West Ham, Crystal Palace and Tottenham’s Premier League rivals sack manager in brief statement

West Ham and Crystal Palace’s Premier League relegation rivals Wolves have parted company with manager Gary O’Neil. The Molineux outfit sit 19th in the table with just nine points from their opening 16 games. They are only above Southampton, who sacked manager Russell Martin on Sunday night after a 5-0 loss against Tottenham Hotspur.

Wolves are seven points behind 15th-placed Crystal Palace and nine adrift of West Ham, who are one position above the Eagles. The Irons picked up an important win over Wolves last Monday to put some distance between themselves and the bottom three. Tomas Soucek opened the scoring at the London Stadium before Matt Doherty levelled for the visitors. However, Jarrod Bowen soon put the Hammers back in front to claim a vital three points for the under-pressure Julen Lopetegui. After the defeat to West Ham, O’Neil was given one final chance to save his job as Wolves hosted Ipswich Town on Saturday afternoon. However, they were dramatically beaten 2-1 as Jack Taylor scored a winner for the Tractor Boys in the fourth minute of stoppage time.

After the game, an irate O’Neil was annoyed by both the goals his side conceded, calling the first “unacceptable” as Doherty scored an own goal. He said: “The set-play goal, I would happily take responsibility for it if the players were stood in the right place. For some reason two of them have decided to change roles very late on in the game. I’m 100 per cent confident if they were in the right spot our player heads it away. That’s the players’ decision-making under stress. Players will change things around and try and find fixes all the time but that’s a real poor decision from them in an important moment.”

He continued: “I know the work that I do every day and I know the situation that we’re in. I know that getting this group to perform the way they did took a lot of work today. So of course people can point a finger at me but some of the responsibility has to land on the players in those moments. When we get in good situations and we spoon the ball off the pitch, I can’t help them with that. That’s like, ‘Come on guys, it’s the Premier League now’… I’m really comfortable with myself as a coach, my standards, what I ask of the group and what I’m going to do over the next however many years that I decide to be a coach for.

“But I also embrace this difficult moment. That group downstairs need me again this week to help get them in a place where they’re ready to go and I’ll keep fighting for them and with them until I’m told not to. But I’ve no concerns around that. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think I’m going to get sacked as obviously with every result that comes, the chances of me losing my job will heighten as we all know, it’s nothing new. But it doesn’t concern me. The situation drives me to want to be better and drives me to to get more out of the group.”

However, O’Neil will not get the chance to get Wolves out of the relegation zone as a short statement confirmed his departure with club chairman Jeff Shi stating: “We’re very grateful to Gary for all of his effort, dedication and hard work during his time at the club, and we wish him and his team the best of luck for the future.”