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Comments
If so, it still wasn't good enough.....!!
I’d blame the squad he inherited more than Nuno, & that lies with Lop, Steidten & Potter
This is from January 1 - May 31 2026 & if you go from after the window closed so he had a full window to improve the situation we were 11!
But I just think a fairer reflection of his time here is after we signed Taty, Pablo, Traore & Disasi & not the useless 11 he had before the window opened
If you don’t want to judge him like that then that’s up to you
Piroe = Kenneth from Benidorm/EFL Erling Haaland
Is it blind allegiance or a denial of reality that we suffer from?
Last season was awful and this season has now started in a similar vein. And yes, depressing is the correct summarisation of my feelings on Saturday evening also.
Most of us have been here before, some like me many times over the six decades of my support.
But for me, sadly, the "Hope springs eternal" message that has been written on the back wall of my brain over the years which had started to fade, it is now barely visable.
In the greater scheme of things this could be quite easily be viewed as mere bagatelle but the injection of a little light relief into our lives would be most welcome at the moment.
My point is West Ham aren’t City, yet City still went through chaos, despite their class. We are one no the biggest clubs (on paper), with a strong first 11 (on paper) in this league. But if our mentality is not where it should be, then we will lose games. Lose enough, we will lose confidence & belief in what we are aiming to achieve. Pep is not Nuno, but even Pep was speechless. The press turned, the media attention grew, fans doubted, players began to doubt. Mentality will always trump ability in a lot of areas. You could be the most talented teacher, builder, lawyer, accountant, shop assistant, deliver diver, customer service advisor, but if your mentality is fragile or not where it should be, you won’t overcome setbacks. For some people that is fine, settling for that, but those that have a passion for what they do or want to be the best have to have that mentality that top level performers require.
The players tried Saturday, but I don’t think they ever truly believed they’d turn the game around. I don’t think we have the psychological requirements that are needed to push for promotion, even if our squad is good on paper. The focus has to be to bring in big characters with the right mentality between now & the deadline, regardless of their ability. Ideally, they have both, but I think we need to boost the dressing room with a few extra characters that can radiate their personalities to the other players & raise expectations/standards within the team.
Maybe this isn’t for his thread, but I was trying to think of reasons why we lost Saturday, despite our obvious difference in player & club size.
It's not the size of the club or the badge on the shirt that counts,
It's the man/woman in the shirt that counts.
Remember, Billy Bonds came from little old Charlton,
And boy o boy did he have heart and a will to win!
Despite our frailties against Charlton we still created more than enough half chances to win the game and had we done so, I think the whole atmosphere surrounding the club would be very different indeed.
Hopefully we will have a good result in the cup today and against Watford and we can get back on track
We need at least one new FB, a CB, a CDM & a back up striker which there is absolutely no sign looking from the outside that any of those positions are going to be filled without panic signings at 22.59 on September 1 2026.
To me, the issue is almost purely down to the fact we have spent years building counterattacking squads, and now that we're expected to have the ball we don't know what to do with it, and we're out of position to do what we normally do when we don't have the ball too. Nuno doesn't help this, because alongside having a squad built to play a specific way, we have a manager to do the same.
No man is an island.
Probably not, because I hate the fact that we keep chopping and changing managers and I don't think it bodes well for the long term. I also think Nuno did a good job in the second half of last season and - aside from the occasional brain fart - has proven that he's a good manager.
The problem, though, is that his instincts are to defend and to counter, and other teams are not going to let us counter them, because they will sit deep. I have concerns about Nuno's ability to convert us into a ball dominant side, but I have concerns about anyone's ability to do that given the squad we have built over the last several years.