When Jack Moylan completed his first-half hat-trick on Wednesday night, Scott Parker could’ve been forgiven for wondering if he was about to set the worst-possible record on his managerial debut at West Ham United.

Dublin dynamo Moylan scored three times for Cardiff inside 39 minutes. ‘New manager bounce’, huh? Never heard of it.

Scott Parker has to settle for a draw as West Ham United fight back at Cardiff

Pellegrini went down 4-0 to Liverpool on his managerial bow back in 2018. Mo Salah and Daniel Sturridge scored that day, alongside a Sadio Mane brace.

That can happen. Pellegrini’s West Ham were hardly the only team who had no answer to Jurgen Klopp’s relentless frontline in those days.

But even in a season in which the Hammers have dropped points against Watford, Millwall and Charlton, a thumping defeat away to bottom-half, newly-promoted Cardiff in Parker’s first game would’ve represented a humiliating new low.

Instead, Parker rolled the clock back to 2011 and, thanks to some inspired half-time alterations, West Ham fought back to secure a 3-3 draw which seemed fanciful at the break. Parker not only dodged the same fate as Pellegrini, he also avoided becoming the seventh West Ham manager since 2010 to lose his first game in charge.

Graham Potter and Julen Lopetegui both suffered 2-1 defeats by Aston Villa, in the FA Cup and the Premier League respectively. Conference League success in the Czech capital seemed a long way off when Watford ruined David Moyes’ arrival in 2017, a 2-0 loss at Vicarage Road his first of 262 matches across two spells.

Sam Allardyce is West Ham’s most recent promotion-winning manager. A campaign which ended with Ricardo Vaz Te’s Wembley heroics, though, started with an inauspicious 1-0 defeat by – funnily enough – Cardiff.

Parker is the 21st permanent manager in West Ham’s 131-year history. As far as we can tell, only three of the previous 20 marked their debuts with a victory; Gianfranco Zola, Slaven Bilic and, thanks to a late Nigel Reo-Coker winner against Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United in 2006, Alan Curbishley.

West Ham managers through history and their first games in charge

Syd King, 1902 – 1-1 vs Reading

Charlie Paynter, 1933 – 0-3 vs Bradford Park Avenue

Ted Fenton, 1950 – 3-3 vs Hull City

Ron Greenwood, 1961 – 1-1 vs Manchester City

John Lyall, 1974 – 0-2 vs Newcastle United

Lou Macari, 1989 – 1-1 vs Stoke

Billy Bonds, 1990 – 1-1 vs Blackburn Rovers

Harry Redknapp, 1994 – 0-0 vs Leeds

Glenn Roeder, 2001 – 1-2 vs Liverpool

Alan Pardew, 2003 – 1-1 vs Nottingham Forest

Alan Curbishley, 2007 – 1-0 vs Man United

Gianfranco Zola, 2008 – 3-1 vs Newcastle

Avram Grant, 2010 – 0-3 vs Aston Villa

Sam Allardyce, 2012 – 0-1 vs Cardiff

Slaven Bilic, 2015 – 1-0 vs FC Lusitans

David Moyes, 2017 – 0-2 vs Watford

Manuel Pellegrini, 2018 – 0-4 vs Liverpool

Julen Lopetegui, 2024 – 1-2 vs Aston Villa

Graham Potter, 2025 – 1-2 vs Aston Villa

Nuno Espirito Santo, 2025 – 1-1 vs Everton