West Ham boss Nuno Espirito Santo has offered a truly ridiculous explanation for his baffling team changes which completely backfired in defeat to Brentford.
All of Nuno Espirito Santo’s positive early work at West Ham has been undone in one night.
Nuno impressed Hammers fans everywhere with his rhetoric, passion, team selection, tactics and aura on arriving at the club to replace the hapless Graham Potter.
The fact he wanted to take on the challenge of two tough away games at Everton and Arsenal rather than wait until the international break to come in spoke volumes of his character.
It also gave West Ham a real lift with the club at its lowest ebb for 15 years.
Nuno undoes all his good West Ham work in one night
Improved performances in those two games looked to have set a solid foundation for Nuno to work from going into a run of crucial matches against teams in and around the Irons in the table.
What a difference a day makes, though.
Because Nuno’s West Ham served up one of the worst performances in the club’s Premier League history to lose 2-0 to Brentford and leave themselves firmly ensconced in the bottom three.
The Irons have been terrible for a long time now – dating all the way back to January 2024.
Just 17 wins in 66 Premier League games since then tells you that as much as the fact West Ham have only two home victories this calendar year.
There was so much wrong with West Ham’s dismal showing against Brentford.
But the team selection and tactics have left Hammers fans scratching their heads at Nuno’s reasoning.
Now Nuno has offered a ridiculous explanation for his shocking West Ham changes.
It is fair to say the new head coach’s team selection, setup and tactics for such a crucial, must-win game against a side just above them in the table went down like a lead balloon.
With Niclas Fullkrug injured, at least one change was expected from Nuno.
But the Portuguese stunned Hammers supporters by making five changes from the Arsenal game – and some truly baffling ones at that.
Nuno offers ridiculous explanation for shocking West Ham changes
Starting with no striker, leaving out two of West Ham’s best and most dynamic players in El Hadji Malick Diouf and Aaron Wan-Bissaka, benching Soungoutou Magassa, starting Andy Irving in central midfield, bringing left-back Ollie Scarles in out of the blue and playing him at right back and putting right-back Kyle Walker-Peters at left-back.
Not to mention Jean-Clair Todibo going from being ostracised to straight back in the starting XI.
It says everything that Nuno was forced to abandon the woeful line-up at half-time as he made a series of changes to try and course correct.
In fairness West Ham actually started the game looking pretty solid. But it all fell apart and the 2-0 scoreline massively flattered the Hammers, who could have lost by at least six.
While fan protests and the boycott aimed at the owners show where supporters feel the blame truly sits for West Ham’s mess, Nuno’s team selection was so bad it has been the main topic of conversation and debate post match.
Supporters have questioned what on earth Nuno was thinking experimenting with such risky and unusual changes for such a huge match.
Now, somehow, the manager’s explanation somehow makes it even worse.
If the players in question were fatigued, ill or carrying knocks of some sort then some of the changes might have been understandable.
But Nuno says he made the changes in order to give certain players a chance to show what they can do and to make them feel important.
He was honest enough to admit some of the players failed to do that.
However, the wisdom of using such a pivotal match as an experiment is seriously questionable.
Nuno’s baffling experiment was to make everyone feel included
“It’s all about that (giving all the players opportunities to show what they can do) to try to realise that everybody’s going to be necessary,” Nuno told West Ham TV.
“Everybody’s going to be needed and it’s good for us that we have options and solutions.
“Some of them were not so good today, but it’s part of the challenge that we have ahead.”
This wasn’t a League Cup second round game against lower league opposition for goodness sake.
It was a Premier League match against a direct survival rival and West Ham ended up losing on their own patch – because Nuno wanted everyone to get a chance and feel important?
West Ham don’t have that kind of depth and luxury.
Play your best players in their best positions Nuno, football really isn’t rocket science.
Now is not the time to be experimenting at West Ham, it’s the time for simple equations with a view to getting enough solutions to stay in the top class.
