Slaven Bilic has been linked with a suprising return to the West Ham United dugout as Graham Potter continues to struggle. 

If West Ham lose again on Saturday against Crystal Palace, there is every chance Grahm Potter could be sacked. As usual, Hammers bosses look like they have started the hiring process before making the call to sack the current manager.

We have yet to decide on a new coach yet, or begin talks with a coach, but a new list of candidates of the job has come out in the past few days. Those managers are Slaven Bilic, Sean Dyche and Nuno Espirito Santo.

Unsurprisingly, the favourite of the fans from this list is Nuno because of the fantastic job he did at Forest. But the one that has caused the biggest reaction is Slaven Bilic.

Some fans would call him a club legend because of his time at the club as a player and the fact he managed us to probably our most memorable season in modern times, the last season at the Boleyn Ground makes him at least a cult hero.

While the potential of a fairy tale return of him turning our season around and saving us from the boredom of Potter ball sounds great, realistically that isn’t going to happen under Slaven Bilic because he isn’t good enough and we have proof of that.

The farewell Boleyn season in 2015/16 was the best season a lot of us have had supporting West Ham, and obviously Slaven did a great job that season, but you can’t help but think the magic of Upton Park and Dimitri Payet really carried us that season.

After that season, it was a complete disaster at the London Stadium. It was a boring first season, we finished 11th in the table after an awful summer transfer window and we failed to make the Europa League group stages. The second season was shocking, the Croatian was sacked in November with the club in the relegation zone.

By the end of his time in charge of West Ham, Bilic had run out of ideas, Dimitri Payet had gone and we just weren’t very good at all, the team’s confidence was low, he didn’t know his best team. He wasn’t the man to turn things around then, so what would make him that now?

Not only that, Bilic really didn’t get on with the London Stadium. Bilic knew West Ham from his time playing at Upton Park between 1996-1997, and he really connected with the fans during that 15/16 season as boss.

The move to the London Stadium immediately lost that connection between him and the fans which ruined the feel good factor, which Bilic really relied on to rally everyone together. Hammers legend and one of Bilic’s coaches at West Ham, Julian Dicks has spoken previously on how much it affected his time in East London.

Not only was his previous time at West Ham enough for him to not make a return, his career after the Hammers has been nothing short of poor. He was sacked by Saudi side Al-Ittihad after winning just three matches from fifteen, he was then sacked by West Brom after wining just once in thirteen.

After a stint in China where he left Beijing Guoan by mutual consent, Bilic was sacked by Championship Watford in March 2023 as they sat mid-table, unlikely to make the playoffs. His most recent job was at Saudi side Al-Fateh, where he left by mutual consent once again.

Bringing in Bilic would be an attempt from the board to try to unite the club, the toxicity around the club isn’t helping anyone including the manager and the players. Bringing back Bilic would lessen that slightly for a while and it could be great if it goes well.

However, if it goes wrong, which it probably would, it would be a disaster. The fans would come for the board even more because hiring a manager of his calibre when were fighting for survival would be ridiculous.

If we were serious, we would pay the compensation to get an employed manager who could completely turn this team full of International quality around. Slaven Bilic isn’t the man to do that, we may as well keep Potter and hope his ideas come to fruition.