In an admission that the championship is a far tougher place than when last he fought a promotion battle with Wolves within the second division, West Ham’s Nuno Espírito Santo has stated that the players and teams which the Hammers now face are more dangerous opponents than when his Wolves side won the league as champions in 2018.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Nuno made it clear that, whilst his coaching team did their preparation on each opponent during the summer, the quality of sides he’s facing now is far higher. In a video entitled :
“Nuno Espirito Santo opens up on West Ham’s progress and how the Championship has changed since his last spell in the division”
West Ham’s coach confirmed the Championship is now a different beast. As he put it;
‘Harder, more quality, talented players, all the squads are talented. it’s a tough, tough league”.
We took a lot of time during the holidays to have a deep knowledge knowledge of all the teams. Honestly, nothing has surprised us. I knew, and we all knew, it was going to be challenging.
West Ham’s coaching team spent a large part of the summer dissecting the threat from championship sides
And how has he found his own squad, hastily assembled after relegation caused sixteen player departures from the club?
” Still a lot of things to improve. It is a squad that is new, a lot of players joined us late..
I truly believe we should have done better [in the games so far] and we are chasing these objectives to always be sustainable in our performances, not up and down…we have major challenges ahead of us.”
Which is a refreshing admission from West Ham’s coach that all is not yet sweetness and light. Sometimes in the post-game press conferences Nuno gives the impression that he feels his side did ok, particularly in those poorer first half performances.
But today it seems he’s held his hand up and admitted that the inconsistency and the poor starts are indeed a ‘major challenge’ ahead. Sitting in third place in this league does not appear to be ‘ok’ with the Manager any more than it does with the fan base, whilst points are dropped and the dream of automatic promotion becomes tougher to realise.