Robson, Steve Potts, Gerard Prenderville and Billy Lepine, with a further announcement on his coaching and backroom staff to be made in due course.

The Hammers took only three points from their opening five league games this season under Potter.

After dismissing the 50-year-old, West Ham said they believed “a change is necessary in order to help improve the team’s position in the Premier League as soon as possible”.

They added: “Results and performances over the course of the second half of last season and the start of the 2025-26 season have not matched expectations.”

In a statement via the League Managers Association, Potter said: “I am incredibly disappointed to be leaving West Ham, particularly without being able to achieve what we set out to achieve at the start of our journey in east London.

Former West Ham winger Matt Jarvis:

I think as a manager, Nuno has been excellent. He went in at Forest and what he did there was incredible.

If you look at the number of players he put into a team… he somehow found a formation and style of play. And everyone was so together. That’s what he’s going to have to do again at West Ham.

It needs a bit of a reshuffle. There are a lot of players there who are not confident.

Will the West Ham fans be patient? David Moyes did an incredible job, and won a European trophy, but they weren’t really pleased with the style of play. They then got Julen Lopetegui in and they thought the style of play was going to be amazing and it wasn’t. They got Potter in thinking the exactly the same.

Potter replaced Julen Lopetegui, who was sacked in January after six months in charge when West Ham were 14th in the table.

But the former Chelsea and Brighton boss found wins difficult to come by.

West Ham, who sold Ghana forward Mohammed Kudus to Tottenham for £55m in July, spent £126m on eight signings in the summer, including the £38m purchase of Portuguese midfielder Mateus Fernandes from Southampton.

But losses to Sunderland, Chelsea, Tottenham and Palace left them in the bottom three. They went out of the Carabao Cup in the second round with a 3-2 defeat by fellow strugglers Wolves.

That led to West Ham issuing a statement acknowledging “results and performances on the pitch over the past two seasons have not met the standards we set for ourselves”.

Disgruntled fans staged a demonstration against the board before the Palace match.

West Ham’s fortunes have declined since David Moyes’ departure a year after he won the Europa Conference League in 2023, the club’s first trophy in 43 years.

Despite Forest’s success during Nuno’s time as manager, his relationship with owner Evangelos Marinakis deteriorated in his final few months at the club.

In August, Nuno revealed he feared for his job, with internal tensions believed to centre around disagreements over their transfer business, which was conducted by new global head of football Edu.

Despite spending about £196m on 13 players, former Wolves and Tottenham coach Nuno criticised the activity in the summer transfer window, saying Forest had wasted a good chance.

Forest suffered a poor run of form towards the end of 2024-25, taking only eight points from their final eight matches to slide out of Champions League contention.

In May, Marinakis appeared to confront Nuno on the pitch following a 2-2 draw against relegated Leicester, although Forest said there was “no confrontation” and it was “fake news” to suggest otherwise.