From the initial impact which the Hammers’ academy coaches made, they’ve obviously been impressing new boss Nuno Espírito Santo with their on-pitch methods: The West Ham head coach arrived in such haste that he’d not had an opportunity to assemble – or pinch from other clubs – his ‘preferred’ back room staff of first team and goal keeping coaches.
Reported today by the standard.co.uk, Nuno’s positive first impressions and the results on the pitch have now led to new permanent appointments in his senior coaching team:
“Nuno Espirito Santo has promoted academy coaches Mark Robson, Steve Potts, Gerard Prenderville and Billy Lepine to his backroom staff at West Ham.
Robson, Potts and Prenderville will continue as first-team coaches, with Lepine as goalkeeping coach after the quartet assisted Nuno on an interim basis during his first week as head coach.”
Tried and tested youth coaching team become West Ham backroom staff
Which can only be a big shot in the arm for the senior side. Tried, tested, proven and youngster-friendly first team coaches at West Ham could herald a new era of success and stability. The quartet actually have the opportunity to become long-servers at the club and survive another ‘purge’ should Nuno follow Potter and Lopetegui out of the door!
Fingers crossed that the results keep coming. Continuity in coaching, independent of the manager, could be a ‘green shoot’ of long term recovery.
If they can come up with a team and style of play similar to the Northern Ireland side that beat Slovakia last night, I’m all for it.
It was the best match I have watched in a long, long time. From start to finish. This NI team had been picked and coached to play their own brand of football. So effective, so entertaining and so refreshing to see them continuing to play the game that saw them lead. Despite the wisdom of the seasoned commentator sidekick advising them to ‘manage’ the game and preserve the lead for the last half hour, they continued with their positive style right until the final whistle.
I would love to see this from West Ham every week. COYI
I guess we need to recruit academy coaches. Good move, I also like the minutes for young players. Big up Nuno…
Very positive news which can only bode well for integrating players from the U21’s.
Pleased the coaches are also getting recognised and being given the opportunity to step up to the first team.
Win / Win
I’m actually quite positive about this move and see it as a good thing for continuing their good work with youth teams.
This can only be a good thing
Hasn’t he always taken a big team with him everywhere he’s went? Wonder if this is a penny pinching option? One or two understanble but taking the full team with non of his own.
most of them are already in contracted employment at other clubs
Can’t see us buying them out of their contracts after paying off Potters team. Thought some of them would have been sacked from Forrest also.