With the transfer window now closed and West Ham having to ‘cope with the squad they have’, recriminations and rumblings continue after Saturday’s capitulation against Chelsea’s second half onslaught. Another three points dropped from a winning position puts the Hammers in serious jeopardy and at the end of a frantic weekend, sees the ‘safety’ gap stretched to six points.
Nuno Espirito Santo is taking the flack for the change of tactics – and formation – that led to two of Chelsea’s goals as West Ham moved away from an offensive ‘defend from the front’ set up by bringing on a centre back for an attacker and adopting Nuno’s favourite (yet shockingly poor) three centre-back deployment.
Criticism looks to have come from inside the West Ham squad as well as from outside. Tomas Soucek, on whufc.com, appears to take aim at his own coach with his clear summing up of where West Ham stumbled:
“We have to go for counter-attacks again as to score a third goal would be important, but we can’t concede three goals, because it’s sometimes too easy.
“That’s the mentality we should have [to score a third goal], because the best defence is to attack, so that’s what we want, but sometimes when we are winning we go too much to defence..”
Exactly so, Tomas. You me and apparently every Hammers fan at Stamford bridge knew it. Seemingly the only one who read it different was the West Ham coach. Fifteen points now lost from winning positions under Nuno. And that has to change.
Well said, I think you are underestimating the clarity. Every fan see’s it only, Nuno who want’s to appear to succeed by defending! And Sullivan who doesn’t know the difference between a premier league centre back and an under 21 winger that won’t be ready for the the championship until the premiership is a distant memory! COYI!!!
Let’s not forget the Brentford 3 pts Leeds 3 pts, Liverpool 3 pts, Arsenal 3pts, total surrender 12prs more just chucked away.
Nuno us to blame if we go down which we will if he stays
It isn’t rocket science the whole fanbase knew that Nuno had made the wrong call at Chelsea.He should’ve tried to stem Chelsea’s constant attacks by bringing on Magassa and Potts and removing soucek who was exhausted and castellano who’d been ineffective! The 2 players he bought on are the two worst players in the squad.And kilman was poor yet again and traore ineffective and he caused the problem with todibo getting sent off! All the Fulham fans,said that traore has no end product and is temperamental.
Agree to so many of your comments but where is the money where are the new players
we are selling more than we buy any other company the owners are selling up nothing will ever change until Sullivan goes.
75 years attending fan.
Every man and his dog knows we cannot sit back and defend a lead, how many points has that cost us this season safety or relegation I wager
I think Thomas is right. I think the obvious thing to do would have been to take off maybe Thomas himself and Pablo and bring on 2 defensive midfielder Potts and Magassa are the obvious choices I think that would have sured us up whilst not going too defensive.
I think including a loss to Chelsea we may have lost 18 points.
Nuno, the coach with the tactical nous of a goldfish. Has there been any other West Ham coach over the years who has lost as many points from second half tactical blunders as him? He needs to be replaced on the touchline if he never learns from his mistakes. Maybe his trusted assistant could do a better job. He surely couldn’t do any worse. Nobody could!
Switching from an attacking formation, to a counter-attacking one when players tire or the time is right, just seems the perfect solution and plays to the strengths of some of our defensive midfielders who can defend and are also willing to run into the box.
Could say manager just seems obstinate, but that is unconvincing since he tried inverted fullback and thankfully stopped, correcting his own mistake. So why not now?
Puzzling really. Those glasses don’t seem to be helping much.
If we get relegated will be because of poor management ( Loppy, Potter and Nuno. Naive pitch decisions that whilst Players are at times calpable they are let down by their managers poor decision making.
Carefull big man you’ll end up.on Nunos naughty step
Maybe we really need Paco as our head coach it appears to me he has done more for us in the 3 previous games than potter or Nuno
Quite agree Tomas
We should have left Bowen and Taty on and yes Pablo was tiring a bit so bring on may be Potts or Wilson and still defend from the front. We lost all our formation and grime defending well into their half we ended up being well into our half.
Taty was so good at pressing and defending from the front and the rest of the team all layer their part.
Should not have changed the defence from first half as soon as Kilman came on it appeared to put panic in the defence.
Bowen should never have gone off for Traore,and his actions at the end caused the sending off
But Tolbido should never of reacted like that,totally unacceptable and has really rocked the boat and put the team under intense pressure now
Got to win Saturday
We defend from the front when Taty and Pablo are on the pitch and it’s no coincidence we have improved since they signed. But it’s not possible to keep those energy levels for 90 minutes (for them or Wilson). When they have to come off Nuno doesn’t have other forwards to bring on up front – he simply doesn’t have enough options.
Traore on for Pablo was my shout at the time. Traore should be able to fit in any offensive position on his debut. He is not a niche position player for West Ham and should have caused the mayhem of Pablo enabling the others to profit from Chelsea’s lack of knowledge of our ‘system’.
To be fair to Chelsea, they reacted to our first half display and made improvements to their style. We should have continued with our surprise tactics and kept them guessing until the end.
Basically agree with you Bill, but we do have the attacking options too.
How many forwards who could have come on has Nuno let go? Either permanently or on loan? Any one of them, could have come on and pressed.
Why did not his new assitant advise him