Nuno puts a clean sheet top of his Christmas list as West Ham host Fulham

Nuno Espirito Santo has asked Father Christmas for a clean sheet ahead of West Ham’s crucial meeting with Fulham on Saturday.

Having initially shown improvements following Nuno’s arrival, West Ham have gone six Premier League games without a victory, losing each of their last two.

They are 18th in the table for Christmas with just 13 points, their joint-lowest tally at this stage of a Premier League season along with 2010-11, when they were relegated.

This is the fifth time the Hammers have been in the Premier League’s relegation zone at Christmas, but on the two previous occasions when they were in the bottom three but not 20th, they stayed up (18th in 2006-07, 19th in 2009-10).

West Ham have not kept a clean sheet since beating Nottingham Forest – who were managed by Nuno at the time – in August, and he is desperate for a shutout.

“We’re training, training, training, preparing for the matches as it’s a busy schedule,” Nuno told reporters.

“We need to improve. Since day one, since we arrived, it was clear that we needed to improve a lot of aspects in our team, defensively and offensively.

“We are trying and sometimes it works out. Sometimes we score and sometimes we concede more than we should.

“We are still chasing the primary objective of having a clean sheet, being solid and compact, and it’s another test for us against Fulham.”

Fulham are 10 points clear of the relegation zone after beating Forest 1-0 on Monday, with Marco Silva delighted to see his team follow up on a prior 3-2 victory at Burnley.

He said: “The away win against Burnley was going to have bigger impact if we could win again, back at home.

“We spoke about that before the match, the importance of the game, and it’s good to win back-to-back in the league after two games that we deserved more from.”

PLAYERS TO WATCH

West Ham – Jarrod Bowen

Bowen has scored in six of his last 12 home Premier League appearances (six goals), but he hasn’t ended on the winning side in any of those games where he has hit the net (D3 L3).

Only five players have had a run of failing to win in seven consecutive home appearances when they have found the net, most recently Oliver McBurnie for Sheffield United, between December 2020 and April 2024.

Fulham – Raul Jimenez

Against no side has Jimenez scored more Premier League goals than he has versus West Ham (six, level with Everton).

His penalty against Forest last time out saw him equal Yaya Toure for the best 100% conversion rate from the spot in Premier League history, scoring all 11 of his spot-kicks.

MATCH PREDICTION – DRAW

West Ham have lost just one of their last 14 Premier League home games against Fulham (W9 D4), going down 2-0 in April 2024 under David Moyes.

And Fulham lost this exact fixture 3-2 last season, in what was the Hammers’ first game under Graham Potter.

They have not lost multiple league games against West Ham in the same calendar year since 2008 (three).

And the Hammers have lost more Premier League London derbies than any other side (136), though Fulham have the highest loss percentage in these matches in the competition (53% – lost 95 of 179).

The Opta supercomputer struggles to split the sides, with West Ham not enjoying much of a new manager bounce under Nuno.

Since Nuno’s first Premier League match in charge, only Burnley (7) and Wolves (one) have collected fewer points than West Ham’s 10 – he is averaging just 0.83 points per game as the Hammers’ boss, the fewest of any permanent manager in their Premier League history.

OPTA WIN PROBABILITY

West Ham – 37.8%

Fulham – 35.8%

Draw – 26.4%