Nuno Espirito Santo's new mentality will WIN West Ham the Championship

West Ham have won back-to-back Championship games for the first time under manager Nuno Espírito Santo. After a rocky start to the season with two draws and a loss in our opening three EFL Championship matches, the Hammers look to have turned a corner against Wolves and, most recently, Derby. Despite being in the Championship, Nuno adopted a similar approach in the opening games to what he would do against Premier League sides. We went 2-0 up against a poor Burnley team and then sat back and let them back into the game even though they were there for the taking. Against Charlton, they scored early and struggled to break them down for the rest of the match. Watford was a game we could've won, but again the shackles were on, and we struggled to break them down. The Wolves game sparked a bit of a change; Nuno opted to start Divine Mukasa in a deeper midfield role, suggesting a more attacking style of play. That's what we got, and it worked; we beat them 4-2. However, that was a game that suited the way Nuno plays; they were attacking us more than the other teams, giving us space on the counter So, coming into the Derby game, a lot of fans thought it was a huge game for Nuno. Could he get the team to attack that effectively against a sitting defence? He kept the team much the same, other than a couple of like-for-like swaps, and it worked out pretty well. It wasn't the most exciting game; the early goal really helped us and is exactly what we needed in this one, and it was a brilliant team goal with Bowen and Taty involved before Piroe found the back of the net. It made Derby have to come out and attack us, so they had quite a lot of the ball in the end but did nothing with it. We were able to cruise pretty comfortably through the game, being a goal up, then at the end, as they were pushing for an equaliser, Kanté and Austbø killed the game off with their late goals. The key for those types of games is to start fast, score a goal early, and ruin their game plan of sitting back and scoring on the counter or keeping it 0-0 for as long as possible and hoping to nick it at the end. The players we have are good enough to go out there and score an early goal against most teams, so if Nuno keeps this more attacking mentality up for the rest of the season, we should win the League.