Look at the team sheet from Swansea, and you’ll notice something. West Ham beat the league leaders, and neither of the club’s two experienced strikers started. Taty Castellanos and Joël Piroe were both on the bench to start the match. Nuno Espírito Santo went with Pablo Felipe as his number 9, and Mohamadou Kanté played in an attacking role behind him.
It worked on the day, but it raises a real question for Nuno. Is this the shape that gets West Ham out of the Championship, and if it is, who plays where?
When Kanté arrived from Paris FC, he was a raw talent who hadn’t worked out where he fit in a starting eleven. This season has answered that question. He isn’t a midfielder, he isn’t a defensive player, and he isn’t a box-to-box player. He needs to be in an attacking position to be at his best. We’ve now seen him as an attacking midfielder, on the wing and as a forward, and in every one of those roles he has been clearly better than when he’s been dropped back into centre midfield. At Swansea he played where Pablo usually does, in the attacking slot behind the number 9. He set up Divine Mukasa’s winner, and it’s hard to see Nuno moving him back now.
That also tells us something about Mukasa. Up until now, whenever he and Kanté have both started, Mukasa was the one playing the advanced midfield role behind the number 9. Against Swansea, Nuno switched them, moving Mukasa into the double pivot alongside Arne Engels because he isn’t out of place, the way Kanté has looked in that position. It freed Kanté to play higher up the pitch, and it worked: Kanté’s pass found Mukasa arriving from deep for the winner.
If Kanté has to play behind the striker, then Pablo can’t. He has to be the number 9, which is the role he played when he arrived in January. Before the move, he had scored ten goals in 13 Primeira Liga games for Gil Vicente, which is why West Ham paid around £20 million for him. That isn’t the Pablo we’ve seen in East London. Last season he made 17 appearances for the club and didn’t score. His first West Ham goal came this September in a Carabao Cup defeat to Fulham, after eight months and 21 games, and he has two this season in all competitions. As a number 9, he can look awkward, and he’s more effective creating space for his teammates and linking play than finishing chances himself.
Swansea showed both sides of it. His link-up work helped create the goal, but he also had two big second-half chances. One he blazed over, and the other, from inside ten yards with the keeper at his mercy, he fired straight at Swansea’s keeper Lawrence Vigouroux’s legs. Nuno took him off soon afterwards for Castellanos.
Nuno has never wavered in support for Pablo publicly. During last season’s run-in, he said “for Pablo, the goals will come,” putting it down to confidence. After the Carabao Cup win at Bolton in September, with the drought now eight months old, he repeated it, saying “We believe that the goal is going to come,” and went on to praise his movement, link play and work without the ball. When the first goal finally arrived against Fulham, Nuno said it was “going to be a big boost of confidence for him.”
Nuno’s praise is nearly always about what Pablo does without the ball, and rarely about his threat in front of goal. That’s fine for a player in a supporting role, but it isn’t what a number 9 is there to do. Right now, Pablo doesn’t look like a striker any Championship defence needs to fear. It would be unfair to leave it there, because there’s one number that explains why Nuno keeps picking him. When Pablo starts, West Ham have won four league games, drawn one and lost none.
That record doesn’t come from goals. It comes from what he does around them: the pressing, the movement, the way he drags defenders out of position and links play for the players behind him. Bowen, Kanté and Mukasa all benefit from the space he creates, and it’s a big part of why West Ham’s attack has worked at all this season. Nuno isn’t picking him on faith; he’s picking him because the team wins.
COMING OFF THE BENCH
Which leaves the other problem. Castellanos has had a disappointing start to the season, with three of his four goals coming in the Carabao Cup. Piroe has been effective in the box at times, but his overall play over a full 90 minutes has left something to be desired. It’s clear what Nuno prefers. He values work rate, and Pablo and Kanté have given him that every week. But that means two veteran strikers, who reportedly make close to £100,000 a week between them, are sitting on the bench.
With midweek games stacked up in the Championship, rotation at striker is unavoidable, so we’ll keep seeing all of them. The question is who Nuno trusts to start the games that matter.
SOLUTION TO NUNO’S DILEMMA?
- Should Pablo keep playing as the number 9? The results say yes, and his work rate fits what Nuno wants. But it means betting on a striker who hasn’t scored enough to justify it, while more natural finishers go unused. This is also trending because, judging by Nuno’s comments and actions, he would prefer Pablo starting upfront.
- Has Kanté made it impossible to start anyone else behind the number 9? If he’s that much better there than anywhere else, it’s hard to argue with the move, and it shapes who can play around him. Swapping Mukasa into the pivot suggests Nuno has already decided it does.
Nuno is clearly still experimenting until he finds the eleven that can play this formation properly. Swansea suggests he is closer than he was, but he isn’t there yet.
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