“The manager selected a team to lose. No desire to progress in the competition and no thoughts for the fans.”
That was the brutal verdict from West Ham supporter Chris following the 3-2 Carabao Cup defeat to Fulham, and it goes straight to the heart of the biggest debate surrounding Nuno Espírito Santo’s team selection.
Chris was responding beneath Martin’s Morning After piece, where several Hammers supporters questioned whether West Ham had allowed a genuine opportunity to progress in the competition to slip away. Did Nuno effectively sacrifice the tie, or was this simply a sensible calculation with promotion and Millwall taking priority?
The Bigger Question Behind Nuno’s Selection
I’m not the biggest fan of Nuno Espírito Santo and never have been, but I don’t agree that he selected a team to lose. I genuinely believe he thought his method would win the game.
Had Nuno completely thrown the tie, I suspect he would have broken up his central defensive partnership too. Instead, he kept much of the back four intact and selected Divin Mukasa and Arne Engels, players he clearly considers important members of his squad.
If anything, swapping the goalkeeper was probably the decision I questioned most.
Nuno selected some of his favourites to face Fulham
My feeling is that Nuno intended to stay in the game, introduce Bowen, Solomon and Castellanos later and then win it in the closing stages – possibly even on penalties.
It almost worked. As our Fulham player ratings reflected, West Ham came from behind twice and were one huge late opportunity away from potentially taking the game to penalties.
His plan didn’t fail because he wanted to lose. It failed because, ultimately, it didn’t quite come off.
Did Nuno Miss A Trick With The Academy?
Peter whu raised a different issue, writing: “You are not using the ex-academy players properly if you do not use it as a chance to play some attractive U21 style football.”
I do like that observation.
We saw against Southampton what can happen when several academy players who know each other’s games are put into the same team. They understand each other’s positioning and combinations because they’ve spent years playing together, and that familiarity was evident in the excellent 4-1 win at St Mary’s.
However, I wouldn’t say Nuno doesn’t trust youth. He’s selected a lot of West Ham youngsters since arriving at the club – probably more than most recent Hammers managers – and he clearly rates Ollie Scarles very highly.
Where I would agree with Peter is that Nuno generally appears to trust the players he has signed more. There are exceptions, but I can understand the argument that playing more of the academy boys together might actually get more from them than dropping individual youngsters into an unfamiliar senior set-up.
Orford and Kante are both liked by Espirito Santo
So Many Holes And Only One Shovel
Taffyhammer, as always, brought a smile to my face with his amusing observation: “Nuno’s conundrum – so many holes and only one shovel.”
He also pointed out that had Taty Castellanos converted the huge late chance and West Ham subsequently won on penalties, we might now be praising Nuno’s experimentation rather than questioning it.
I find myself largely agreeing with Taffy on this one.
Nuno half took the competition seriously. He clearly wanted to rotate and protect some of his attacking players ahead of Millwall, but he also left enough quality in the team and on the bench to believe he could win.
Almost every Fulham goal had an individual West Ham error attached to it and almost any other time you’d expect Taty to convert that late opportunity.
Nuno’s plan almost worked.
That doesn’t mean every selection was right, but I can’t accuse him of throwing the game. He gambled that he could rotate, remain competitive and finish the job from the bench.
This time, the gamble failed.
Enjoyed reading your thoughts on my comments – thanks. It’s true he does play youngsters, those with experience it seems. Also, he is playing the hand he is dealt with and doing a good job of it with his attacking 4-2-4 (which I like).
My guess is NES was willing to exit the cup against Soton, only to his surprise the ex-academy players effectively won the game – he then threw on more experienced players to keep the win. He was hoping to make the point that experienced players needed to be recruited by Koppen and stop asking him to trust academy.
Come end of season how many ex-academy players will have progressed enough to play in the Championship, let alone PL? That’s the manager’s call though and he sees them in training. We’ll see, but I think it will be few apart from Kante.
This time against Fulham, as DAVID said in some comments, he was tinkering, trying this trying that. Anyhow, he is the manager and it’s his right to try out some ideas, try something new.
I would have preferred ex-academy because enjoy their style of play, great watch and very effective against Soton and strangely enough, I think NES could learn from the U21 way of playing quick passing, attacking football and incorporate it into the 1st team when playing 4-3-3.
Golombeckis ( ?? ) deserves to start . He looks far safer and athletic than Kilman who offers absolutely NOTHING to the team . He is a liability . Nuno is trying to justify his decision to force Todibo out of the club because he was upset about being sacrificed . At the time he has a good and growing partnership with Dinos but Nuno made another of his senseless substitutions . Clueless
If he’d thrown the carabao cup I wouldn’t have cared. Our priority is to get promoted isn’t? Mind you I’m enjoying the championship but aware I’m only enjoying it because we are effectively a premier league club with premier league players playing in the championship. Give us a few years in the championship and no doubt we’d manage to navigate our way down to the bottom of it if not the league below. Now that wouldnt be quite as enjoyable.
Looking at the tables we are on about the same course as Coventry were last season. Perhaps slightly less due to our loss of 7 points from our first 3 games.
All of those so called fans that refuse to believe the obvious and were applauding the teams Championship exploits, should now know that there is a yawning gap between West Ham and the bottom of the PL. Fulham are currently 18th and West Ham 21st in the league, but the comparative incompetence of some of our players, the same ones hailed as “reborn” after 4 wins in the Championship, is plain to see when we step up to the next level. There is no comparison between the game played at the top of the PL (where we would like to be) and the game played in the Championship. West Ham might win the Championship, but to stay in the PL they are going to need to replace most of their players and the coach. The jury is still out on the boards ambition.
yep , I thought it was pretty much the 1st choice back 4 , but they didn’t really cover theirselves in glory , always seemed to find ourselves on the back foot for pretty much all the game , perhaps they played well or perhaps we under performed but hey that’s football x
We didn’t start our strongest eleven against a premier league side is not giving it 100%. It’s not throwing the match but it is placing greater importance on the Millwall game because there’s a break after that.
Totally agree with You guys especially Andy. Nuno has to try players in these games. We are not going to win these cups if we are honest. The championship is the target for us nothing else.
Absolutely agree Gonzo. Nuno is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t (somewhat brought upon himself given previous team selections to be fair). But this is the nature of the game these days and the fickle nature of the modern football supporter. We’re not going to win every game and the schedule in this league is punishing. We lost to a better side but gave a good account of ourselves. The squad has to be rotated to maintain the pace. Let’s not start the moaning as soon as we lose a game or drop some points, especially if we’ve actually put a shift in.
I agree with Taffy, if Taty scores late then we go to penalties with momentum whilst Fulham might have felt “here we go again” after a tough league start. Coincidentally we could also say if Taty scores the late penalty against Charlton then we would be undefeated in the league!