There was a wretched, red-faced return to Wolverhampton Wanderers for Nuno Espírito Santo on Saturday afternoon as the hapless Hammers catastrophically capitulated at the hands of his former club.
Woeful West Ham United were simply swept aside by Rob Edwards’ rock-bottom strugglers, who had come into the New Year without a solitary Premier League win all season.
“I don’t recall one day that I’ve felt so bad on a football pitch like today,” admitted the Hammers head coach after a Molineux mauling that saw first-half strikes from Jhon Arias and Mateus Mané, either side of a penalty from Hee-Chan Hwang, secure a free-wheeling 3-0 victory for Wolves, at long last.
“We have to apologise to our travelling fans because it was an embarrassing performance. I’m particularly sad because what I saw today simply was not good enough.”
Indeed, none of the frozen travelling supporters amongst the 2,992-strong Claret and Blue army would argue with that verdict after a performance of chilling ineptitude which was underlined by the failure to muster a single shot on target.
The wheels began to fall off the West Ham wagon within just four minutes of the kick-off.
Already arriving back in the Midlands without a shut-out in his previous 14 matches in charge, Nuno’s hopes of a first clean-sheet quickly evaporated, when Arias ghosted to the edge of the six-yard box, where he side-footed home Hwang’s left-wing cut-back after Soungoutou Magassa had been caught napping.
On the half-hour mark, former Molineux man, Maximilian Kilman, failed to control and Magassa’s foul on Mané then allowed Hwang to double the lead with the consequent spot-kick.
“Lots of things went wrong today,” continued Nuno, his misery having been compounded by Mané, who fired home a low 18-yarder after being allowed to roam free by the helplessly positioned Magassa.
“We made mistakes and didn’t react to them and that just kept happening over and over again. We expected a tough game and it was up to us to dominate and contain Wolves but we didn’t do the things that we planned to do.
“We have found ourselves in tough situation recently but until today we’ve played well at times and kept ourselves in games even though we haven’t always got the results and the points. We needed much, much more today.”
Nuno, who spent most of the second-half anonymously holed-up in his dug-out rather than patrolling his technical area now has just two victories and five draws from his 15 matches in the Hammers hot-seat.
With his side languishing in 18th-spot - four points adrift of safety and without a win in nine games – the noise levels calling for a second managerial change of the season will undoubtedly start to rise down West Ham way.
“It’s not about my future,” insisted Nuno who comes face-to-face with his previous club – 17th-placed Nottingham Forest – in a crucial clash at London Stadium on Tuesday evening (kick-off 8pm).
“We need to change many things. We must go away and ask ourselves: ‘How can we improve and get the results we need to climb the table?’ We need all of the players in the squad to help us do that because everyone is responsible for turning this around. Now is the time to reflect and ask ourselves: ‘Are we strong enough to resolve things?’”
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