“Intoxicated” coaching staff come to terms with Championship challenge

The debris of West Ham’s Premier League season hasn’t been fully cleared away yet, but already the planning has to start for the brutality of a Championship campaign in which every single side is going to be raising their game to compete against the fallen prima donnas from the Premier League.

As Nuno put it, every side will come to London Stadium with their A game. West Ham will be one of the favourites and so the pressure will be well and truly ‘on’ to hit the ground running come August.

The Hammers boss has already admitted to something approaching ‘information overload’ with the sheer volume of the number of games in the second tier, the travelling and the logistics required:

“It’s a very hard competition, very demanding.

“We have 46 games, probably even more. The cycles of the weeks are different.

“Sometimes you play three times a week. The travelling is going to be different. The opponents are different.

“So all these things we have to adapt to. This is what we are receiving now as coaching staff. We’re getting intoxicated by information that is necessary for them to transmit to the players the ideas that we want.”

However, a repeating on the outside at least to be remaining calm at this early stage – whilst still having no idea who will be in his squad, his starting eleven or even his coaching set-up, Nuno did his best to remain unperturbed by the challenge ahead, promising that he’d be ready to rock come the new season:

“But there are things that don’t change. Commitment, be resilient, disciplined, brave. We need character.

“We need a lot of character. That doesn’t change. And it didn’t change in the past, and it will be for the future.”

The first step in the right direction must surely be to nail down his assistant manager and coaching team ahead of player departures and recruitment: Last we heard, Paco Jemez was still waiting for a call.