It has been a common complaint of West Ham United this season; With Mateus Fernandes epitomising a more youth-focused approach to the transfer market, does Nuno Espirito Santo’s team lack experience now?
Former Upton Park goalkeeper Rob Green questioned the Hammers’ recruitment strategy just two games into the new Premier League season.
Without experienced old heads such as Michail Antonio, Aaron Cresswell, Vladimir Coufal or Lukasz Fabianski to look to, West Ham United collapsed at home to bitter rivals Chelsea. Thus, conceding five goals in a home match for only the third time in the Premier League era.
Coufal himself then suggested that, while he has nothing but the utmost admiration, Jarrod Bowen is perhaps not the captain West Ham need.
Aston Villa became the fourth team to score at least three goals past the Hammers this season on Sunday afternoon. Bowen, brilliant at one end, could do nothing to prevent another capitulation in the defensive third.
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More points lost…
Furthermore, with Mateus Fernandes, El Hadji Malick Diouf, Mads Hermansen and Soungoutou Magassa arriving to help succeed Mohammed Kudus, Cresswell, Fabianski and arguably Tomas Soucek, ‘proven’ talent was replaced by potential.
Fernandes though, insists that Nuno Espirito Santo deserves a lot of credit for helping to fill a leadership vacuum at the London Stadium following the departure of Graham Potter.
Mateus Fernandes explains how Nuno Espirito Santo has really helped West Ham United
Fernandes was labelled an ‘ultimate Premier League midfielder’ while at Southampton, by former Saints skipper Jo Tessem. Now the creative force in Nuno’s midfield – his ball-carrier, his line-breaker, and his ball-winner rolled into one – the two Iberians provide reason to believe that happier times could be around the corner.
“Personally, I think I’m reaching my highest level in terms of performance and consistency. I also feel that Mr Nuno’s arrival was important for my stability,” Fernandes says on the Remi Martins podcast.
“The truth is that he has a lot of humour. And on the side of high level, international players who have already achieved a lot in football, he keeps the focus on the day-to-day, on what you have to learn, and on what you have to evolve.
“He’s also always very straightforward about his ideas with me and the team. He’s brought us a lot of leadership, which was something that was also missing and that we feel much more now.”
During spells at Wolves, Tottenham Hotspur, Nottingham Forest and now West Ham, Nuno has coached in excess of 250 Premier League matches. And though Potter was no top-flight novice, the 51-year-old brings a greater sense of authority and control.
It would take a brave man to ask Nuno about a face-swapping social media trend, let’s just say…
“The Mister [Nuno] clearly gets involved a bit and adapts to the opponent in each game,” adds Fernandes, West Ham chopping and changing their system almost week-by-week these days, albeit with mixed results.
“It’s also up to us to show what we’re going to do and what we’ve seen in training. We have a lot of quality in the team. And, in games, it has helped that these players with more quality are making an individual difference.”
Fernandes knows West Ham must stop throwing away leads
West Ham have picked up eight points from losing positions under Nuno. In 23 matches under Potter, they picked up only three.
Captain Jarrod Bowen has bemoaned the Hammers’ vulnerability when it comes to protecting leads, though. Morgan Rogers screamer on Sunday against Aston Villa means that, while eight have been won, six more points have been lost to goals after the 79th minute across the last five matches.
Fernandes agrees that this is an issue West Ham must address. He is confident that Nuno is the man to achieve this, though, having already gone a long way to solving their issues defending set-pieces.
Against Manchester City and Erling Haaland this weekend, a repeat of those Villa vulnerabilities could have pretty devastating results.
Can you work out the three MISSING PLAYERS from our 2-1 win over Man City in 2015? 🕵️♂️
A clue: Two of the these mystery men scored the goals for Slaven Bilic's side…
“We are still lacking some maturity and have conceded some goals at the end [of games], but I believe the future will be bright,” adds the Portugal Under-21 captain. “We’re working well, the team has leadership, it’s stable, and it’s up to us to face the games in the best way and do our best to achieve the best result.
“Mr Nuno’s leadership brought this calm. We were conceding goals due to tactical setups. Then we’d go to training, and we were very focused on not conceding a goal. But then, we ended up going into the game the same way, still under a lot of pressure, feeling we couldn’t make any mistakes. This ended up destabilising us.
“I think he brought that pressure factor down, essentially saying; ‘OK, you can concede a goal. The other teams are also good. Now, it’s about how you react.’
“Last year, I lost a lot of games, and we always started losing and never had that feeling of coming back to get back into the game. Now, when you concede a goal, you have the feeling: ‘OK, we can still go back there, we can still win.’
“When you feel that, you always end up staying awake and alive in the game, and that, obviously, gives us extra motivation, knowing that nothing is lost.”
West Ham went the extra mile to sign Fernandes in a £40 million deal in August. He is repaying that investment now, shaping up to be one of the few big-money signings to really live up to his price tag in claret and blue.
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