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Axe looms for Zola in crunch Tuesday meeting

It has been a tough year for Gianfranco Zola at West Ham © Getty Images

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Gianfranco Zola is expected to be sacked as West Ham boss by managing director Karren Brady on Tuesday, with former Hammers defender Slaven Bilic favourite to replace him.

Brady will be heading up the crunch talks with Zola on behalf of co-owners David Sullivan and David Gold and with Zola lacking the full support of the board, it appears his time is up.

"We will have a long and interesting chat," Zola said of the meeting. "It's been a tiring and exhausting season for us."

It has been clear for some time that Zola's Upton Park tenure would come to an end after the season finished and even though Gold has publicly backed his manager, the Italian has held on for long enough.

The decision on his future will be taken on Tuesday, when Zola will discover that his position is untenable after the narrow escape from relegation.

Zola has hinted in the past that he might quit his post, but the issue of compensation is sure to arise, and that is the sticking point for a club with £95 million of debt still to cope with, after Sullivan and Gold put up £50 million to buy 50% of the club in January when the debt stood at £110 million.

Sullivan has pledged that the club will bring in several new signings this summer, but it is clear that Zola is not the man the board trust with their money, a manager they inherited and thought about replacing when they first arrived with Mark Hughes.

Hughes will again be high on the Hammers agenda, but the former Manchester City boss has intimated that he might even be considered for the Liverpool job should Rafa Benitez go, and it would appear his wage demands would be too high for the financially strapped Hammers.

Instead, their former defender Bilic, who has impressed with his work with Croatia, has emerged as the favourite to replace Zola, though the first move will be to sort out Zola's position.

His assistant Steve Clarke will be present at the meeting, but Soccernet understands he will be given the option to remain at the club even though he fell out with Sullivan when refusing the co-owner's request to personally address the squad at the training ground when the club were staring relegation in the face.

Writing in Sunday's programme notes, Sullivan was again critical of Zola: "The current management and team know that what they have delivered was below the expectations at the start of the season and we simply have to do better next season.

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