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From Eurosport:
West Ham are expected to start talks with Gianfranco Zola on Tuesday with a view to appointing the Italian as the club's new manager. Zola remains the clear favourite to succeed Alan Curbishley after the club's board ruled out Slaven Bilic's claims on Monday.
The club's directors are understood to have made Zola, 42, their top choice narrowly ahead of fellow Italian Roberto Donadoni. West Ham will look to complete talks as soon as possible but may face a slight delay - the former Chelsea midfielder is joint coach of the Italy Under-21 side and they are in action in Croatia on Tuesday night.
It is understood Zola's years of experience in the Premier League have given him the slight edge over Donadoni, the former Italy coach who resigned from that job after a disappointing Euro 2008 campaign. Donadoni still remains in the frame in the unlikely event a deal is not clinched with Zola, but Bilic's hopes of succeeding Alan Curbishley foundered on the complications surrounding his release from his current job as coach of Croatia, though he was never top of West Ham's wish list.
West Ham hope they will unveil their first foreign manager at a news conference on Thursday.
Kia Joorabchian, who works as an advisor to West Ham, said both Zola and Donadoni had impressed. He told Sky Sports News: "Zola has a lot of experience in the Premier League, he was admired by every fan in the league irrespective of which club they supported. He has built a big reputation for himself in Italy. He hasn't Premier League experience as a manager but he understands the Premier League very much. But Donadoni has vast experience and is a good candidate. They are moving fast. They would like to appoint a new manager before the weekend but it is a process they will consider carefully. It is a different system, a more European system of working and it will be a manager who will be working under that style in order to minimise and avoid errors which have occurred in the past."
Your thoughts, demonrail666?
I can't help but think that West Ham's problems aren't going to be solved by a new team manager, their problems are at boardroom level. Zola will only able to turn them around if he is given the chance to get rid of the sort of players that WHU seem to end up buying, and keep the sort that they generally end up selling. I don't think the current West Ham squad is necessarily capable of playing the style of football that Zola would want them to.
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