Espirito Santo insists that staying in the Premier League will be tough after Brentford loss

Nuno Espirito Santo insisted that staying in the Premier League will be a “tough challenge” after his side were beaten by Brentford.

West Ham currently sit two points above 18th placed Tottenham who face Aston Villa away from home on Sunday evening.

The east London outfit had the opportunity to extend their lead to five points before Spurs were in action but were unable to get the result they needed.

An own goal from Konstantinos Mavropanos , an Igor Thiago penalty and a late Mikkel Damsgaard strike were enough for the three points for Brentford.

The Portuguese manager understands that staying up will be a tough challenge for his men after the loss.

“It’s going to be a big challenge for all of us with the impact of this tough day,” he said. “We’ve got to look at other stadiums and see what’s going on.

“But that’s what I said to the boys: ‘Let’s keep together, let’s realise how we react from a bad day like today is going to keep us alive in the fight’.”

Despite losing 3-0 West Ham had chances with both Taty Castellanos and Cyrencio Summerville both hitting the woodwork throughout. Espirito Santo saw the positives from the performance.

“We played a very good first half,” he added.

“The way we played, the way our game flowed, even though we conceded in the first situation off a cross, a couple of times we had bad luck in the other end.

“We didn’t achieve [a goal], we had chances with the post and we created a lot of problems for Brentford.

“So, we were positive in the first half, but then [after they scored] the penalty in the second half, we lost a bit of composure and organisation, and it became much harder.”