Forget winning the Premier League or the Champions League. The true test of Pep Guardiola or Jurgen Klopp’s managerial genius is what they could achieve with this current crop of West Ham United players.
The question on everybody’s lips, when Nuno Espirito Santo was appointed West Ham United’s new head coach in September, was whether he could get more out of the squad than Graham Potter ever did.
Those who argued that things could hardly get any worse were proven emphatically wrong by Monday’s calamitous home defeat by Brentford. Nuno’s London Stadium debut was a disaster, and that is being kind.
It turns out that, while Potter slammed face-first into a surface labelled ‘rock bottom’, his replacement would discover another layer of misery lying just below the dirt.
Tim Sherwood, a Premier League-winning captain with Blackburn Rovers back in 1995, feels that even Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp would meet their match in charge of the Hammers these days.
Two of the greatest-ever managerial minds, with 51 trophies between them via spells at Manchester City, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund.
But the task of turning Jean-Clair Todibo, Max Kilman, Kyle Walker-Peters and Ollie Scarles into a Premier League-worthy backline may make conquering the continent and seizing Europe’s biggest prize look like child’s play in comparison.
Nuno Espirito Santo reacts as West Ham United lose to Brentford in the Premier League
Photo by GLYN KIRK/AFP via Getty Images
Tim Sherwood feels Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola would fail at West Ham United
Speaking on Sky Sports, Sherwood indicates that only so much can be expected from Nuno given the ‘bang average’ nature of West Ham’s squad.
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The 51-year-old Portuguese may have turned Nottingham Forest and Wolves into teams capable of challenging for Europe. But, barring captain Jarrod Bowen, arguably none of his current roster would be capable of forcing their way into last season’s Forest XI, or the Wolverhampton Wanderers side which finished seventh in 2020.
“They have bang average players, I would suggest,” Sherwood says. “That is the bottom of it.
“It doesn’t matter if Pep Guardiola went in there or Jurgen Klopp wanted to come back to manage them. They would struggle because the quality of player is not good enough. They keep clogging up the pathways with bang average players.”
Sherwood certainly has a point about ‘clogging up the pathway’, especially when it comes to the lack of game time afforded to academy talent.
Sherwood cannot understand Nuno picking Ollie Scarles over Aaron Wan-Bissaka
West Ham fans accused Nuno of ‘losing the plot’ when he introduced Guido Rodriguez to audible confusion against Brentford. Freddie Potts had made such a difference in similar circumstances against Everton a few weeks later, but he remained on the bench alongside £14 million summer signing Soungoutou Magassa.
That was one of many odd decisions made by the manager in a 2-0 defeat arguably more worrying than anything served up during Potter’s eight-month reign.
Sherwood could not understand the decision to start the left-footed Ollie Scarles at right-back. Particularly with Aaron Wan-Bissaka, the club’s reigning Hammer of the Year, left out.
“They have players there sat on the bench who are better than what’s on the pitch,” added Sherwood, who while much-maligned by his critics led a Gareth Bale-less Tottenham to sixth and Aston Villa to an FA Cup final during his short-lived spell in Premier League management.
“How is Wan-Bissaka not in the side? They threw a kid in there, and it’s probably the wrong environment.”