There were empty seats before West Ham took on Brentford in their London derby. And plenty during the game. And even more so as the game drew to a close.<\/p>\n
The fans who were left booed their team off after a truly miserable 2-0 defeat that could easily have been 5-0.<\/p>\n
These are toxic times at London Stadium, with some fans staying away in a protest against the running of the club.<\/p>\n
New Hammers boss Nuno Espirito Santo – yet to win after three games – admits the players have to work hard to get the fans back onside.<\/p>\n
There was no sugar-coating this performance by the head coach with his after-match verdict.<\/p>\n
“Not good enough. Poor,” said the Portuguese, who was managing his first West Ham home game since replacing Graham Potter, after two away trips.<\/p>\n
“Fairly Brentford won the game, they were the better team.<\/p>\n
“I think we are all concerned. You can see our own fans are concerned. Concern becomes anxiety, becomes silence. That anxiety passes to the players. We have a problem.<\/p>\n
“It’s understandable. It’s up to us to change. The fans need to see something that pleases them and they can support us and give us energy.<\/p>\n
“I understand it, I understand it totally, and I respect it. It’s up to us, it’s up to us to change it. We are the people who have to pull the fans back together.”<\/p>\n
West Ham remain 19th, with just four points from their opening eight games. They are in action in the next Premier League game too, visiting Leeds on Friday.<\/p>\n
Nuno told BBC Sport: “It’s a challenge for all of us. It’s up to us to change the momentum and bring our fans back to support us. In four days’ time we need a big improvement.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were empty seats before West Ham took on Brentford in their London derby. And plenty during the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-214253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}