Sometimes you just want answers to questions, without much hope of being enlightened... but here goes. Why on earth did Nuno Espirito Santo take the West Ham job?
He must have known what he was letting himself in for. Everybody else seemed to know. He must have known owner David Sullivan’s “way” with transfers. He must have known about our financial position with a second £100m debt about to be announced.He must have had a good look at our squad, seen that it had been gutted of experienced players, many having been replaced by sub-standard acquisitions.
I wonder whether he really wanted the job in the first place, and how long it took his mate and agent Jorge Mendes to persuaded him to take it knowing he would not be able to do anything to strengthen a paper-thin squad until January?
But here we are, 14 matches in charge and only two victories, with relegation staring us in the face. And I bet he didn’t envisage sending on two hugely inexperienced youngsters, Ezra Mayers and Mo Kante, on the right flank with seven minutes to go as we hang on desperately to a 2-2 draw with Brighton.
We are making a habit of throwing away winning positions in the final minutes, and these two kids are probably all he could trust from the bench - other than old warhorse Tomas Soucek - not to make a mess of things. We’ve seen enough of that already in this nightmare season.
I mean, Nuno could have been forgiven for just taking the job to keep the money coming in, knowing full well that West Ham under this ownership tend to shed managers alarmingly quickly. Nine now (David Moyes twice) in Sullivan’s chaotic 15 years at the club and three in less than two years since we won the European Conference League in Prague.
Doesn’t time fly? We even got a fleeting reminder of that night early in the first half on Tuesday when Lucas Paqueta’s beautifully weighted through ball sent Jarrod Bowen racing clear to score.
Nuno has had five decent jobs now in the last four years or so, four in the Premier League, so it’s doubtful he’ll be out of work for long with Mendes as his agent. And his CV won’t suffer, he’ll just point to West Ham as a totally unmanageable club. Not my fault, guv!
And the way it’s going, Nuno might not last much longer in the current climate. It would be stupid not to give him this transfer window to try to improve a horribly unbalance squad. But then again a respected journalist this week did describe West Ham as a ”stupid” club, and few would disagree with that.
Nuno, of course, has history for leaving clubs abruptly when finances or transfers don’t go his way. I believe Wolves and Nottingham Forest fall into that category.
But the job doesn’t get any easier. Wolves, away on Saturday and still bottom without a win this season, would have been in the “winnable” category, but they go and produce a fine battling performance to draw at Manchester United. Now all hope is lost they have found their pride and courage. You can see this one coming a mile off.
And don’t forget we have lost there already this season when current Nuno target, Jorgen Strand Larsen, came off the bench to score two fine goals to knock us out of the Carling Cup. And the writing for us should have been on the wall then, unfortunately it has taken a lot longer for our troubles to sink in.
After that we have Forest at home next Tuesday, the Tricky Trees currently being the only team above us we look capable of catching. Forest put up an outstanding hard running display before losing at home to Manchester City recently, but they are inconsistent and lost at home to Moyes’s Everton this week (of this more a little later).
Lose these next two and the excrement will hit the fan, the seventh relegation in our history and the sixth in 48 years will be on the cards.
Will Nuno survive to the end of this window, many are already asking? The players he persuades to come through the door - or leave - will dictate everything. And how he manages his relationship with Sullivan.
Of course, this reconstruction will be hard. Who will come to a club in our position? Adama Traore will, obviously, out of contract and out of favour at Fulham, and with a two-and-a-half-year contract with us on offer for the Spanish international at 29. Ten assists and four goals in three seasons doesn’t suggest he’ll be our salvation.
Quality defenders like Nathan Ake won’t come near us. At 30 he’s a reliable squad player now at Manchester City and needs to be playing regularly somewhere to make sure he gets selected for the Netherlands’ World Cup squad in the States. A relegation battle will not help his cause.
He’s been offered to Barcelona, but it’s been rumoured he could join Moyes at Everton. At least he could stay living in Cheshire.
Ahh yes, Moyes. He has Everton eighth in the Premier League and talking of another crack at Europe, where he was last seen with that manic race down the touchline in Prague to celebrate our European triumph. Those were the days, and many - a majority I accept outside our club - still feel we were daft to let him go.
And no, I’m not going down that road again, you’ll be glad to hear. Some of you still point to the charade of the contract Sullivan offered which excluded Moyes from transfer dealings, which he would never have accepted. Others rightly point to the string of disappointing league results over a long period, even though we were sixth this time two years ago and top of our European group. Those were the days.
All I will add is that for Everton’s victory at Forest, the home side had 245 touches in the attacking third and Everton just 54. Some things never change, maybe we should have been careful what we wished for, it’s an argument that just goes on.
Even Everton, I’m told, have fans with an entitled belief in what style of football they play. The club of Colin Harvey, Alan Ball and Howard Kendall are not always impressed with Moyes' pragmatism. I'm not sure, though, that the majority will be that bothered if they are back in Europe next season. Frankly, I’d settle for that, because what we have replaced Moyes with is a disgrace.
Nuno has arrived without the coaching staff he wanted, he’d found a club that is rumoured to have axed its set pieces coach last season without replacing him. Who’d have guessed. And then there was the highly regarded goalkeeping coach who was replaced, having - again it is rumoured - expressed concerns about Mads Hermansen’s talents.
Will Nuno now find that Sullivan will interfere in transfer dealings set up by himself and his agent Mendes? And, to be fair, Sullivan must have seen that one coming, he knew what he was getting by appointing Nuno.
Of course that is the root cause of much of our problems, recruitment. The squads over the last couple of years have been put together by a cast of thousands. Well, not quite, although iIn no particular order I’ve come up with 13 people who have been involved in who we buy and sell.
Sullivan, obviously and his agent mates Will Salthouse and Barry Silkman. Then there’s Moyes and his recruitment buddy Rob Newman, plus Manual Pellegrini and his director of football, Mario Husillos, Slaven Bilic, even Sam Allardyce, who signed Aaron Cresswell.
The list goes on; Graham Potter and head of recruitment Kyle Macaulay, ousted in the summer and now running Manchester United’s recruitment. And of course Julen Lopetegui and the once feted but now taking the blame for all this, Tim Steidten.
I’m tempted to say, that’s no way to run a circus, but I sense you all know that by now. No long term plan, frequently going for the cheaper option, rather than the manager’s preference, and ending up with the unbalanced squad we have now.
Back to Moyes. His signings were decent on the whole and he was considered to be the one manager who handled Sullivan best. Moyes can be credited with Zouma, Coufal, Soucek, Emerson, Aguerd, Bowen, Areola, Kehrer, Ward-Prowse and even Kudus, scouted before Steidten arrived.
But the upgrades he wanted frequently didn’t happen - and it’s worth asking why. That probably contributed to the charge that his squad was old and slow. But he did want James Tarkowski, Harry Maguire, Scott McTominay, Harvey Barnes, John McGinn, Amadou Onana, Youri Tielemans and Eberechi Eze instead of Said Benrahma. My view is all of those are an upgrade on what we have now.
Bilic’s signings were pretty good too. Antonio, Lanzini, Ogbonna and of course Dimitri Payet. Overseeing all this has been the sometimes dead hand of Sullivan, for whatever reason.
So here we are, staring relegation in the face, a case of all our yesterdays about to unfold in front of us yet again. And this could be the most damaging of all for Sullivan, the club and our amazing, long suffering fans. I just hope not.
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