Torn between despondency owing to the team’s perilous position and woeful performances, yet still wanting to find some kind of optimistic outcome, its a tough time to be a West Ham fan just now.
Supporting ‘the protest’ seems essential yet possibly an act of self-harm as the team struggle to put in a decent performance, Irons fans don’t know whether to dread each new game or look forward toward an upturn in the side’s fortunes.
With a manager seemingly ‘feeling his way’ through the dark with no settled starting eleven, and the club sat in nineteenth position, surely..the only way is up?
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You’d hope.
One whose glass is most definitely half full is twenty-one year old u21 International Mateus Fernandes.The Portuguese midfielder could feel entitled to be a tad frustrated that Nuno didn’t select select him to start in either of the last two defeats, but despite this, his words are all very measured.
West Ham already have a ‘relegation veteran’ ready for the fight
A relegation veteran – who has just gone through a season of doom at Southampton, the guy knows a thing or two about a bottom-table scrap. His experience of a season-long fight could well turn out to be something of a secret weapon – should the penny drop and Nuno start to deploy the midfielder from the start.
“I know it’s a difficult moment for the fans as well, but we need to stick together, everybody, to get some points and win the games.” (whufc.com).
Last season for me it was the same, and one game can change everything. So we need to focus on our goal, our game, what we can do more, what we need to do more.
Which presumably also means getting more game time: Fernandes scored his first ever headed goal in the away defeat to Leeds. Surely Nuno will clear his head and work out the the young midfielder offers more than either of Friday night’s pairing of Soucek and Irving. Evidently he believes its action, not words that is needed now:
“If it’s the training sessions, if it’s the [meeting room], recovery, we don’t need to talk, we need to show it to everybody. But I think if you look at the squad, we see a lot of quality, but in the Premier League it’s not about quality, it’s about intensity, it’s about fighting once more and we need to show more. I trust my teammates, we can do it much better and I’m sure we will do much better”
Nuno, get him on the pitch!