If Nuno Espirito Santo wanted to make himself popular right from the first minute at West Ham United, dropping James Ward-Prowse and promoting Freddie Potts was the way to go.
Having started every single Premier League match under Graham Potter so far, James Ward-Prowse was dumped from West Ham’s squad for the trip to Everton on Monday night.
Yes, the squad. Not just the starting XI.
Now, plenty of West Ham United fans have wanted Ward-Prowse dropped for some time. But few would have predicted this.
Yes, Nuno was the Nottingham Forest manager when the £30 million England international saw his loan spell at the City Ground terminated less than a year ago.
Although those who wanted a ruthless streak from Graham Potter’s replacement – a sense of accountability, that bad performances would no longer go unpunished – may still have been taken aback by Nuno’s brutal cutting adrift of the experienced midfielder.
Freddie Potts took Ward-Prowse’s place in the squad. And, eventually, on the pitch too, introduced for the final half hour at the Hill Dickinson Stadium. A decision countless West Ham supporters spent weeks urging Potter to make, occurring just two days into the Nuno Espirito Santo era.
Freddie Potts reflects after Nuno Espirito Santo gives him his West Ham United chance
Jarrod Bowen tipped Potts to be West Ham’s breakout star on the eve of the 2025/26 campaign.
And, weeks later, the West Ham skipper was delighted to see his young teammate finally get the opportunity to build on those impressive pre-season displays, this his first Premier League outing since the 5-1 drubbing by Chelsea on August 22nd.
Potts is determined to build on this as well, hoping to show Nuno ‘what I can do’ on the pitch and behind the scenes.
“I felt confident,” Potts told the club’s official website on Merseyside. “The new manager’s come in and didn’t have a lot of time to set out his tactics, only having two days to do so.
“I just felt I wanted to come on and play my game and do my best for the team, because we were 1-0 down. I had to try and help the team in any way I could to turn the result around.
“Thankfully, we did that and that was the main thing at the end of the day. It wasn’t my performance, it was the fact that we’d come away with a point, and I feel like we could have got more.”
Potts impressed alongside Malick Diouf and Crysencio Summerville at Everton
It did not take long for Freddie Potts to prove his worth in a West Ham shirt.
Amid all the early-season complaints over a lack of legs in the centre of the park, a partnership of Potts and Mateus Fernandes provided exactly that in abundance on a night where Malick Diouf and Crysencio Summerville were ‘outstanding’ and Soungoutou Magassa grew into the game on his first league start.
With Potts the second-oldest of the five at the age of 22, the future looks bright even if the present has been anything but of late.
“Today was just another showcase of real confidence in each other to get the point,” adds Potts, who played 38 games on loan at Portsmouth last season.
“I think there’s a lot of hunger, [in the youngsters and the] senior players. There’s a lot of hunger. Everyone wants to play and everyone is helping each other out, especially in training. You see it as healthy competition, everyone’s pushing each other on to fight to start or to come on.
“I think that’s good to have, because obviously that keeps performances high, everyone’s got to be on their game. Today, I just wanted to show what I could do to the new manager and help the team in any way that I could. So, I’m happy.
“Hearing the fans chanting my name is something I’ve dreamt of since I first joined when I was five. I’m very happy and I’m hoping to hear that quite a few more times.”
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