Forget the clean sheets, Nuno has found his solution to West Ham’s defensive frailties

Looking aback at the mid point in the summer transfer window, it seemed that West Ham were haemorrhaging players whilst there were few hopes of summer signings. Nervousness grew as the window neared its last few weeks. Sixteen did leave the club and even as the pre-season friendlies kicked off, it seemed West Ham were something of a one-trick pony: Stop Jarrod Bowen and you’d stop West Ham from scoring.

Quietly, without splashing Troy Parrot-like cash on a striker, West Ham have used their existing resources well and brought in ‘horses for courses‘ such as Joel Piroe and Manor Solomon on modest money – and have created a strike force to be reckoned with in this division.

Opposition managers now have multiple headaches – such as todays Millwall who will have to reckon with six different West Ham scorers from their last Championship game, along with a newly bubbling Pablo who has finally got on the scoresheet too.

As Nuno claimed:

“We always look to our forward players to score, to increase [their output], and he [Pablo] gives us more solutions than options..The goal was missing, so it’s going to be a big boost of confidence for him” (whufc.com)

Nuno appears – finally – committed to simply outscoring his opponents whilst not over stressing on defensive errors which keep cropping up at the back.

In this division, that is likely to be enough. Nuno and Koppen actually deserve huge credit for creating this line up with a pretty modest summer budget – and just a couple of weeks to bring it all together.

Just don’t expect the clean sheet tally to be boosted today though. It seems the norm for the Hammers to gift their opponents an early goal lead but with the likes of Bowen, Solomon, Taty, Pablo, Piroe and Austbø plus Mavropanos from set pieces- the Hammers have goal threat aplenty to take the game away from their opponents today.