Grim headlines have abounded in recent weeks as West Ham succumbed to first Wolves and then Nottingham Forest, their two closest neighbours in the relegation battle that has left the Hammers seven points from safety with seventeen games to play.
Regular readers will remember, though, how even in defeat, West Ham’s twenty one year old midfielder Mateus Fernandes has been turning in stellar performances that have rewarded him with being at the head of the ‘wonderkid ratings‘. Despite another desperate team performance with West Ham contriving to lose to Nottingham Forest after leading, Fernandes is still ranked highly amongst the Premier League’s young elite.
Alongside the best youngsters of the Premier League, even in defeat, Fernandes compares well; Still out performing Nico O’Reilly, Michael Kayode and Manchester United’s Ayode Heaven, Fernandes maintains a hugely impressive debut season as a Hammer despite a seemingly never-ending run of defeats.
Fernandes looks the real deal at West Ham and is getting much deserved recognition.
Knocked off the top spot, Fernandes still achieves a hugely creditable second position in the weekly ratings produced by 3addedminutes.com:
In tie-ing for second place with Crystal Palace’s Adam Wharton, West Ham’s young midfielder earned high praise:
“Fernandes has been astonishingly consistent lately when you consider that he’s playing for a team that just can’t buy a win, but then that’s how it was in his Southampton days as well – and we simply couldn’t drive a wedge between Wharton and Fernandes this week.
For starters, their stats were practically identical (19 recoveries, four chances created, almost identical success rate in one-on-one duels etc) and so was their impact on their team’s results, which largely consisted of being one of the best players on the pitch while their team-mates struggle for form around them.”
No mean feat to maintain such a high standard of football in a side that cannot seemingly fashion a win even though their Premier League lives depend on it.
Again it begs the question as to why Fernandes was substituted when he was beginning to pull the strings at London Stadium – and it was after his exit that the side slumped to a defeat: Notice a pattern, here Nuno?
Nuno’s a dumbo. Was he this bad at either Forest or Wolves? I always thought he was genius.
The really sad part about all this is, we will lose home and magassa at the end of the season when we go down.
Absolutely shocking management from the Owners
My theory as to why Fernandez get taken off towards the end of games is he gets tired probably because of how much work he does. It’s something that a few of us have noticed in a few games recently