Nuno Espírito Santo Gives West Ham Fresh Hope for Survival as Newcastle’s Form Crumbles
This week, Nuno Espirito Santo discussed how he and his West Ham team must both discover a performance that works and then maintain it for the duration of a game. They found it against Newcastle.
This was unquestionably West Ham’s best performance of the season; there is no other way to put it, so it seems like a slight compliment but shouldn’t.
Furthermore, it was superior to what the teams the Hammers are facing this season can produce.
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This was the quintessential “They’ll be fine” effort from a side that has no business being in a relegation struggle.
Repeating that is certainly the key now. However, there were a lot of positive aspects of what West Ham did.
And what they did amounted to doing the exact opposite of almost everything they had been doing this season up to this point—a great tactic, really, and one that other failing teams should follow.
As of this weekend, the Hammers had let up one in five of all Premier League goals this season from corners.
This is a truly ridiculous number, but their efforts in open play were matched by their dogged, well-organised, and resolute set-piece defence.
Even while West Ham’s defence was outstanding, the truly striking aspects of their play were farther forward.
Few teams defeat Joelinton, Bruno Guimaraes, and Sandro Tonali in a midfield battle and come out on top like West Ham did.
Teams that accomplish so while fielding a 22-year-old making his Premier League debut are even fewer.
In the face of what is arguably the most intense baptism a rookie Premier League midfielder could ever experience, he performed admirably.
Together with Jarrod Bowen, Lucas Paqueta was outstanding, serving as the link between midfield and offence that kept West Ham a continual danger.
West Ham never faltered, even after falling down to a deadly Newcastle counterattack within five minutes and only 25 seconds after Jarrod Bowen had thundered a shot off the post.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of a performance that changes the tone of the Hammers’ entire season is their mental toughness in recovering from such an early setback, considering how awful things have been for them this season.
The Sack Race was unavoidably brought to mind when Jacob Murphy effortlessly switched to his right foot to put Newcastle ahead.
“It’s quite surprising that both Nuno and West Ham found themselves searching for their third manager of the season by the first weekend of November.”
It is quite impressive to turn things around from that position against a team as difficult as Newcastle. Minutes later, West Ham believed they got a penalty, but one of those VAR decisions reminded us of how terrible it can be even when it works.
The choice made on the pitch made sense, but it was obviously incorrect after one replay.
That was all that was required to show that Malick Thiaw studded the ball before coming into contact with Bowen. Instead, a 30-second decision took four minutes longer for no apparent reason.
However, the Hammers were unbeatable and had completely changed the course of the match by halftime.
Although Paqueta’s long-range strike was fiendishly brilliantly hit and dipped ominously late on the Newcastle keeper, Nick Pope will feel that he might have done better.
Long into injury time, Sven Botman deflected Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s low cross into his own net, leaving him helpless. However, for a club where it has been extremely scarce, the good news simply kept coming.
West Ham skilfully dominated the second half, and it wasn’t until Tomas Soucek scored a third goal in the closing seconds to secure a well-earned victory that the final score reflected the balance of play.
It is only West Ham’s second victory of the year, but it is far more advantageous in terms of money than their first, which ironically came against Nuno’s Forest in the latter days of Graham Potter’s disastrous tenure.
That triumph had an air of strange ridiculousness due to three late goals. Nothing of it shouted repeatability or sustainability. This performance succeeded.
This is how West Ham ought to appear and perform. Other than how drastically different it was from anything we’ve seen from them so far, there was nothing bizarre or strange about it.
This performance serves as proof of concept in addition to buying Nuno some time. It provides a path to survival, and it doesn’t necessarily have to compete against Newcastle-caliber clubs in the future.
Nuno’s natural conservatism will nevertheless occasionally be detrimental to West Ham.
Nuno’s decision to move so early to Soucek as a false nine when the Hammers seemed to be handling the game so well without turning quite so negative quite so early would have come under scrutiny if Newcastle had managed to muster any kind of response in the final thirty minutes.
However, Newcastle was unable to provide anything. After their Carabao efforts against Tottenham in the middle of the week, there may have been some fatigue, but it only somewhat lessens the situation for a team that has placed itself in a position where competing in several tournaments is the standard.
After a midweek game, you can’t be as sluggish and unmotivated every weekend. Particularly considering that Spurs seldom showed up in the middle of the week.
With today’s loss, Newcastle has yet to have the same outcome in two straight Premier League games this season, and losses are currently slightly ahead of wins and draws in the overall ledger.
It is disappointing and odd that Newcastle has been unable to get anything going this season.
Newcastle’s slow start is far from fatal since, aside from Arsenal, everyone is unimpressive.
Despite this significant setback, they are still as close to the top four as the bottom three.
However, they now need to improve in preparation for a significant Champions League opportunity in the middle of the week and devise better strategies to save some energy for the upcoming weekend. After the start they had, this was a major opportunity lost.
