Fortunes went into hiding and hope ebbed away on a wretched weekend for West Ham United.
Heading to the Gtech Stadium on Saturday afternoon, Premier League survival was in Hammers hands but - by Sunday evening - a three-goal defeat at Brentford coupled with Tottenham Hotspur’s victory at Aston Villa meant Nuno Espírito Santo’s struggling side are now languishing back in the dreaded drop-zone, one precious point adrift of safety with just three games to play.
An early Konstantinos Mavropanos own goal plus Igor Thiago’s second-half penalty and a late Mikkel Damsgaard strike saw the Bees sting the Hammers on a day when the head coach was left cursing his luck.
West Ham struck the woodwork no less than four times, while Mavropanos also had a first-half ‘equaliser’ narrowly ruled out following a Video Assistant Referee review.
“We were playing against a very good, tough clinical team but I’m still very disappointed,” grimaced Nuno after the forlorn 3-0 reverse.
“Recently, we’ve reacted to set-backs but that wasn’t the case today.”
Early on, the hesitant Pablo woefully scuffed his weak shot to Caoimhin Kelleher before West Ham - unchanged for their fourth successive match - fell behind on the quarter-hour mark.
Michael Kayode scrambled a deep cross onto the far post before the luckless Mavropanos inadvertently stabbed the ball over his own goal-line attempting to clear from the inrushing Brentford defender.
After Taty Castellanos rattled Kelleher’s left-hand upright, Mavropanos thought he had netted at the right end, when he met El Hadji Malick Diouf’s curling free-kick with a powerful header but a VAR review ruled him a shirt-sleeve offside.
During an end-to-end opening 45 minutes, Castellanos also sent a header onto the opposite post before forcing the flying Kelleher to tip over his rising shot and then nodding wide.
“On a normal day, Taty will score but football’s about fine margins,” contended Nuno.
“Our first-half was really good and, at half-time, we were still positive that things would change onto our side. We’d reacted well to their goal, the game had been flowing and we created some situations.”
That all changed 10 minutes after the break when Diouf’s clumsy slide on Dango Ouattara allowed Thiago to coolly convert the consequent spot-kick.
“We should’ve avoided the penalty,” insisted Nuno. “After that we lost composure and organisation. We were rushing our game and weren’t able to react to going two goals behind.”
Although the lively Crysencio Summerville rocked the crossbar and Tomáš Souček clipped his follow-up onto the outside of the right-post, more pedestrian defending enabled Damsgaard to net Brentford’s third with six minutes remaining.
“There were things we didn’t do well today and we’ll need to rectify that.” contended Nuno. “My main concern is about how we will react to this result because we just cannot afford to give up. That’s not allowed.
“After today, there’ll be lots of noise so it’ll be about helping each other more than ever over these next three games. That’s what’s necessary for this fight which will go to the last match.
“We cannot do anything about what’s happening elsewhere,” concluded Nuno who now leads 18th-placed West Ham into Sunday’s daunting, yet crucial, clash with table-topping Arsenal (kick off 4.30 pm) knowing survival is now out of his hands.
“We’re going to need our fans at London Stadium because we’re in a fight. We all need to stick together.”
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