After the Stamford Bridge disaster, it was a very relieved Nuno Espírito Santo who faced the media following his team’s solid performance to leave Turf Moor with three points and a clean sheet.
West Ham’s head coach made several big selection calls which could have unravelled badly had either Hermansen or Axel Disasi flopped. Fortunately both stood up well to the challenge and made important contributions to the protection of that rarest of rare: A Hammers’ clean sheet.
After the game Nuno passed judgement on his Hammers’ side’s prognosis with thirteen games left to save their Premier Leaguer status. As he told skysports.com:
“That was really important. Was a good performance, a good result…
We were so accurate in our offensive box. In the offensive box, it makes a big difference. I think if we are solid in defence, the talent that we have up front.
“We can, we can do nice things. It was important to react to what happened against Chelsea and the reaction of the boys was massive.
“They showed character, showed desire and commitment. We are still in the same situation. We have to focus on ourselves and play and play and play. As long as we play the way we did today, we’re gonna be okay”
Which offers the intriguing possibility of a coach who is defensive by nature playing aggressive, flowing, attacking, attractive football for the rest of the season.
Who’d have thought it after West Ham started early Nuno games with no striker and five across the back.
Is it a coincidence that the upturn in form has come about after two more experienced coaching staff members have joined the club?
Beggars belief that NES wasn’t allowed to bring his backroom team when initially appointed.
How much further along would we be in the transistion process with competent, thoughtful recruitment?
Just for the record. We were on exactly the same points in 22/23 at this point (under moyes). We ended up on 40.
No thursday nights to contend with this time.
Funnily enough I think we can achieve 41 points if we win enough and lose to obvious teams.
Good to see. Looks like lessons were finally learned. How to hold on to a 2 nil lead at half time. Don’t take off a striker and put on a defender instead he took off a striker,Wilson, who’d run out of steam and out on a midfielder, Potts. Gave us back control of the game. The addition of Pablo in the second half when Taty ran out of steam also enabled us to keep the press on their back line. A clean sheet the cherry on the cake. Good debut for Disasi. Good clean sheet for Hermansen his second of the season, our only two clean sheets. Gap on Nottingham Forest reduced to 3 points. It’s game on. It’s us or Forest. If we keep playing like this though we’ve got a good chance.
Westham need to beat the big teams now in the next few matches and they can . Brave aggressive tactics and no more white flags after 55 minutes .