• Italian’s stance has shifted over past week
• Manager will seek settlement of up to £1.9m to leave
Gianfranco Zola is set to leave West Ham United at the end of the season but intends to sit down with the owners to secure a dignified, negotiated exit with a payoff rather than quitting as manager.
Zola’s initial intention had been to leave once West Ham had secured their future in the Premier League but his stance is understood to have shifted over the past week and, rather than walking away and appearing to accept full responsibility for this season’s toils, he will now seek a settlement over the remaining two years of a contract worth £1.9m a season.
The Italian’s relationship with the co-owners, David Gold and David Sullivan, has been fractious at best. He has become more defiant in part because of the support he has received from the players and is deeply frustrated by Sullivan’s comments that all of the squad, bar the midfielder Scott Parker, will be available for sale this summer.
Gold said he hoped Zola would stay as manager after Saturday’s win against Wigan Athletic all but mathematically kept West Ham in the top flight for another season. The co-owner was speaking sincerely but the words put the onus on Zola to quit if he were unhappy and the manager is now less minded to do that.
Gold and Sullivan will meet Zola to discuss his future after the final game of the season on 9 May. “Franco has indicated he doesn’t want to discuss his position until the end of the season and that’s fine by us,” said Sullivan, who has yet to indicate publicly whether he wants Zola to stay on. “We shall ask him what he has in mind, we will see what he wants to do.”
There was an indication that West Ham may well be planning for a future without Zola in the £4m bid the club has made for Graham Dorrans, the West Brom midfielder. This was rejected by Jeremy Peace, the West Brom chairman, who said: “As I have stressed several times since we achieved promotion over two weeks ago our aim now is to retain our core players and try to strengthen our squad around them. I want to make it clear again that Graham Dorrans is not for sale.”
With Zola’s future in doubt any interest in Dorrans would surely have been driven by Gold and Sullivan rather than a manager who might soon be leaving.
Zola came close to resigning at the end of last month when he returned to his native Sardinia to consider his position after a run of six consecutive defeats, which threatened West Ham’s Premier League status. But Zola returned to declare he wanted to stay to help West Ham avoid relegation, and his team collected seven points from the next four games to make the club all but secure. The Italian has had a particularly difficult season, with West Ham’s onfield struggles compounded by fragile finances and the criticism players received from Sullivan, who bought West Ham with Gold in January.
Following West Ham’s 3-1 home defeat by Wolverhampton Wanderers on 23 March Sullivan published an open letter on the club’s website in which he described that performance as “shambolic and pathetic”. This caused Zola an unwanted distraction ahead of the following game with Stoke City, which was lost, prompting the manager’s bout of soul-searching in Sardinia.
West Ham’s difficult season was also reflected by Sullivan insistence that only Parker was not for sale. He said: “Other than Scott Parker, there is not a player we wouldn’t sell if it was the right bid. Scott will not be sold and we will be buying more than we are selling. There will be no fire-selling and we will enhance the squad, not diminish it. We will have to shake up the pack because there is no point kidding ourselves otherwise we will be in the same position next year – the table doesn’t lie.”
Hesaid although Matthew Upson would be offered a new contract, his England colleagues Robert Green and Carlton Cole would not. “We’ll make [Upson] a proposal for a new three-year contract. We would give him an offer of a comparable level to what he is on now. But Upson has a year to go so if we get a good offer we will take it.”
Gianfranco ZolaWest Ham UnitedPremier LeagueDominic FifieldJamie Jacksonguardian.co.uk
