Nuno's 'pathetic' striker decision causes West Ham defeat vs Charlton - The West Ham Way
The West Ham Way · Daniel Luker · 2026-08-24T09:44:35+00:00 · nguồn gốc
West Ham were embarrassed as they were defeated 2-1 at home against Charlton Athletic.
The manager Nuno Espirito Santo has come in for a lot of blame for this result, and with the number of mistakes he made with the team selection I think that’s very fair.
The worse of all of his decisions was the front two, with Pablo injured there wasn’t much choice, but to start with Joel Piroe and Taty Castellanos as a two. Even if Pablo was fit, myself and most Hammers fans would’ve gone with that duo anyway. But the way Nuno deployed the two of them was completely wrong and no one can understand why he did it.
When there’s a front two, there’s normally one that plays as a proper number nine, a target man, getting in behind. Then the other one is almost like a false nine/number ten, dropping deep and linking up with the midfielders as well as the other striker.
You’d think with their skillsets, Piroe would be the striker and Taty would be the false nine, but no, Nuno had other ideas. It was an absolute shambles at London Stadium, it was awful to watch and was the main reason our attack and whole team looked so bad.
Watching Piroe trying to pull the strings in attack as times was awful, he doesn’t have the technical ability to do it. Then you see all the chances that fell to Taty that he failed to finish it’s so frustrating. The fact Nuno was there on the sidelines and didn’t change it was pathetic.
He does a similar thing when Taty plays up front with Pablo, but because Pablo works so hard it sort of made up for it, especially in the Premier League, we did see it against Portsmouth but that game went according to plan.
The game on Saturday didn’t go to plan at all when their centre-back put them in the lead with an overhead kick in the first five minutes. The Addicks sat back after that and the Hammers really struggled to break through, the front two was a big reason for that.
The only explanation other than Nuno being a bad manager is Taty’s attitude.
If the Argentinian doesn’t want to do the hard yards and play that deeper role, work harder and get more involved in the build-up then he has to go. However, this is only speculation and I’m just trying to find reasons as to why Nuno would set the attack out like that because it was ridiculous.
Nuno is supposed to be the best and most experienced manager in the League, and with by far the best squad in the League we really should be blowing teams like Charlton, and it was mainly down to Nuno this weekend that we didn’t. If he continues to make stupid decisions which are costing us points, he could be out the door sooner rather than later.