To listen to Nuno’s post-match press conference, you’d believe that West Ham have merely encountered a bump in the road along a path to promotion rather than running the risk of developing a recurring trend that threatens to wreck the Hammers’ Premier League aspirations.
Whilst he admitted the first half wasn’t good enough, West Ham’s manager believed the Irons had done sufficiently well in the last half an hour to win the game, thwarted only by an excellent piece of goal keeping:
“All the things that we’ve done, especially in the second half — the way we controlled the counter-attack on QPR, the way we tried to try and push it and we finished in the end with a fantastic save — you go home and think you should get the win but it was not to be. We have to improve.”
West Ham’s coach simply has to stop his side from giving opponents a head start
But, truth be told, there’s a fundamental flaw emerging in the side’s play, identified and laid out clearly by Roshane Thomas’s article in today’s NYTimes
“West Ham aren’t starting games the way a promotion-chasing team should..…Repeatedly this season West Ham have been prone to slow starts. In seven of their last 12 matches they have conceded first, failing to win in five of those games: against QPR, Millwall, Fulham in the Carabao Cup, Watford and Charlton Athletic.
It was not until after the break that the hosts showed semblance of a side vying for promotion. All five of their shots on target came between the 70th to 91st minutes.”
Who can say why this has become a trend: Nuno is paid the big bucks to fix it as he surely must, before West Ham start to sink back towards mid table mediocrity.
Giving away a head start again and dropping two points from a home fixture will very quickly come back to bite them, as the article concludes: Already Swansea City, who came from behind today to beat Norwich 2- 1 have opened up a four point lead, and at the time of writing either one of Middlesboro or Stoke – or both – looked poised to overtake Nuno’s side:
Friday’s draw ended with an encouraging 30-minute attacking spell, but West Ham would be foolhardy to think this is sustainable for a promotion challenge.”
Not time to panic just yet of course, but by the end of this weekend the Hammers will surely have relinquished second place in this cut throat, unforgiving league.
Nuno’s job is to get Paco Jemez on speed dial and remember how to make his own side more cut-throat themselves, because at the moment they’re starting games like a bunch of former Premier League pushovers with an achilles heel that no amount of Jarrod Bowen’s heroics can offset.
Lost once, 3rd. Non story.
Martin – an interesting article as usual
However I don’t think that Nuno will call up Paco Jemez – he has now installed his favored assistant coach in Rui Pedro Silva
The question is why he wasn’t brought in immediately Nuno took over – perhaps Sullivan too stingy to pay compensation?
While Paco is certainly very charismatic he was there for the away defeats to Brentford and Newcastle which were the games that effectively relegated us
Hopefully Nuno will select a better starting combination starting on Wednesday at Lincoln – I would like to see Pirloe start in place of Taty and perhaps Mo Kante in the midfield
COYI
You cannot start games as we’re doing and expect to be promoted, either it changes or we won’t be.
We need a high tempo first ten minutes to ensure that it doesn’t happen.
I could pick better starting XIs and tactics than this multiple-sacked ex-reserve ‘keeper cagey football cowardly loser manager and have more points on the board than we have now.
Yet he somehow has a fan club amongst our support despite relegating us.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we miss out on promotion if we keep this plum in charge.
Look we didn’t look like scoring in the first half and didn’t play well but nither did QPR really look that great. If it wasn’t from that poor referee decision for that penalty that then give them more hope and fight too we would have gone in at least on equal terms. That begin the case we could have won it in the second half. Ok there are problems for Nuno to sort out and quick but we will not always have that bad a decision given against us to give the opposition the lead.