Nuno Espirito Santo is facing mounting pressure after West Brom’s stylish 3-1 win at the London Stadium left West Ham, the Championship promotion favourites, six points off the pace in eighth place. A second consecutive home defeat contained few saving graces for Nuno, who faced the wrath of fans on the final whistle. Albion, slick and measured, moved into the top four with their 3,000 travelling fans revelling in the discomfort of Nuno, once manager of arch-rivals Wolves.
After falling behind in nine of their previous 15 games, West Ham conceded first again on 20 minutes, with the unmarked midfielder Felix Horn Myhre firing home from point-blank range. West Ham levelled when a Jarrod Bowen shot deflected in off Callum Styles, but within three minutes of the restart Albion were back in front. Jimmy-Jay Morgan1 struck his fourth goal of the season from the corner of the six-yard box.
Within two minutes of Walker-Peters limping off with a thigh injury, and with Nuno using up all his five substitutes, Price’s corner was only half-cleared to Styles and his fierce, deflected shot made it three. Asked about visiting fans’ taunts that he would be “sacked in the morning”, Nuno said: “This is the reality: we can only change this if we win games. There is pressure every day.
We have conceded six goals at home in two games and we have to fix it. The idea and the approach is to try and score first. That is the objective of any team and it’s our responsibility to change it.” The in-form Will Lankshear scored twice as Middlesbrough maintained their position at the top with a comprehensive 3-0 victory over Charlton at the Riverside.
Sebastian Berhalter opened the scoring in the 12th minute before Lankshear netted twice to take his tally to 15 in all competitions. Swansea provided the perfect response to last Saturday’s hammering at QPR by beating Blackburn 4-0. The hosts were three goals to the good by half-time thanks to Stephen Eustáquio, Joseph Opoki and Filip Lissah, with the Scotland international striker Ross Stewart scoring his first goal for the Swans on the hour mark to complete the rout.
Tony Mowbray’s Rovers had arrived in Wales having won four of their previous six games, including last week’s 2-0 home victory over Wrexham, but were blown away in the first half. Headed goals from Fer Lopez, Adam Armstrong and Ladislav Krejci helped Wolves beat Cardiff 3-0 at Molineux. Wolves gave themselves the platform for victory by scoring twice in the first 15 minutes and made it four games unbeaten and back-to-back wins without conceding, ending Cardiff’s three-match unbeaten run.
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