Joe Cole felt there was one department, in particular, which summed up the cavernous divide between Brentford and West Ham United as Nuno Espirito Santo suffered a first home Premier League defeat in charge.
Given how much money the Hammers have spent in recent years, and given that they won a European trophy as recently as 2023, how on earth do they now look lightyears behind their rivals from West London?
A Brentford side who lost their long-serving head coach Thomas Frank in the summer, and star forward in Bryan Mbeumo. Not to mention captain Christian Norgaard.
Nuno Espirito Santo was out-coached pretty dramatically by Keith Andrews on Monday night. A damning statement in itself. Andrews, remember, had never taken sole charge of a senior team before this season, and was promoted from his role as set-piece coach when Frank left for Tottenham Hotspur.
On a night when Nuno’s selections drew groans from the London Stadium supporters and West Ham United sunk to second-bottom in the Premier League table, homegrown hero Joe Cole highlighted the centre-forward department as emblematic of the gulf between the two sides.
On one hand, Nuno started Jarrod Bowen, and then introduced the unproven Callum Marshall ahead of Callum Wilson. Andrews, meanwhile, would see Brentford’s £27 million targetman Igor Thiago run Max Kilman ragged while netting for a fifth time in eight top-flight starts.
Only a tight offside call on the stroke of half-time denied him a sixth.
Joe Cole says West Ham United need a striker like Brentford’s Igor Thiago
Igor Thiago managed as many as six shots on Monday evening. As many as West Ham’s Niclas Fullkrug-less front four of Bowen, Crysencio Summerville, Lucas Paqueta and Mateus Fernandes managed between them.
Even if their misfiring German was available – Fullkrug had a ‘scan’ last week to determine the extent of his latest injury – the in-form Thiago would comfortably force his way into West Ham’s XI with the same broad-shouldered belligerence in which he ragdolled Kilman throughout.
“£27m is peanuts in today’s market,” Cole tells Premier League Productions. “And West Ham will be on the other side thinking, ‘we’ve been looking for a centre-forward for a decade now. And they still haven’t got one.
“He’d get into any team outside the top four in the Premier League, Thiago.”
Ironically, the £27 million fee Brentford paid Club Brugge is reportedly the same as the sum West Ham paid to bring Fullkrug to English football from Borussia Dortmund. Igor Thiago now has two more goals this season than Fullkrug has in his entire Premier League career.
Jamie Carragher says David Sullivan is a reason why West Ham are underachieving
Liverpool legend and Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher explained Brentford’s dominance over West Ham by highlighting their success off the pitch, as well as their continued coupon-busting tendencies on it.
While thousands of West Ham fans boycotted the opening minutes in another protest against the board, Brentford are once again living proof of the benefits of long-term planning and intelligent, coherent squad-building.
Frank out, Andrews in. Ivan Toney out, Igor Thiago in. Bryan Mbeumo goals, Kevin Schade picks up the slack, and so on.
“West Ham are shocking and they’ve been shocking for a while, a long time,” Carragher said. “It feels an awful long time ago since they won that European trophy under David Moyes.
“Sometimes we question supporters. But when supporters go against a club or they go against an ownership, a lot of the time it’s almost a last resort.
“And very rarely do supporters of their own football clubs get it wrong. They know exactly what is going on at this football club and it’s not down to managers more often than not.
“The ownership at West Ham is completely different to what we’re seeing at the club that have just absolutely battered them on their own patch. [How David Sullivan runs the club] is almost like a throwback in terms of how they go about transfers.
“Sullivan at the top of that club, he’s been there a few years now, they’ve won a trophy under David Moyes, I get that. But it doesn’t feel a modern way of doing things and that’s where the frustration comes from in that support.
“They feel like they look at other clubs who are not a patch on West Ham – and that’s not being disrespectful to Brentford and maybe a Brighton, we look at those two as forward-thinking, modern football clubs the way they run themselves.
“West Ham are a far bigger club than those two clubs I’ve mentioned. But the way they are run right now means they can’t actually compete with them on the pitch.”
