Nuno Espirito Santo would hardly be breaking new ground at West Ham United if Adama Traore ends up reuniting with the head coach who turned him into a Premier League stalwart at Wolverhampton Wanderers.
There is no shortage of examples to choose from when highlighting players who followed their old managers from club to club. In fact, this whole article could be a piece about Harry Redknapp providing a constant, near-career-long stream of income for Jermaine Defoe, Peter Crouch, Niko Kranjcar and co.
Jose Mourinho took Nemanja Matic to Chelsea in 2014 and later brought the Serbian colossus to Manchester United. Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta worked alongside Gabriel Jesus, Oleksandr Zinchenko as an assistant to Pep Guardiola at Man City.
One of Sam Allardyce’s first acts after taking charge at West Ham United in 2011, meanwhile, was to get on the phone to his former Bolton Wanderers captain, Kevin Nolan.
So if Nuno Espirito Santo gets the Old Gold band back together in a new claret-and-blue hue – Hammers News reported back in October that Fulham winger Adama Traore is a West Ham target – he will hardly be the first manager to bring a trusted lieutenant with him at the beginning of another battle.
Nuno Espirito Santo talks to Adama Traore after Wolverhampton Wanderers v Leeds United - Premier League
Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images
Nuno Espirito Santo turned West Ham United target Adama Traore into a star at Wolves
West Ham’s Adama Traore plan is becoming pretty well-documented now. Sky Sports’ Rob Dorsett backed up those earlier Hammers News claims on Tuesday.
Now, after stumping up £5 million to ensnare a proven Premier League operator for their promotion push in 2011, the late-David Gold called Nolan’s transfer ‘a coup’. The sort of deal which proved West Ham ‘mean business’.
Fourteen years later, it is hard to imagine even the most optimistic Hammers fan describing the potential addition of Adama Traore – approaching his 30th birthday and a free-agent next summer – in similarly glowing terms.
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If Nolan was a show of ambition from a club desperate to bounce back from relegation, then Traore may be the sort of ageing, cut-price addition that has some fearing a return to the dreaded Championship.
But there are reasons to believe that a Nuno reunion could be the moment which jump-starts Traore’s top-flight career. As former Arsenal and Liverpool winger Jermaine Pennant explained, on talkSPORT, Traore didn’t lack for ‘end product’ at Wolves under the Portuguese tactician.
In fact, with four goals and nine assists in the 2019/20 season – including his famous brace away at Man City – Traore’s flying form at Molineux earned the La Masia graduate a brief return to Spanish giants Barcelona.
“Adama is unique worldwide. He always has space to give things to the team,” Nuno said at the time, Traore exploding into life thanks largely to the patience and the freedom afforded to him by the now-West Ham boss.
“His speed, his one-versus-one, there are not many players that can achieve these kind of performances. We need to adjust to exploit the maximum talent that Adama can give us.”
Nuno could bring the best out of Traore again if he leaves Fulham
While those heady days are long gone now, rumours of Traore’s demise may have been slightly exaggerated. Albeit oft-maligned these days, Traore did actually produce seven assists in just 18 Premier League starts last season at Fulham. This was his best return since that 2019/20 campaign.
Furthermore, Nuno’s reputation for turning exciting-if-inconsistent wingers into potent attacking threats has only been enhanced by the brilliance of Callum Hudson-Odoi and Anthony Elanga at Nottingham Forest during last season’s successful European charge.
While it is still early days at West Ham, Crysencio Summerville appears to be benefitting from Nuno’s desire to make the most of his rapid acceleration and occasionally devastating qualities in one-v-one situations.
Nuno’s system made the most of Traore’s rare gifts all those years ago at Wolves. Now, in the present day, there is no reason to believe that the man who really launched Traore’s career cannot also pick up where they left off in the Midlands.
“I think [Summerville has] a lot of talent,” Nuno said in October, reminiscent of the way he instructed Wolves to ‘exploit’ Traore’s turbo-charged powers once upon a time. “He has his own specific characteristics. Speed. Very, very aggressive one-on-one.
“What we have to do, a team, is to give Cry the chance to do his actions with space and time. It is our job to give the ball to our front players in the right positions so they can deliver.”
If Adama Traore is the archetypal ‘confidence player’, it was Nuno who gave him the belief to become – briefly – one of the most feared prospects in English football. Labelled ‘undefendable’ by Jurgen Klopp and ‘impossible to stop’ by Pep Guardiola at the time, Nuno even had some of the game’s greatest-ever managers racking their brains for a solution to that Traore problem.
“Nuno has been a massive figure for me,” the one-time Aston Villa and Middlesbrough man told The Mirror back in 2020. “It’s the confidence he gives me.
“That is massive for a player. Maybe you think it’s just me but, if you ask any of the guys, they will tell you that the confidence of the manager is as important as the training you go to on a daily basis.
“A lot has changed for me but the football ability has always been there. It’s just [I needed] a little bit of adjusting.”