Upon arrival at London Stadium this summer, Julen Lopetegui was greeted with excitement and optimism alongside many followers suggesting we ‘should see where the team is at Christmas’ before passing judgement. Hungry for instant success, its fair to say that Lopetegui’s relationship with many fans has been up-and-down: Many still remain to be won over as poor performances and player discipline has been the norm.
All signs of a team in transition? Perhaps. The integration of nine new recruits in the summer was a bigger challenge than many thought, along with a new coach mentality and coaching philosophy to ingest has made for criticism as the sometimes chaotic change has taken place in the public eye.
Now though, team Captain Jarrod Bowen alludes to the team being much clearer about what Julen Lopetegui demands, five months into his tenure as head coach.
On whufc.com Bowen confirms: “On Monday, every player on the pitch understood the assignment.”
Indeed, it did look to us as if the ‘team was singing from the same hymn sheet.’ Finally it looks as if Lopetegui knows his best formation. And Bowen believes the effort levels are now up where they should be:“That [Newcastle win] was more like the level of what it takes to play for this Club. The desire and work-rate from everyone was excellent, and a clean sheet away at Newcastle is not an easy thing to achieve.”
Perhaps indeed, if not by this weekend when the toughest challenge of Arsenal awaits – but in the five games that follow in the pre-Christmas run up, we shall really be able to say that the ‘change’ is over and the ‘improvement’ has begun.
8 of the 9 comments (excluding BS) here make good sense, cautiously optimistic without ignoring the facts. As I said before, what is the difference between the Lopetegui that was in charge versus Everton, and the Lopetegui that was in charge versus Newcastle? Absolutely nothing. There were probably many reasons we won at Newcastle, but one of them was not that Lopetegui suddenly had a career skills upgrade. Now Bowen says “OK, we get it now” which in itself is a little worrying. The Arsenal game probably won’t prove much, but the five after that certainly will. I still have my doubts about Lopetegui, not so much the team.
With all our new players and coaching staff, it would be an amazing achievement to hit the ground running and improve the previous squad. Just because we brought in new players never meant that we needed to ignore and discard the ones that were already there.
So it was very right that wholesale changes in personnel did not happen for the first five or so games. Even then it was always a difficult task to get all the squad practiced in a new style. It was always going to be a development job.
New players were highly unlikely to slot seamlessly into a system when that system and style was still under development. The best we can hope for is that the style of play envisaged by management is eventually realised. There will be disappointments on the way to this goal. Let us hope that we continue to play well and get results. The Captain is telling us that there are signs of significant understanding and improvement of application.
We are all praying that improvement and understanding is ongoing and we will be moving the right way up the table. There will be blips on the way and statistics will show us beaten for possession, chances, tackles, runs and so on. The only statistic that will matter will be points. Winning games. Let us also hope that our team achieves those points playing positive, exciting and attractive football.
Let everyone enjoy supporting West Ham United.
COYI
“On Monday, every player on the pitch understood the assignment.”
Bowen says the right club narrative and always backs his manager like a true pro and captain..
Still think that can be interpreted as JLo finally set up the team with players in preferred positions. It’s much easier to understand tactics and formations that suit individuals and the collective.
The 11 games prior were extremely disappointing.
I’m not convinced by Lopetegui, most of what we’ve seen has been farcical. Newcastle was a good performance though by whatever measure is put to it.
It proves what can be done and good performances now need to become the norm. Everton was only the game before last.
I’m open minded again for a while, how long the while is depends on what I see.
Like you John I really want JLo to succeed but just not sure that one performance papers over the cracks.
He has bought himself some additional time. The effort and determination must be there against Arsenal. I’m just keen to see how we get on against Leicester and Wolves.
Let’s see, Arsenal are a team that plays like most with aggressive pressing and plays with the whole team in attack and defence, if there is an improvement against that type of team it will be a sign of moving in a better direction. Am not sure why it has taken 5 months to produce a single performance in which statistically we were still worse than our opponents and yet won a game through being clinical.
That shouldn’t be the ambition of our achievements, we should be looking to be moving towards the teams that can create multiple good chances a game and concede fewer and as Lopetegui corrected Bowen, first you must look to be a good team, not thinking of European places.
OK, I’ll buy into the sentiment.
However, would a truly great coach require this period of time for that to be the case? Constant changes in formation between and indeed during games doesn’t allow sufficient time for any system to develop, this surely is a training ground exercise. It would justifiably appear to the outsider that a random ‘squad bag’ is being shaken from which 11 players are drawn to be fitted into a formation to play.
Slot, Maresca et al haven’t required this timeframe to get their squads functioning. We for diffetent reasons maybe mirror Chelsea moreso, but Maresca appeared to have decided from his huge squad precisely who he wanted from the word go. It took Lopetegui 4 months to realise Rodriguez wasn’t cutting it.
My jury’s still out, but I sincerely hope he proves me completely wrong.
Fabian Hürzeler Is another that hit the ground running coming from the German 2nd tier.
Like Slot and Maresca he communicates clearly and precisely and has a clear identity at Brighton.
All three have seriously impressed from day one!
Comparing our squad to Liverpool’s and Chelsea’s lol.
The name says it all. If you bothered at all to read the post correctly there is no comparison being made.
Try again.
I was using Brighton to compare us against as they don’t have a higher turnover, play a very exciting brand of football, are challenging for European qualification and are managed by someone Steidten had shortlisted to replace Moyes.
Take a look BS