Nuno must bin West Ham dud who’s making them one of the slowest teams ever

It’s incredible how quickly the mood around West Ham United has collapsed again.

Following the fightback away to Everton, there was a real sense of optimism that Nuno Espírito Santo would be able to lead the club back up the Premier League table.

Unfortunately, an unsurprising defeat away to Arsenal and a truly dreadful home defeat to Brentford have left the fan base utterly deflated.

The team look bereft of ideas and so painfully slow, and while the former might be hard to fix, Nuno can deal with the latter by bringing a player back into the lineup for the next game.

West Ham’s athleticism problem

To state the obvious, there are a mountain of problems with West Ham United at the moment, both on and off the pitch.

However, while Nuno cannot address all of them, one of the most significant ones he might be able to fix in a relatively short period is the severe lack of athleticism in the side.

This lack of running power and physicality has, unfortunately, been on show in some way or other most of the season, but against Brentford on Monday night, it was impossible to ignore.

In fact, love or loathe him, it was one of Jamie Carragher’s main talking points after the game, with him describing the Hammers as “one of the slowest teams I’ve seen in Premier League history!”

While he was speaking in hyperbole somewhat, it’s not too far off the truth, and it was on full display for the first goal in particular, with Igor Jesus seemingly having plenty of time to score.

Now, the best way to address this problem is to go out and sign some young, dynamic, and physically imposing players as soon as the window opens, but to make a more immediate impact, the manager has to change his starting lineup for the next game, starting with the removal of Andy Irving.

It might sound harsh, but as Tomáš Souček can still be an important player for the Irons, it’s the once-capped Scottish international who has to make way.

Moreover, by taking the 25-year-old out of the lineup, the former Nottingham Forest coach can bring in just the sort of player who could add some dynamism and bite back into the midfield.

The player to add dynamism back into West Ham

When looking at West Ham’s bench against Brentford, one player stood out who would have added some dynamism back into the midfield: Soungoutou Magassa.

The young Frenchman certainly has some drawbacks and is still a little raw, but his talent is evident to see, and most importantly, he would have made life far harder for Brentford.

For example, respected analyst Ben Mattinson has described the 22-year-old as someone who can “spray passes wide out to the wings” but that he’s also got very “high potential” for playing as a six “due to how he reads the game.”

However, more importantly for the Hammers, Mattinson also claims that the former AS Monaco gem is blessed with “pure athleticism”, and U23 scout Antonio Mango has highlighted that he’s “strong in both offensive and defensive duels.”

In other words, he’s a fast, tough-tackling defensive midfielder who has a great pass on him, which sounds like just the sort of player Nuno should be playing as often as possible.

After all, he’s not going to improve and iron out the errors in his game without playing regularly, and even if he does make the odd mistake here and there, his physical presence in the middle of the park should make it harder for opposition sides to just run through the East Londoners.

Finally, if people are still unconvinced, they only need to look at some of his underlying numbers from last season to understand he could be something special.

According to FBref, he ranked in the top 1% of midfielders in Ligue 1 last season for dribblers tackled, tackles plus interceptions, and ball recoveries, the top 5% for tackles won, the top 9% for successful take-on percentage and the top 17% for passes into the final third and more, all per 90 minutes.

Ultimately, there is no way to make West Ham dramatically better overnight, but by starting Magassa in place of Irving, Nuno can certainly improve the athleticism of the side.