West Ham manager Nuno Espirito Santo should consider dropping Lucas Paqueta as West Ham host Brentford after the international break.

One of the players Nuno Espirito Santo would’ve been most excited to work with when he got the West Ham job would have been Lucas Paqueta, the Brazilian has pretty much all the abilities you want in a midfielder – he’s strong, got an eye for a pass, skillful, tall and hard-working.

The hallmark of every Nuno team is counter-attacking and you’d think with Lucas Paqueta’s ability to pick out a through ball he would be absolutely perfect for Nuno’s style. The Brazilian has always been one of the best midfielders in terms of through ball statistics. Even though Paqueta himself and West Ham have had a drop off, Paqueta is still in the top 6% for successful through-balls in Europe’s top 5 leagues over the past year.

However, one thing he’s not good at is moving the ball quickly. Paqueta isn’t working in Nuno’s team so far and in my opinion he has been poor in both matches under the former Nottingham Forest boss, he holds onto the ball for way too long on a lot of occasions, missing opportunities to spark a fast counter. Obviously Nuno has only had a handful of training sessions with Paqueta and the team, but from what we’ve seen from him in the last two matches, and the fact he won’t be in training over the international break suggests dropping him against Brentford is a real possibility.

Arsenal were fantastic on Saturday and they completely dominated in the centre of the park, a midfield of Paqueta, Fernandes and Magassa just isn’t strong enough defensively to play against a team like Arsenal. Obviously Keith Andrews’ Brentford is a completely different level of opponent to Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal, but maybe it would be better to start with an extra defensive midfielder to help improve the defensive side of the game, which can spark more counters.

It’s not like Paqueta has been bringing much to the team creatively, he hasn’t been getting assists or creating chances for a long time now, so really we’re not losing out at all by bringing in Freddie Potts to play alongside Magassa and moving Matheus Fernandes into a more attacking position where he can impact the game more.

However, I can’t see Nuno doing this as Paqueta is one of our most talented players and he can do things the majority of the other players in the squad wouldn’t even try. Nuno needs to put his arm around Paqueta and make him the talisman we al know he can be – creating chances, scoring goals and providing magic for the Hammers fans to get excited by.