Nuno Espírito Santo got his team and tactics spot on as his West Ham side beat Southampton 4-1.

Quite ironically, the game that means almost nothing to our season could be the one that really kickstarts our season after a poor start.

A lot of Hammers fans were going into this game not bothered about the result, but wanted to see a shift in mentality and performance from the players and Nuno.

After seeing the lineup, we all thought Nuno had that same mentality. He picked 6 academy graduates, and nine of the starting eleven were under 23.

It was brilliant to see, but also worry about what the score could be, tweets were going around comparing it to the lineup Sam Allardyce put out when we were thrashed 5-0 in the cup by Nottingham Forest in 2014.

However, that wasn’t the case. There was a new youthful hope and energy in the team and it was really infectious, even at home watching it on Sky Sports red button.

Whether Nuno meant for this to happen or he just threw the youngsters and a few squad players in to the team focusing on Saturday, this is a massive opportunity for him and West Ham United to build on this.

Not only was it the youngsters, Joel Veltman and Joel Piroe both looked brilliant from the start. Then both Taty and Bowen came on with a new lease of life after the youngsters played so well for an hour.

We didn’t sit back after we took the lead like we did against Burnley, we went for more and we got more. That’s exactly what we need to be doing from now on.

If Nuno wants to turn our fortunes around he needs to build on this energy. Stop relying on players that aren’t fully committed, stop being so defensive and use the talent we have in the squad to attack teams we are so clearly better than.

Yes, it was a rotated Southampton side, but a rotated Saints is comfortably better than a lot of teams in the Championship, even Charlton who we lost to just four days ago.

Tuesday was brilliant from Nuno, the players and everyone involved. But it’s a cup game, realistically we’re not going to win the cup this year, the focus from everyone is on the Championship.

We need to bring this happy and attacking mentality into Saturday and beyond, and we will almost certainly be back in the Premier League this time next year.