The Hammers made it back-to-back wins with their 3-0 victory over Derby County at London Stadium, on Saturday afternoon.
Seven days can be an eternity in football and, after being heckled and harangued following last weekend’s 1-1 draw at Watford, the smile well and truly returned to Nuno Espírito Santo’s face as West Ham United followed-up Tuesday’s fantastic 4-2 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers with another three precious points to send the Claret & Blue army home in buoyant mood.
“I’m very happy, it’s been a very good positive week for us,” grinned the Hammers Head Coach after Joël Piroe’s sixth-minute opener was eventually followed-up by late strikes from second-half substitutes Edvin Austbø and Mohamadou Kanté. “We’ve had some much-needed results and, overall, have played some good spells of football. There are many things to be happy with – a clean sheet, a good game with three different goal-scorers and a big ‘Thank You’ to our fans, too.
“I’ve always believed that we’d improve and, hopefully, this is what we can now expect throughout the season. We must see for how long we can sustain these levels of performance but, although it’s starting to click, we still need much, much more.
“Today, there was a big improvement in terms of our defence – we didn’t give Derby too many chances and if we stay compact and solid, we’ll always find space upfield for our talented, attacking players.”
Certainly, with few Rams’ raids to contend with, ‘keeper Mads Hermansen enjoyed a relatively relaxing afternoon in the Stratford sun as the visitors failed to muster a single shot on target, while the Hammers never looked back after Jarrod Bowen’s deep right-wing cross was nodded back across goal by Taty Castellanos, who presented Piroe with the simplest tap-in.
After that, it was one-way traffic as West Ham went in search of a seemingly elusive second.
“We had a very good opening 30 minutes and created a lot of offensive situations,” observed Nuno. “We scored and, of course, would’ve like to have solved the game much sooner but we need to improve on our combinations and be more accurate with our final pass. That’ll take time but as we get to know each other more, things will gel. In training, we’ll repeat, repeat and repeat again because I don’t know any other recipe to achieve this.
“Derby put on some attacking players in the second-half and created some problems but we killed the game in the end,” he continued after seeing his two newly-introduced substitutes finally extinguish any feint hopes of a County comeback. “It’s not only about the players who are starting, it’s also about those coming off the bench and giving energy to the team.”
With three minutes remaining Austbø swept home at the far post after Bowen helped on Arne Engels low right-wing centre and, with virtually the final kick of the match, Kanté let fly with an unstoppable 18-yarder that flew inside the left-hand upright.
“Winning helps our legs recover,” concluded Nuno, who now takes his eighth-placed Hammers to Bolton Wanderers on Tuesday evening (kick-off 8pm) before Wrexham visit London Stadium on Friday night (8pm). “It’s a tight schedule and we’re going to need all of our players. Tuesday and then Friday is crazy but we simply have to find solutions.”
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