Why Nuno Won’t Be Worried About West Ham’s Slow Starts

Much has been made of Nuno Espírito Santo’s West Ham team being very slow starters in football matches. It’s a criticism that is strangely ironic given that last season, Nuno was under the cosh for doing quite the opposite — starting games well before capitulating with negative tactics.

However, I thought it might be time to look at a couple of factors that go very much in West Ham’s favour this season. Starting with the way the Hammers’ attack seems to carry genuine menace towards the end of football matches, even when the opening 45 minutes have been far from convincing.

Much of that threat is no doubt due to the strength of the West Ham bench, but there may be more to it than simply having better players available. Whether it’s tactical, down to squad depth or possibly even excellent fitness levels, Nuno’s team seem increasingly capable of creating good goalscoring opportunities in the final minutes of games.

West Ham’s Bench Gives Nuno A Major Advantage

One only has to look at Nuno’s substitutions against Swansea to see the point. Rather than introducing defensive players to protect a narrow lead, he brought on Taty Castellanos, Edvin Austbø, Tomáš Souček and Joël Piroe.

Every one of those players carries a goalscoring threat, and the Hammers continued creating opportunities right into stoppage time. Piroe’s late chance, following good work from Austbø, was another example of West Ham looking capable of adding to their lead rather than simply hanging on. There is a growing sense that Nuno has enough options to change the course of matches from the bench.

Now, this could be tactical, it could be down to squad depth or possibly even excellent fitness levels. Either way, it’s something West Ham’s opposition will want to pay close attention to.

Nuno May Be More Relaxed Than We Think

As we approach a quarter of the way into the season, I’m becoming more and more convinced that Nuno is pretty relaxed about what happens in the first half of football matches, as long as the opposition remain within striking distance.

That’s not to say the slow starts we’ve criticised previously aren’t a problem. They clearly are, particularly when West Ham concede early and give themselves unnecessary work to do.

But his team have genuine threat in the second half of matches and enough firepower in the trenches to turn any game around late in the day. The options available to Nuno mean that even when his starting XI isn’t firing, he can introduce players capable of causing completely different problems.

Factor in the threat caused by set pieces and, whilst it might not always be pretty, West Ham do indeed seem to be in the wonderful position of always being in games.