Reading boss Jaap Stam has been linked with a move to West Ham United.
West Ham United manager Slaven Bilic during the match
West Ham manager Slaven Bilic is under increasing pressure – and a manager he had a brief spat with earlier this month has been touted to take his job.
Bilic may have guided West Ham to a seventh-placed finish in the Premier League last season, but this term has been a waking nightmare for the Croatian.
Fans and players have yet to really adjust to life at the London Stadium following the move from Upton Park, Bilic didn’t get the prolific striker he wanted last summer, has had to endure injury after injury, and then saw star playmaker Dimitri Payet leave the club in January.
All of that has added up to West Ham having a below-par season in comparison to last season’s success, with Bilic’s men currently lying in the bottom half of the Premier League table.
With two points in the last five games and three defeats in a row, Bilic is back under pressure – and reports are linking West Ham with potential replacements should they decide to part ways with Bilic this summer.
The Mirror recently claimed that the Hammers are eyeing up Reading boss Jaap Stam, who has turned the Royals into candidates for promotion to the Premier League following a surprise move from Ajax last summer.
The links are particularly fascinating given that Bilic and Stam had a brief war of words earlier this month over Hammers wonderkid Reece Oxford, who is currently on loan at the Madejski Stadium.
Reading manager Jaap Stam
After Stam had told Get Reading that he felt Oxford was ‘surprised’ by the intensity of his training sessions compared to Bilic’s, the West Ham boss fired back at the former Manchester United defender.
Bilic, as quoted by Football.London, stated that West Ham train with enough intensity despite Stam’s barbed comments, insisting that Oxford must not have been fit enough to be training with Stam’s men at the time.
The public feud between the two could be notched up a level should Stam take Bilic’s job this summer, and the West Ham boss certainly won’t want to be forced out in favour of a man who seemingly questioned the Croatian’s training methods just two weeks ago.
Would you want Stam to replace Bilic?
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