West Ham United joint-owner, David Sullivan, has virtually signalled the end of Franco Zola’s first management job in football.

The owner has come out in the media during recent days and blasted the performance of the side and of the manager. It leaves Zola in a virtually impossible situation as he is clearly losing the faith of those who control the club.

Sullivan has called many of the team’s recent performances pathetic, which was capped off by the heavy home defeat at the hands of Wolves, who are also struggling.

Relegation for West Ham would have a tremendous blow on the side and could be one, which they struggle to recover from. Sullivan has already said the side should not be close to any of the relegation slots.

He said: “We will see what he is made of in the next few games. If he wins the next seven games [which begin with Stoke City at home tomorrow] he looks like the best manager of all time. If he loses them he’s the worst manager of all time.”

“We need this team to show us their talent, their desire, their passion, their dare. When I first started supporting West Ham, we had a tradition for playing the game ‘the right way’. I will settle for any way right now, as long as it is the winning way!”

“Nobody at the club should delude themselves that we are a good team. The table at this stage of the season does not lie. I accept that the club is in deep relegation trouble. However, we are a long way from being relegated. With some of the outstanding players we have, we can and must do better as a team.”

Key player, Matthew Upson, added: “If David Sullivan wants to air his views in public then he’s entitled to, he’s the chairman. I wouldn’t say, from a player’s point of view, that it helps, but we only concentrate on what the coaches and manager want us to do. They’re the people we want to listen to. Everything else is pretty irrelevant.”

West Ham have now reached the stage where they will have to scrap and fight for every single point they can get their hands on. How they react in the days to come will determine where the club ends up by the end of the season.

Any manager will say that when a high ranking official at a club comes out and starts virtually having a go at the gaffer, it puts the boss of the team in a difficult situation. This is because it undermines the manager’s authroity over the side.

If the players start to listen more and more to what Sullivan says, they will start to think that Zola is no good and therefore they will not be as willing to bust a gut for the manager in order to save the club.