Nuno Espírito Santo spoke with typical clarity, honesty and directness following West Ham United’s 2-0 home Premier League defeat by Brentford.
The Head Coach had hoped to mark his home debut with a welcome win at London Stadium, but the Bees were too strong for his side and travelled back across the capital with all three points.
After an encouraging opening that included a flurry of West Ham corners and half-chances for Mateus Fernandes and Jarrod Bowen, Brentford began to dominate, both from open play and from a succession of set pieces that were launched into the home penalty area.
The visitors went in front just before half-time when a long, straight ball bisected the home defence and Igor Thiago fired past Alphonse Areola. Thiago had a goal disallowed, while both he and Kevin Schade hit the woodwork before Brentford substitute Mathias Jensen made the game safe in added-time.
Nuno had made five changes from the 2-0 defeat at Arsenal last time out, giving rare starts to Ollie Scarles and Andy Irving, and made five substitions, including three at half-time, as he sought to find a formula that worked.
The Irons could not build any sustained momentum, though, and created chances sporadically. Crysencio Summerville and Bowen fired high and wide and Tomáš Souček saw a shot blocked, but there was precious little else.
Speaking to West Ham TV after the game, Nuno knows he needs to find ways to get better performances out of his players, starting at Leeds United on Friday evening.
It was a difficult evening for us. Nobody’s going to sleep tonight and rightly so.
It was not good enough.
We have to be strong in every moment, in every duel. Individually, we have to improve. We have to win our own duels so we can, as a team, improve.
I think if we look at the game by itself, we started better.
We started better. First 15, 20 minutes was good. We had good spells of possession, combination. We were solid. And after that, the set-pieces [they had and put into our penalty area], we couldn’t go out.
So, the momentum of the game changed and until the end Brentford was the better team.
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.
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.
We need to be stronger down the road [starting at Leeds].
The good thing is it’s coming soon. It’s coming fast in four days’ time. And we have to show another situation, another face, if you want, of ourselves.
We must improve so many things.
