A decision that has been labelled “brave” and “groundbreaking” by experts has been taken by the chairman of an established Premier League club, whose future in the top league has come under severe threat after one of the worst starts to a season ever seen.

David Sullivan, chairman of the West Ham United FC board and largest shareholder, has made the decision, according to insiders, after becoming increasingly disillusioned by the performance of the human coaches he has hired and fired in the last couple of years, and has been quoted as remarking that ‘my son and I can win the Champions League with the club when we play Football Manager 24, while winning the Euros and the World Cup with England at the same time, so I’m going to try an AI coach’.

West Ham won the Europa Conference League in 2023 under then manager David Moyes, but their league performance that season and since has seen them flirting with relegation, with Sullivan appointing a series of managers who have all failed to address the worsening league form, which has seen them only win 2 home games in 2025. The latest, Nuno Espirito Santo, is just 3 games into his tenure, but a home loss to Brentford after a shocking display of ineptness by his team has fans and pundits alike saying that the Hammers are now almost certain to be relegated.

Sullivan (shown left as the life size bobble head available in the club shop), holds the Guinness World Record for the shortest ever EPL club chairman, a record that is widely regarded as impossible to beat, and has faced huge protests and match boycotts by fans, who blame him and co-chair Baroness Karen Brady for the overall performance of the team, their meddling in the playing side, and in particular the move to their current rented home at the London Stadium, which is a badly altered athletics bowl never suited to football.

Some pundits are questioning how an AI coach could possibly work, in particular on the training pitch and the dugout, but rumours of secret talks with Elon Musk to adapt his Optimus robot have been swirling, and a whistleblower at Tesla claims that they have seen the prototype, that purportedly can speak every language, although in a Scottish accent, and is able to hack into the match timing system to either increase or decrease the amount of added time at the end of each half, with a new piece of coding dubbed “FERGIE”, which stands for Fudging Every Referee’s Game-Influencing Extension. The Optimus team are also said to be working on a way to make all VAR calls be favourable to the AI coach’s team, although they deny that this will involve AI alteration of the video replays.

Above – An artists impression of the new AI Head Coach

Sports journalists have been speculating on what the robot will actually be named, if it is appointed at West Ham, with the current odds on favourite being Iron Man; however bookies report that big money is being wagered on Bubbles McBubbles, with the thought that Sullivan will try to win fans over by acknowledging the club’s history.

We spoke to some fans about the possible change, and from the ones we could understand, most seemed to be in favour of the move. Arthur, from Essex, said, “Well it can’t be any bleedin’ worse, can it?”, while Terry, from Stratford, commented, “All I care about is when they are going to ‘ave jellied eels at the ground; they’ve been promising it since we moved ‘ere. If they can get a robot to make ’em, I’ll be ‘appy.” We are unable to reproduce the other comments due to expletives. Former Hammers manager and slayer of the beautiful game, Mike Bassett Sam Allardyce was quoted as saying, “it’s a load of b*llocks; I’ve always maintained that if you can’t chew gum you can’t be a manager. And I didn’t just play long ball”.