The only thing that made West Ham United’s calamitous, error-strewn 3-2 home defeat by Southampton that little bit palatable was the fact that James Ward-Prowse would not get on the scoresheet on his return to the London Stadium.

Despite joining the club when he was on the verge of overtaking David Beckham as the most prolific scorer of free-kicks in Premier League history, the £30 million signing from The Saints never scored from a single dead-ball in 75 West Ham United appearances.

“Man of the Match from Saints’ outfield players,” wrote Dan Hargreaves. “Seemed to be everywhere he needed to be and covered a ridiculous amount of ground at his old home stadium. Food for thought for Nuno watching on the touchline.”

If not quite ‘food for thought’ – it’s not like West Ham have spent the last few months wishing they had kept hold of a man who would probably be their fourth or fifth-choice midfielder – it was certainly a difficult one to swallow. The bitterest of pills.

“James Ward-Prowse never had legs like that for us,” one fan wrote on social media, wondering if the man who ambled through games at West Ham had been cloned and replaced by a younger model.

Ward-Prowse, in addition to completing 93 per cent of his passes, made the third-most defensive contributions of anyone on the pitch. At the same time, none of Arne Engels, Mohamadou Kante or Divine Mukasa really succeeded in grabbing the game by the scruff of the neck, even if they all showed brief moments of individual quality.

“Ward-Prowse running back the full length of the pitch to stop our counter-attack while our midfield gives the Southampton players the space of Newham on the ball…”

“JWP. best midfielder on the pitch. Not a surprise, really.”

“We’ve seen first hand how bad JWP is, yet joins another team and all of a sudden controls a midfield. Coincidence? I think not. We have one of the worst coaches in the league.”

That final comment is perhaps a classic case of clouded, post-match thinking. After all, it is only a week since Nuno defeated then-league leaders Swansea City on their own soil, having devised a gameplan which not only restricted the hosts’ strengths but also boosted the visitors’ threat in transition.

But still, the optics aren’t exactly good.