Soccer
Nuno Espirito Santo heaps praise on substitutes after West Ham victory
Nuno Espirito Santo admitted goalscoring substitutes Edvin Austbo and Mahamadou Kante “brought energy” at the right time for West Ham in their 3-0 win at home to Derby.
After Joel Piroe gave the Hammers an early lead, it was beginning to look a little precarious when 21-year-old Austbo, signed from Norwegian club Viking on transfer deadline day, made it 2-0.
Academy product Kante, 20, sealed West Ham’s second home win in five days with a rasping low shot in stoppage time.
Nuno said: “It has been a very good, very positive week for us. Two good results and much-needed results. There were some good spells of football overall today.
“We didn’t give them too many chances, which is really positive, and to achieve a clean sheet is always a boost of confidence for us.
“Of course we wanted to end the game sooner, but in the end I was so happy for the players who came off the bench, they brought energy and scored to help the team.”
While West Ham have moved into the play-off picture, Nuno knows their fluency remains a way off.
He added: “We improved on our combinations today, but we still need to be better. It will take time. Once the players get to know each other better it will gel, so I am very positive.
“We have to repeat things again and again. The new players need their confidence. Let’s see how long we can sustain our level of performance.
“It is a very tight schedule with the next game on Tuesday and then on Friday. But there are many things to be positive about.
“For the substitutes to score helps them get confidence more quickly. Of course, winning helps our legs to recover.”
Derby manager John Eustace was left to regret an insipid first-half display by his side going forward.
Eustace said: “We started quite slowly and it’s disappointing to concede such an easy goal in the first half. Against a quality team you cannot give them chances like that.
“But then we grew ourselves into the game a little bit, we adjusted a few things at half-time and after the break we really imposed ourselves onto the game.
“It was just in the final third that we lacked the quality or belief that we needed. We should have imposed ourselves and really believed in ourselves a little bit more, and we could have come away with something.”
Because of the protracted summer takeover saga at Derby, Eustace was left with uncertainty over his transfer budget for the new season.
When the takeover collapsed five days before the Championship season began, many of the club’s original targets had already signed elsewhere, which meant starting again.
Eustace added: “We are a work in progress and certainly not the finished article. We’ll be growing and building throughout the season like we did last year.
“We’ve been at the club for 18 months now and we’ve certainly built in the right direction. The way we finished last season was so positive. We were a really competitive team.
“With the recruitment we had to go backwards slightly in the summer. In an ideal world we’d love to have the squad from last year and build on that. But we haven’t and now we’ve got to go through that similar process again.
“It’s always going to be difficult with new players coming in this week. They’ve got to get used to each other and we have to get used to them.”
