NUNO ESPIRITO SANTO was supposed to be the doctor who would cure the Graham Potter infection at West Ham.
Yet ask most Hammers fans and they would tell you the club’s Premier League survival hopes are now on life support.
And unless something changes soon, it will be the last rites on 14 years of top- flight membership.
The blame game has already started. For the supporters, the easy target is the board. Isn’t it always?
Yet West Ham’s problems run far deeper. A squad that is not performing, under a manager who looks increasingly perplexed and troubled.
This is a side which does not appear to know what it is supposed to be.
‘It’s a mystery’
Aston Villa make formal complaint to Premier League ahead of Arsenal clash
And if you are rubbish up top AND at the other end, it normally ends one way. The bad way.
Nuno-ball is rarely easy on the eye and even the Portuguese’s biggest backer might have warned it was going to be a tough watch.
But after Potter’s side were as easy to bypass as Channel immigration security, appointing him seemed an obvious move — back to the “Moyes-ball” stuff that supporters had tired of but actually got points on the board.
It wasn’t going to be fun. But at least it would be effective, especially after summer additions costing £125million.
BEST ONLINE CASINOS – TOP SITES IN THE UK
And, for most fans, there was an expectation that at least two of the three promoted clubs would prove to be cannon fodder in the Prem.
After all, Nuno had done the same trick at Wolves and Nottingham Forest — although the least said about his short-lived spell at Tottenham, the better.
Especially given how popular the cockerel is in the East End, where Spurs are more loathed than Millwall these days.
Instead, though, Nuno has delivered a team that has STILL yet to keep a clean sheet in the 13 matches since he was appointed.
Or, for the most part, look like keeping one. There is a huge irony that, halfway through the season, there has been just one match in which the Irons have not conceded — the 3-0 win at Forest on August 31 which sealed Nuno’s City Ground fate.
Saturday’s latest limp defeat by Fulham felt like another milestone on a journey with an inevitable end-point.
Those back-to-back victories over Newcastle and Burnley at the start of November now feel like a distant memory.
Since then, it is three points out of 21, from draws at Bournemouth, Manchester United and Brighton, and three defeats on the bounce. Relegation form in any season.
Playing Jarrod Bowen — comfortably their best player and certain to attract suitors this summer irrespective of West Ham’s status — through the middle rather than on the right again felt like a desperate move from a boss who already appears to be running out of time and ideas.
The mood has gone from mutinous with those pre-match fan protests of a few weeks ago, to something far, far worse.
Resignation. A shrug of acceptance. Supporters who can’t even be bothered to rage against the dying of the light. The five-point gap to 17th appearing a chasm.
That is the responsibility of the manager and his players. It is their job, their obligation, to show some fight, to give the fans a kernel of belief and hope.
After the home game with Brighton, it is two of Nuno’s former sides, Wolves and Forest, before the FA Cup game with QPR.
Were the Hammers to become the first team this season to lose to the Molineux men in the Prem, you feel that the axe would HAVE to fall.
The shame would be too much for anyone to bear.
Cherries picked
IF the money is on the table for Antoine Semenyo, Bournemouth will surely take it.
But even if the Cherries do get £65million for the Ghana winger, it might prove to be the last straw for Andoni Iraola — with an object lesson a few miles along the south coast.
The Spanish boss has lost more than £200m-worth of players over the past two seasons — with Dean Huijsen, Ilya Zabarnyi, Milos Kerkez and Dango Ouattara all following Dominic Solanke out of the door.
Iraola has stuck to his guns and his football. Yet letting Semenyo go now will have further echoes of Southampton’s decline and fall, when the Saints eventually ran out of players to sell and stopped finding adequate replacements.
And an ambitious Iraola knows he will have plenty of offers on the table if he decides to walk away from the club in the summer.
Sab, Sab, day
BILLIE JEAN KING was making a statement on behalf of women when she beat Bobby Riggs in the first “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973.
Fast forward half a century and Sunday’s nonsense in Dubai did precisely nothing to advance any female cause — except Aryna Sabalenka’s already deep bank account.
A modified court that looked beyond odd, one-serve points and Nick Kyrgios — No 671 in the world — going through the motions.
He was often just keeping points alive to wait for an error from Sabalenka, the world No 1 and winner of four Grand Slams.
When the 27-year-old Belarusian took a time out in order to dance the Macarena, any semblance of sport went out of the window. Embarrassing for everyone involved.
Mor like it, Ruben
WHISPER it quietly… but Ruben Amorim might be turning Manchester United around.
Only the top three have picked up more points than the Old Trafford side’s 22 from their last 12 Prem games.
It has seen United get into the front two of the crowded field looking to pick up the likely fifth Champions League spot.
And after a year of being wedded to one approach, the Portuguese has even started to show some tactical flexibility. Small steps. But very important ones.
England leave Noosa behind
SO the MCG pitch was “unsatisfactory”. Tell me something that wasn’t blindingly obvious.
But at least the madness in Melbourne helped England escape the shadow of their Noosa “stag” do.
And on the plus-side, you don’t have to go far to find a beach resort in Sydney for the full Ben Duckett Test preparation.
Pep’s men look like themselves again
PEP GUARDIOLA banished the “fog of Manchester” that hung over his City squad last season.
Their run of one win in 13 games coincided with the Premier League Independent Commission hearing into the alleged “130” financial breaches.
With no result more than 12 months since the hearing ended, it’s hardly a surprise Guardiola’s side are looking more like themselves again.