Nuno sack sealed but West Ham have already given 47 million reasons why he must stay for relegation | OneFootball

No manager has ever been sacked twice in a single Premier League season. No manager has ever been directly linked with two relegations in a single Premier League season. No manager, presumably, has ever been disposed of within hours of pushing his club to invest in £47m worth of survival gear.

Yet here lies Nuno Espirito Santo, first of his name, first to be dazed by Wolves this campaign, and a man who could have been feasibly dispensed with by the end of the first half at Molineux.

Except there sit West Ham, an increasingly desperate, perplexing and self-mutilating institution, who have inexplicably wedded themselves to the most likely next manager to lose his job as they seek to cling to their Premier League status.

A trip to Wolves so soon after the £21.8m capture of Pablo Felipe, client of Jorge Mendes, was as fitting as it should have been welcomed. West Ham, winless in eight, had landed themselves a game against perhaps the worst club in Premier League history in which to finally find their feet again.

One might argue they did in the second half, but only after they had tied their shoelaces together for the entirety of the first. Wolves led within four minutes, doubled that lead on the half hour and went an unfathomable three goals ahead before half time.

A side which had not been in front in the Premier League or even scored before the 42nd minute since October 5, nor scored more than once in a game since October 26, was 3-0 up by the 41st, inspired by Mateus Mane on his first Wolves start.

The 18-year-old’s clever turn and pass helped created the first goal for Jhon Arias before he was fouled by Soungoutou Magassa to award Hwang Hee-chan an opportunity to convert from 12 yards for the second. Mane then collected the ball in an absurd amount of space on the edge of the area before cutting inside and firing past Alphonse Areola from outside the area for the third.

Perhaps it should be surprising that West Ham were essentially dismantled by a teenager making the first start of his professional career for a historically dreadful team under a manager without a win at this level in 12 matches. But then maybe those who didn’t see this coming were foolish for viewing it through the prism of Wolves rather than the Hammers, a club whose motto might well have become the Latin translation of Our Expectations For You Were Low But Holy F**k.

Nuno made only two changes. Both were at half time, and of his starting midfield pair. Magassa and Freddie Potts had been atrocious, but not uniquely so.

Felipe, a 22-year-old forward with nine goals in 12 games for Gil Vicente this season, might soon have been regretting his life choices from the bench – although it should be noted that he missed five of the last six matches for his former club due to an injury and has never played outside of Portugal.

It does not sound like a particularly textbook relegation battle signing, even before taking in the really quite ludicrous Mendes factor. And nor does the imminent purchase of Taty Castellanos from Lazio for £26m, a deal specifically pushed by the surely doomed Nuno, along with the pursuit of Adama Traore and failed approach for Raheem Sterling.

This result confirmed West Ham’s defence to be the worst in the division, yet £50m has been spent on attacking reinforcements while Konstantinos Mavropanos continues to flounder and Max Kilman strengthens his case as the club’s worst signing in Premier League history.

The likeliest scenario from here is that an inedible West Ham meal already comprised of ingredients assembled by too many cooks – including but far from limited to David Moyes, Julen Lopetegui, Graham Potter, David Sullivan, Tim Steidten and Kyle Macaulay – is simply inherited by someone else once Nuno’s own rotten items are added.

His personal fall from grace has been remarkable. No current manager is on a longer run without a Premier League clean sheet (27 games). He has been the opposition manager on the only two occasions in the last couple of seasons that the team bottom of the Premier League has led by three goals or more. He, in 90 minutes, doubled Wolves’ points tally for the campaign and was thanked by his former employers for such generosity.

The home support hailed Nuno as “one of our own” and requested a wave during what must but also cannot be his final game in charge, considering how they have tied themselves directly and explicitly to him already this month in a marriage made in hell.