There were no signs of the green, green grass of home as Nuno Espírito Santo’s first match at London Stadium ended in an abject, abysmal defeat for woeful West Ham United to Brentford on Monday evening (October 20).
"Tonight’s performance wasn’t good enough,” admitted the unhappy Hammers head coach after his sorry side were well and truly stung by the Bees, who secured a 2-0 victory thanks to goals from Igor Thiago and substitute Mathias Jensen. “Although we started well during the opening 15 minutes, the momentum then changed and, overall, Brentford were the better team.”
Returning from the international break, Nuno made five changes from the team that had lost at Arsenal by the same scoreline, last time out.
Certainly, the recently-installed Portuguese boss raised quizzical stares with a curious team-sheet that saw Jean-Clair Todibo, Ollie Scarles, Andy Irving and Kyle Walker-Peters handed starts alongside Tomas Soucek, who returned from a three-game suspension.
“I thought that my selections would work out for us because it was a formation that was designed to be compact,” said Nuno, who surprisingly relegated first-choice full-backs El Hadji Malick Diouf and Aaron Wan-Bissaka to the bench. “We also have to give all of our players their opportunities to show what they can do for the team.”
But after twice going close, Thiago outmuscled his markers to fire Brentford ahead on 43 minutes before also having another effort ruled out for a marginal offside following a Video Assistant Referee review seconds before the interval.
Meanwhile, at the other end, skipper Jarrod Bowen had seen his low 18-yarder tipped aside towards the end of the opening period for what was destined to be Caoimhin Kelleher’s only save of the entire 100-minute contest.
The Hammers made a fruitless triple substitution for the restart as Diouf, Wan-Bissaka and Konstantinos Mavropanos replaced Scarles, Walker-Peters and Mateus Fernandes.
“Things had stopped working so we changed it around at half-time,” explained Nuno, who later opted to overlook experienced goal-getter Callum Wilson, when replacing Irving with rookie-striker, Callum Marshall.
With Kevin Schade also rattling the crossbar it was clear that wobbling West Ham were both heading towards their sixth Premier League defeat of the season and a fifth straight reverse in London derbies.
“We’re all concerned and you can see that’s the case with our fans, too,” admitted Nuno after his side’s subdued, sterile showing did nothing to stir the Claret & Blue army, who have not witnessed a home victory since late-February.
“I can understand the atmosphere and it’s got to be up to us to change things. The silence turns to anxiety and then we have problems." The boss continued, "We need to play well and create chances to give the fans an energy to get behind their team.”
Indeed, by the time Keane Lewis-Potter had invited fellow substitute Jensen to cement Brentford’s victory with a 12-yarder in the dying seconds, most of the home support had already headed for the exits.
“We are not clicking right now and we have to solve that because we are a long way off from where we want to be,” concluded Nuno whose struggling 19th-placed team – with just four points on the board - now face a tricky trip to Leeds United on Friday evening (kick-off 8pm).
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