West Ham fired Nuno Espírito Santo because of results: the slow starts and the lack of a Plan B. Each reason played their part. But the clearest explanation for why Nuno is gone is that he lost his players, and the first thing he lost was the captain. It is the second time in little more than a year that a West Ham manager has gone down that road. Jarrod Bowen is 2-0 against the men in the dugout.
The Hammer Times wrote about it at the time in No One Puts Bowen in a Corner, first published on Green Street Hammers in October 2025. In late August, as the transfer window closed, Graham Potter publicly criticised the squad’s lack of leadership. His comments alienated veteran players and, most significantly, unsettled Bowen. Niclas Füllkrug challenged Potter’s remarks, offended by the implication that the captain could not lead. Potter doubled down through the media, and The Athletic later reported that he had reservations about Bowen’s ability to lead the team. According to sources, that included the question of whether Bowen should keep the armband at all.
Under Potter’s watch, the club shed its leaders: Aaron Cresswell, Michail Antonio, Vladimír Coufal and Kurt Zouma were among the senior players who left. That left Bowen, who had been named the captain under Julen Lopetegui, remaining, and a manager who wanted him replaced had no one else of that stature to turn to.
Potter leaned on James Ward-Prowse as the vocal leader instead, and the dressing room did not buy it. Even Ward-Prowse, according to sources, stood behind Bowen. He was part of a group of veterans, along with Tomáš Souček and Aaron Wan-Bissaka, who told Potter to move on from the idea of taking the armband away. When the man a manager has chosen as his alternative tells him he is wrong, the argument is over.
Potter was gone within weeks, after only 25 games in charge.
Whether anyone believes Bowen is the perfect captain or the best leader is beside the point. Bowen is true West Ham. Supporters know it. His teammates know it. Rivals know it, and England knows it. If he were not, he would have left after relegation, when he could have walked into any number of Premier League dressing rooms. He stayed, and sacrificed a potential place on England’s national squad, and that tells everyone in the building what the club means to him.
That was what the players understood when Potter was sniffing around the question of whether to replace him. It was also what Nuno understood when he arrived. Two days into the job, he benched Ward-Prowse, then left him out of the matchday squad altogether against Everton, a clear message about who the team belonged to. Of course there was now a personal history between the two, but nevertheless Bowen answered with the equaliser to earn a point. Nuno kept the captain close, and it worked.
Somewhere along the way, he forgot it.
He forgot how the other players see Bowen. It’s the way the previous leadership group saw Mark Noble as the one who is genuinely West Ham, who speaks for the dressing room and whose word carries because everyone knows where he comes from. When a manager treats that person as just another selection decision, the rest of the squad notices.
The relationship between Nuno and Bowen began to deteriorate once Bowen felt ignored, and the relationship between Nuno and his players went with it. Early in the season, Bowen spoke up for two of his teammates, asking whether there was a plan for Edson Álvarez and Soungoutou Magassa. It was not contentious. The two players were unclear whether they had a role in Nuno’s squad, and Bowen wanted answers on their behalf. He was told everyone was being evaluated.
After the long international break, Bowen went back to his manager and asked again what the plans were for Álvarez and Magassa. The response was non-committal. Bowen felt ignored, and, according to sources, the refusal to include the pair in training and on matchdays began to spread through the dressing room.
Millwall away: The Captain takes the room
The clearest example of what Bowen means to this squad came at The Den. West Ham, top of the Championship and chasing a fifth straight win, were 2-0 down at half-time in a derby that Millwall had been waiting for since relegation. It was as bad as West Ham had looked all season.
At the break, as The Hammer Times reported in Millwall at the Half, Bowen asked Nuno and his coaching staff to step out of the dressing room, and then addressed his teammates on his own. According to a source, he spoke to the new signings who had not lived through last season and to the veterans who had, and made it about what the shirt means to the supporters and what losing that day would feel like for the rest of the season.
West Ham came out a different team. Kanté pulled one back and Konstantinos Mavropanos headed in the equaliser for a 2-2 draw away at their rivals. Nuno deserves credit for his own half-time changes, bringing on Mohamadou Kanté and Pablo, but a tactical tweak does not explain the change in intensity. Nuno changed the system, and Bowen changed the mood. It was a captain filling a gap that the manager and his staff were not filling.
The Álvarez and Magassa standoff was not the only reason Nuno lost his job. The results were poor, the slow starts became an epidemic, and the plan changed from half to half without much of a balance. A promotion mandate is a promotion mandate, and when the results are not there, the club has to look at everything. But when a manager also loses the players, there is nothing left to hold on to. Nobody stood up for Nuno when the club came asking, and that silence was the last straw.
The first night of the new era made the point again. Parker started Magassa at Cardiff, which was a message in itself, and West Ham found themselves 3-0 down at half-time. This time, according to sources, Bowen, Noble and Parker all addressed the squad at the break. What followed was Bowen willing his teammates to a comeback. He pulled the strings from a more central role and set up all three of West Ham’s goals for Divine Mukasa, Arne Engels and Max Kilman, as the Hammers came back for a 3-3 draw.
Parker’s appointment was driven by Mark Noble, who wanted someone who understood the club and would empower his players to lead. That means knowing who the leaders are. Bowen is not the loudest voice, and he is not for everyone, but he is the one the squad follows and the one the supporters trust. Ignore Bowen, ignore true West Ham, and you lose the dressing room. Two managers have now found that out the hard way. Let’s hope Scott Parker truly understands what his captain means to his squad and to the supporters.
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