The language used yesterday to describe Julen Lopetegui’s perilous position as West Ham head coach was fascinating, to say the least.
It seems that as the pressure grows on the Hammers’ boss to keep his job, the bar keeps getting raised for what he must do to retain his position.
Sunday morning brought quotes attributed to West Ham, stating that the club remained 100% behind Lopetegui. However, by lunchtime, our top source at the London Stadium exclusively revealed to Claret & Hugh that the Premier League fixture against Everton this weekend is a “must-win” for the Spaniard.
Yesterday, the vernacular shifted again, with more than one source claiming that failure to produce a convincing performance at home against Sean Dyche’s men on Saturday could be the final straw for Lopetegui.
The key phrase here is “convincing performance,” which presumably means that even a win may not be sufficient for the 58-year-old to keep his job. Whether these recent updates are accurate remains to be seen, but it is becoming clear that if West Ham heads into the international break after a loss to Everton, a new manager is highly likely to be in place for the challenging November 25th fixture away to Newcastle.
Just look at what Lopetegui has done since June 2024. In five months, he has achieved NOTHING. Of West Hams three wins, both Palace and United should have buried West Ham in the first half. The only deserved win was against newly promoted Ipswich. True, they have played a number of the top sides, but at no time did they ever look like a team. You couldn’t even look back and say “Well, at least they tried.” No sign of progress or a plan or even a reset and back to basics. All of which shows that Lopetegui is not a coach, never mind a premier league level winner. Finding a good one is not easy, but it is even harder when you ignore the bloody obvious.
We won’t be able to compete with the big clubs untill Mr Sullivan starts behaving like a big club chairman. It seems we missed out on Duran because he didn’t want to pay an extra 5 million and we missed out on a top manager because he didn’t want to pay compensation for him. Who knows where we might be if we had signed those two.It’s all very well wanting to strike good deals but sometimes you need the foresight and courage to go that bit further.
You could read that changing from a “must win game” to “A convincing performance” might mean a draw and they aren’t boxed into a corner and have to sack him straight away. He will go, just a mater of when rather than if.
JL has lost the fan base and there’s no coming back from that. Moyes couldn’t do it and he delivered a trophy. A win over Everton won’t get anyone back onboard except the naive or the foolishly optimistic, and we are a jaded cynical bunch right now.
Why bother keeping him around, let Nobes run the show again the Toffees, then install full manager immediately after. None of us want this anymore and the longer this relationship festers, the harder the wound will be to heal.
It’s totally irrelevant what happens against Everton, the bloke is not up to scratch snd we’re delaying the inevitable. As Dave mentions, Steiden needs looking at too, as recruitment awful – we have a midfield that would struggle in an over 50’s walking football team – abysmal.
Something positive needs to happen soon or we are in serious trouble…..
Paying all that money for Luis Guilherme was terrible business and that was all down to Steiden.
They didn’t buy this player to be playing in the U-21s they bought him to be challenging the first team and where is he?
Not sure what everyone was expecting, we’ve got bang average players, again completely blew millions in the transfer market.
Steiden is in charge of scouting and bringing players in, why is no one looking at him?
Recruitment is appalling, now we know why Moyes turned down so many of his recommended players, some people can pick players some can’t.
It might be, even though he might have bang average players, he’s not even setting them up correctly. Square pegs in round holes! How different would the set up be with diff.players. I think he’s duped Sully..which is not difficult!
I’m not seeing any improvement. We shipped four v Spurs, then I have no idea how we beat Man Utd given how abject we were in the first half, before we shipped three v Forest.
If we were to beat Everton then I still don’t see him seeing the season out. So I’m in the sack him sooner rather than later camp.
Both Potter and Terzic are available at this time and arguably either would be likely to improve matters. Finishing a couple of places higher would take care of the severances. And it’s the last international break until March gives time to get a new man in.
My fear is that with no sign of things improving the situation deteriorates into the New Year with things going from bad to worse. I just don’t see any improvement so I say twist now.
A convincing performance or a near type of convincing performance hasn’t been seen in the last 10 games….not sure it will happen in the next 10 with the current managerial set up.
Disappointing as I had so much enthusiasm at the start of the season..
We need a spark of some sort and JL just ain’t it.