FANS ARE FURIOUS AND ARE IN SHOCK OVER TWO PLAYERS NUNO ESPÍRITO SANTO DROPS FROM MATCHDAY SQUAD FOR WOLVES CLASH

Wolves away. Nottingham Forest at home. West Ham’s Premier League survival could well rest on their next two games.

Nuno Espirito Santo admits he still takes defeats as badly as he did when he first started following West Ham’s eight game winless run.

The 51-year-old’s side have lost seven of the 14 matches they have played since he took charge, winning just two, to leave them languishing in the bottom three.

“No, we don’t deal with bad results well. It’s impossible to deal with. It’s painful,” he said.
“Believe me, when you don’t win and you go on a (bad) run, you feel that it’s there to take and it’s hard on everybody. Especially on who has the responsibility, because we are in a big club and it requires better from us.”

Nuno began his career in England more than eight years ago with Saturday’s opponents, Wolves, which is followed by another six-pointer against the club he left in September, 17th-placed Nottingham Forest.
“Every game is important,” he added. “We’re going to start the second half of the season. All of the teams that are around are direct opponents.
“It’s huge. It’s going to be a quick turnaround. We have to assess properly the options that we have, which are not too many, so we can compete on both of them properly.”
Wolves boss Rob Edwards is not concerned about the form or future of Jorgen Strand Larsen despite speculation surrounding the striker.
Strand Larsen continues to be linked with a move away from the club, but Edwards says he is not concerned the speculation will affect the player.
“His attitude has been brilliant. He is working extremely hard and there is no concerns about that.
“Because of the position we’re in, we have some good players so there is going to be speculation about them, not just him. I am not concerned about it because the attitude is good.”
Speaking at his pre-match press conference, Nuno confirms that his most in-form centre-half is a doubt thanks to a groin strain which forced him off just before the interval in that 2-2 draw with Brighton.

“We are assessing now,” Nuno said. “What [Todibo] said was that it was the groin, that he started feeling tight, he was not able to run and there was a lot of sprints going back in this space.
Of course, Nuno does still have Igor Julio at his disposal, as well as teenager Ezra Mayers. Given that the duo have played less than 150 minutes of Premier League football between them this season, though, the expectation is that Nuno will persist with Kilman should Todibo fail to pass a late fitness test.

“They are tough, every game in the Premier League is tough so we expect at Molineux a very tough game,” adds Nuno, who famously took Wolves into the Europa League quarter-finals during far happier times in the Black Country.

“Both teams in need like us and Wolves and when we have the need we have to do whatever we can to achieve it. Our job here at West Ham takes so much out of us that honestly it seems like there’s nothing else around. There’s nothing else, it doesn’t exist, anything.

“What I want is to perform, compete and make this point [against Brighton] really valuable. If we achieve a good win there, a good performance, this is what we’re going to prepare.”