Let’s be crystal clear, Nuno Espírito Santo picked the best eleven available to him. The Hammers competed for 80 minutes with the third placed side in the Premier league who are unbeaten now in half a dozen games. The days of cave-ins and capitulations are long gone but whether the Irons can scrape together enough points h=to overtake Leeds or Nottingham Forest looks ever more questionable as likely a five point gap will open up by the end of this weekend.
20/20 hindsight is an easy lens through which to view a football fixture but the removal of man of the match Soungoutou Magassa at 80- minutes for the introduction of Callum Wilson looks a serious error.
Sportsview.co.uk claim:
“Anyone watching could see that Magassa was doing brilliantly in midfield. He had won 6/9 duels and made eight recoveries protecting the rearguard.Meanwhile, Lucas Paqueta was having a horrendous outing. The Brazilian struggled to make an impact and should have been the one to come off the pitch”.
Perhaps the biggest drawback of not having his full quota of assistant coaching staff in his team which is made up from West Ham academy coaches, Nuno lacks the trusted lieutenant to lean on when decisions are being made on the fly.
Without an assistant to offer him that second opinion, Nuno has floundered repeatedly in response to the now predictable Hammers late goal concession.
Surely mangassa and Potts , can last the 90 minutes of a game we don’t have to contend with midweek European games, where’s that billy bonds mentality gone, the substitutions we make is driving me to despair, I’m personally devastated by the result ,no belief , no imagination , no nothing just desperation on display, we are better than that.
Clear to anyone with a brain that Paqueta was a complete liability to us throughout the game.The Magassa sub was another serious error from a manager, that will probably lead to us being relegated
We were unlucky not to get something from the match . I thought we played well against a team in real form . We will get points if we keep working hard.
So the record shows that for every loss and bad performance this season, Nuno’s team selection + substitutions are at the fore front of this horror. Followed by regular mistakes from Mavropanos, Kilman + Todibo. And that followed by the selfish Paqueta style.
Surely if that can be eliminated, the team will get the results much needed. But will Nuno? And right there is a big, big problem !!!
Magassa was injured in a bad tackle. I think that’s the only reason Nuno took him off.
I’m equally frustrated as most people on here especially after leading twice and still conceding another 3 goals at home BUT to call for yet another managerial change is frankly ridiculous. We have improved under Nuno but the silly individual mistakes are costing us dearly. A soft own goal, Paqueta being too easily dispossessed and not getting close enough to the scorer for their third. We will undoubtedly get battered by City next weekend however it is the other games against similar teams that we need to start beating.
We played some really good stuff today, but was ultimately let down by Paqueta who yet again makes a sloppy mistake that lets them back into the game.
Why the hell Paqueta gets a start is beyond me. Such a liability. If it’s the case that he’s so creative, then he needs to up his creative output drastically just to even up in the costly mistakes that he has made. Fernandes looks a much better player.
Paqueta and diouf should’ve been taken off at 70 minutes and replaced with Wilson and earthy to button down the midfield and provide more of a goal threat !!!
For more than two seasons Paqueta has cost more goals due to dangerous loss of possession than he has assisted or scored . If Westham can sell him for 50 million then they should now . The real problem for Westham is that they are run by a 77 year old man running the club like it’s the 1980.s . The club is just a hollow husk now with not enough quality personnel or the right management blue print . Continually overpaying on transfers and salaries for the wrong players has left Westham financially crippled . Nuno is a good coach who really needed his idea of the right players and a preseason .to succeed . Every team above Westham looks competent and so survival is unlikely .
The only reason I could see for taking Magassa off was that he’d been on the wrong end if some dubious villa tackling, and possibly carrying a knock.
Personally I would have taken Paqueta off around 60 minutes and given Wilson half an hour, and if Magassa was struggling, to have brought on Kante or Walker-Peters, who at least know how to run and tackle!
Can’t understand why Earthy wasn’t on the bench, though.
Nuno needs his trusted lieutenant to cover his backside when decision time comes around, so tell me why West Ham are paying him millions just to be useless. He is another incompetent coach but worse still, another one that does not learn from his own stupid mistakes. There is no doubt that with the exception of the equally useless Paqueta, the rest of the team is playing a much better brand of football than they were, but thanks to those two it is all for nothing. We now need an average of at least a point per game from the remaining 22. Our average over the last 2 years and 4 coaches is 1.13, so we are not done yet, but this definitely constitutes an emergency. How will the owners react?
If he needs a trusted lieutenant to.tell him that Paqueta has checked out and playing him is like playing with 10 men then he’s in the wrong job and we are in more doggy dooh than we all thought
And who’s to blame Nuno not having his full backup team with him SULLIVAN MONEY MONEY MONEY
Firstly AV are a great team with a great manager. We got nothing from the game which is exactly what we deserved. We were very naive today repeatedly leaving ourselves exposed whilst trying to attack. There is nothing wrong with keeping things tight and playing for a point. Paqueta who is our star player was at fault again today. You cannot give the ball away in your own half against a top team. Nuno must take some responsibility for not giving him clear instructions. On the day we said goodbye to Bonzo I think back to the time when he would regularly chastise Trev and Dev for losing possession in the wrong areas. We so miss having a leader in the team. Bowen is a nice lad but a joke of a captain
Losing after twice being in front is definitely gutting – but Villa recently scored late winners away at Arsenal and Brighton so there is no disgrace
So we are 3 points adrift with more than half the season still remaining – a worrying situation but not hopeless
I still think that another team could go on a losing run and be dragged into the relegation battle (Fulham? Brentford?) – we just need to start winning some games
I agree with many on here that Paqueta often seems a luxury for a team in a relegation battle – and as he did today (and has previously done against Villa) gave away the ball leading to a goal against us – I would not be heartbroken if he were to leave in the January window
COYI
I’m not and have never been a football player, never had the talent wish I did, but I could see Paqueta should have been taken off he was a hindrance to the team, Nuno is not the man for the job the decisions he’s made has cost us in all of our losses and draws since he arrived, sorry Nuno you have to go. If he stays we will go down, we need Andoni Iraola.