Nuno should bin the underachievers who make West Ham one of the slowest teams in history

It’s incredible how quickly the atmosphere surrounding West Ham United has collapsed again.

After the away game against Everton, there was a sense of optimism that manager Nuno Espirito Santo would be able to get the club back into the Premier League standings.

Unfortunately, a shocking away defeat to Arsenal and a downright dreadful home defeat to Brentford left the fan base completely deflated.

The team seems short on ideas and painfully slow. While the former may be difficult to fix, Nuno could address the latter by putting the player back in the lineup for the next game.

west ham athleticism problem

To put it bluntly, West Ham United have a lot of problems on and off the pitch at the moment.

However, while Nuno cannot address them all, one of the most important issues that he could potentially fix in a relatively short period of time is a serious lack of athleticism on the side.

Unfortunately, this lack of running and physicality has been evident in one form or another throughout most of the season, but it was impossible to ignore against Brentford on Monday night.

In fact, love him or hate him, that was one of Jamie Carragher’s main talking points after the match, with him describing the Hammers as “one of the slowest teams in the history of the Premier League!”

Although that was a bit of an exaggeration, it wasn’t too far from the truth, and it was especially evident in the first goal, when Igor Jesus appeared to have had plenty of time to score.

Now, the best way to deal with this problem is to sign young, dynamic, physically imposing players as soon as the opportunity opens up, but to have a more immediate impact, the manager needs to change his starting lineup for the next game, starting with letting Andy Irving go.

It may sound harsh, but Tomáš Soucek could still be an important player for the Irons, so the former capped Scotland international must make way.

Moreover, by removing the 25-year-old from the line-up, the former Nottingham Forest coach could bring in just the kind of player who can add dynamism and break into the midfield.

A player who brings dynamism to West Ham

Looking at West Ham’s bench against Brentford, one player stood out who could add some dynamism to the midfield: Sungoutu Magassa.

The young Frenchman certainly has some flaws and is still immature, but his talent is obvious and most importantly, he would have made life much more difficult for Brentford.

Respected analyst Ben Mattinson, for example, describes the 22-year-old as a player who can “pass wide wide”, but also says he has very “high potential” to play as a number six “because of the way he reads the game”.

But more importantly for the Hammers, Mattinson also claims the former AS Monaco star is blessed with “pure athleticism”, with Under-23 scout Antonio Mango insisting he is “strong both offensively and defensively”.

In other words, he’s a fast, tough-tackling, defensive midfielder who can make great passes, and he looks like exactly the kind of player Nuno should be playing as often as possible.

After all, he’s not going to improve or correct any errors in his game if he doesn’t play regularly, and even if he makes the odd mistake here and there, his physical presence in the middle of the park should make it difficult for opposing teams to just run through the East London players.

Finally, if people aren’t convinced yet, just look at some of his fundamental numbers from last season to understand he could be something special.

According to FBref, last season he ranked in the top 1% of Ligue 1 midfielders for dribbler tackles, tackles + interceptions and ball recoveries, the top 5% for tackles won, the top 9% for take success rate and the top 17% for passes completed into the final third.

After all, there’s no way to dramatically improve West Ham overnight, but starting Magassa in place of Irving would certainly allow Nuno to improve the team’s athleticism.