**West Ham United’s fantastic team display vs Newcastle United shows exactly what the club and Nuno Espírito Santo are capable of.**
After beating Newcastle 3-1, a lot will be made about some players individual performances, Freddie Potts, Lucas Paqueta, Matheus Fernandes and Jean-Clair Todibo mainly, but what may go under the radar is the teams display as a whole.
Yes, Newcastle were bed, but we made them look bad, everyone from Alphonse Areola in goal, who barely had to be tested, to Callum Wilson up top were great, and throughly improved.
Nuno was starting to feel the heat from the Hammers faithful and rightly so. His team selections in the last two matches before this, Brentford and Leeds were baffling. But against Newcastle he got everything spot on.
He started the midfield three everyone wanted to see, the full-back pairing we all wanted to see and the front three we all hoped to see play together.
Fans didn’t want the Todibo and Kilman partnership to continue, it had been so poor in recent weeks, but Nuno had faith in the both of them and it paid off.
Todibo was excellent, Kilman had his moments, his crazy run up the pitch left us wide open at the back for Murphy’s goal to open the scoring. But after that, in the second-half especially, he was faultless. They looked like the £75m pairing we signed last summer today.
The way the team defended together, attacked together, went to war together was exactly what the Hammers fans wanted to see from their team. They looked like they wanted to play for the badge, so whatever Nuno drilled into them over the week clearly worked.
We conceded early on yet again, which does need to stop, but we didn’t let it ruin our game plan, we didn’t let our heads drop like they have been a lot over the past year or so and it paid off. This is exactly what we thought we were getting when Nuno arrived, so long may it continue.