According to Sky Sports, Nuno Espirito Santo has counselled his Hammers team with some very specific advice in this season’s Premier League climax as teams swap places, sometimes mid-game, in the relegation battle of 2025/6.
Leeds and Nottingham Forest took big strides this weekend toward their own safety and it is now West Ham’s turn to step up to the plate and try and take their own campaign for survival forwards with a crucial three points away at Selhurst Park tomorrow night.
Espirito Santo tries to damp down the significance of tomorrow night’s Crystal Palace game
Huge game with high stakes tomorrow
West Ham occupy the ‘safe zone’ by a solitary point after late drama at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium yesterday. Nuno has acknowledged the extent of the challenge ahead. According to skysports.com:
“We still have a big mission to accomplish, a hard job to do.””
That was his mindset after his side beat Wolves 4-0 to move out of the relegation zone and expect it to be his mindset regardless of Tottenham’s draw with Brighton on Saturday, which has ensured West Ham will remain out of the bottom three ahead of their Monday Night Football trip to Crystal Palace.
And the West Ham boss has urged his side to forget the bigger picture and merely take each game as it comes:
“Let’s try to ignore the table and focus on what we have to do game by game,” he urged.
Which may be logical but it is virtually impossible to put into practise: London rivals Spurs visibly wilted as the equaliser went in late-on yesterday and Arsenal today looked hugely deflated when Haaland knocked in the winner that virtually levels up the title race with six games to go.
Nuno’s advice may be sound, but you can guarantee there’ll be some celebrations come the final whistle if West Ham go away to south London and return with what would be three massive points..
I’d like to seee us tackle the game in the same way we did in the first half versus Chelsea.
Just don’t replicate the second half performance 😃
I mean at the end of the day, he’s not wrong.
Realistically we’re likely to drop some points here or there but the fact is if we win every game we’re safe so it’s entirely in our own hands.
Article isn’t wrong and it’s just natural to focus on the table/other teams but just a few months back if you’d gave any fan a “6 games to go and you win them all you can’t be relegated” scenario and we’d have bit their hand off all the way to the armpit.
We have to go all out in the next 3 games for wins, no one knows what the future holds but if we are more than a single result away it will hit Tottenham hard as it did us earlier in the season. All we can do is put the pressure on, assume all the teams will win and play like we have too every game, hope we do get a great result tomorrow COYI !!!
The first goal against Wolves was going to be crucial and it will be the same against Palace. If will settle nerves if WHU score and then the team will start playing with more freedom, thinking more about the game than the table.