For a club that prides itself on playing the 'West Ham Way', it has long been impossible to decipher quite what that means these days.

Managers have come and gone with no one able to tell you what their West Ham team embodies. What was the identity under Julen Lopetegui? What was it under Graham Potter? And what, after more than a year in charge, was it under Nuno Espirito Santo? If anything, the longer it went on under Nuno, the more unclear it became.

There had long been concerns in the West Ham dressing room, and boardroom, about Nuno’s confusing tactics, unforgiving man-management and humdrum training sessions. Club insiders described him as distant.

Few can forget the time he played his full backs on the wrong side in a damaging defeat by Brentford and then sent his team out against Leeds with no recognised forward and Andy Irving in midfield.

It was little surprise to see Callum Wilson, the former Hammers striker who started on the bench in those games, liking the club’s Instagram post confirming Nuno had been sacked.

Nor to see current jettisoned midfielder Edson Alvarez do the same when he can’t get into the side despite EFL record signing Arne Engels and Divine Mukasa being overrun every week. And especially not to see the wife of goalkeeper Alphonse Areola, now playing second fiddle to Mads Hermansen, posting an Instagram story to the tune of So Long, Farewell from The Sound of Music.

Former West Ham midfielder James Ward-Prowse, another who was bombed out under Nuno, could barely conceal his glee when asked last month after his Southampton side's win at the London Stadium whether it felt even better to get one over a manager who didn’t want you. ‘I’m not gonna lie,' he said, 'of course it does.’

Nuno’s fate is not expected to be mourned for long. West Ham’s supporters had already made their own views clear.

Spurred on by the travelling West Brom fans at the London Stadium on Saturday with their hearty rendition of ’You’re getting sacked in the morning’, the few Hammers left at the end of their 3-1 home defeat joined in.

Three days later, they got their wish. ‘Following a thorough review of the start to the Championship season, the board of directors believe a change is necessary at this time to ensure that the club’s objectives and expectations remain on track,’ read the club statement.

Those expectations are to earn instant automatic promotion, considering West Ham have the most expensive squad in the division and kept hold of Jarrod Bowen after relegation. But they are eighth following those back-to-back defeats by Southampton and West Brom.

It was a surprise to many that Nuno kept his job after relegation. David Sullivan, the former majority shareholder, wanted to sack Nuno in the summer but his influence in the boardroom was fading amid the BBC Panorama expose into historic allegations about his behaviour, which he denies, that saw him stand down as joint-chair.

Daniel Kretinsky, now the man who makes the decisions, wanted to keep the ship steady but has realised a change is needed after their unimpressive start. He made the decision after a crunch meeting this week.

And, so, for their fourth permanent manager since they enjoyed European glory under David Moyes, the Hammers will turn to one of their own former players in Scott Parker, out of work since leaving Burnley in April.

The club hope he could even be in charge for the Cardiff game on Wednesday night. They held talks with Parker in the summer and are believed to have done so again last week following the Southampton defeat.

Insiders say the club is acting with more ‘normality’ these days under the leadership of new chief executive Karim Virani, a stark change from the madcap chaos of recent years, and the appointment of Parker, a manager with a track record of getting teams promoted, feels like another step in that direction.

Parker has won three promotions with Fulham, Bournemouth and Burnley, with the last coming after racking up 100 points in 2024-25.

And, perhaps even more importantly at a time when the club are still searching for an identity, the 46-year-old – who was named Hammer of the Year three times in a row from 2009 to 2011 – knows what it means to represent West Ham. ‘He knows the West Ham ethos,’ as one senior club source told me this morning.

It’s expected that Hammers legend Mark Noble, currently sporting director and in interim charge, will form part of Parker’s staff. The fans, at least, will have figures in the dugout they can feel connected to.

Parker’s first job after taking over will be instilling a resilience that typified his Burnley team. West Ham boast the best attack in the Championship with 33 goals, helped by pumping six past Wrexham and Lincoln, but they have the leakiest defence of any of its top 11 teams.

Eight of their 18 goals conceded have come inside the first 20 minutes and, so far this term, they have failed to win when conceding the first goal.

By contrast, Parker's sides have kept a clean sheet in nearly half of his Championship matches. Burnley kept 30 in their 2024-25 promotion campaign, conceding 16 times in 46 matches and never more than once in a game. West Ham have mustered four clean sheets in their 13 games thus far and have already let in 18.

Parker is arguably the safest pair of hands West Ham could have placed their promotion hopes in. Those hoping to be freed from the turgid football of Nuno, however, may still be left disappointed.

Parker’s sides do have an identity but it’s one based firmly on being hard to beat. Those who followed Burnley under him say that if they scored even once, they knew they would likely win. ‘Dour but effective,’ was how one Burnley source put it.

Even though they ended the 2024-25 season as the third-highest scorers in the Championship, they ranked only 10th for number of shots and their expected goals (xG). Eight other teams had more touches in the opposition box.

For all the grumbles over his style, Parker’s players loved him. ‘They would run through brick walls for him,’ said one Burnley source. An unusual flurry of long, heartfelt messages from his players followed the decision to part ways.

Those players who had their noses put out of joint by Nuno have a chance to reignite their West Ham careers.

Areola won the player of the season award at Fulham after Parker brought him to the club on loan from Paris Saint-Germain. Noble previously told talkSPORT how much he ‘always respected and liked’ Alvarez as a midfielder.

There’s still a hope among senior figures that having better players at his disposal will allow Parker to play a more attractive style than during his Burnley days. Many who follow the Clarets credit him with being able to build such a resilient team after losing a host of his key players at the end of the transfer window.

The issue, of course, is what happens should Parker get West Ham back up. For all his brilliance at getting teams out of the Championship, his record at keeping them in the Premier League is equally dismal.

Fulham and Burnley came straight back down, the latter after spending more than £100million in the summer, and he was sacked by Bournemouth just four games in after a 9-0 defeat by Liverpool and complaints his squad was ‘under-equipped’.

Parker has won 55 per cent of his matches as manager in the Championship but only 15 per cent of them in the Premier League. His points per game plummets from 1.95 in the second tier to 0.7 in the top flight.

West Ham and their supporters may well harbour reservations over how they might fare in the Premier League under Parker but, right now, are in no position to think that far ahead. They need to get there first and, more than a quarter of the way through the season, have shown little to suggest they will.

Forget the carnival of free-flowing football for now. After putting up with a circus for so long, a little sense of order might be West Ham’s way back.