West Ham’s Slow-Start Problem Finally Comes Home To Roost

For nine games, Nuno Espírito Santo’s West Ham managed to get away with starting football matches slowly because they invariably finished them strongly. Unfortunately, in today’s 3-2 defeat against Southampton at the London Stadium, that nasty habit finally caught up with us. The Saints were two goals up inside 11 minutes, and West Ham were left chasing a game they should never have allowed to get away from them so early.

Southampton manager Tonda Eckert had clearly got the memo that the Hammers would not attack the opposition early, even at home, and he took full advantage. Kuryu Matsuki opened the scoring after barely 90 seconds, before James Bree doubled Southampton’s advantage in the 11th minute. Although Kyle Walker-Peters pulled one back against his former club, Lewis Dobbin restored the visitors’ two-goal lead before half-time.

No doubt the extraordinary statistics, which show West Ham having nearly 30 shots, will be used to mitigate the loss and claim that Nuno’s team were unlucky. But realistically, this one has been coming. Despite plenty of shots and corners, I never felt West Ham were capable of winning the game once Matsuki had scored that opening goal.

West Ham’s Slow Starts Finally Cost Them

We’ve been talking about this problem for weeks. In fact, I recently wrote about West Ham’s increasingly worrying habit of starting matches slowly, and today was a particularly painful demonstration of why it needed addressing.

Only two days ago, I suggested that Nuno might not be particularly worried about those slow starts because his team carried so much attacking threat late in matches. Well, today demonstrated the danger of relying on that approach.

Sure, the tale of the tape will say differently, and it’s true that the Southampton goal may have lived a charmed life. But West Ham were not good, and as the game wore on and more substitutions were made, the team seemed to get progressively worse.

For once, Nuno failed to pull a rabbit from the hat. The attacking options which have proved so effective in recent weeks could not rescue the Hammers from the damage inflicted during those opening minutes.

West Ham 2-3 Southampton: Match Statistics

Those numbers are extraordinary. West Ham registered 28 shots, 13 on target and 13 corners, yet somehow managed to lose a home game against a direct promotion rival.

But statistics do not tell the whole story. Southampton were clinical when it mattered, while West Ham spent most of the afternoon trying to repair the damage from their dreadful opening.

Nuno Must Find A Solution

There were great goals from Kyle Walker-Peters and Tomáš Souček, whose stoppage-time effort gave the scoreline a more respectable appearance. But realistically, Southampton were reasonably comfortable for much of the afternoon, despite the enormous amount of pressure West Ham appeared to exert on paper.

As I said in our pre-match preview, Southampton were genuine promotion rivals and this was an opportunity for West Ham to put significant daylight between the two clubs. Instead, the Saints have closed the gap and brought our nine-game unbeaten run to an end.

Nuno has rightly received plenty of praise for West Ham’s recent results, but he cannot continue to allow opponents to get a head start.

If he doesn’t fix it, we’ll suffer as a result.