It will be easy to leap at Edson Alvarez for leaping into his own his reckless challenge on Mo Salah that cost him a second yellow card: The wheels fell off in a flurry of both goals and yellow cards and West Ham left Anfield with their tale between their legs and their Head Coach on crutches.
Alvarez was clearly rev’ved up last weekend after his threat ‘to kill’ which was caught on audio and reported internationally. The antics of the head coach prowling the touch line and throwing himself into the air at every miss, every perceived wrong decision is not unique, try watching Arsenal for a couple of games and see the antics of Lopetegui’s compatriot Mikel Arteta.
The Arsenal coach has sought to change his attitude as he knows how much it transmits to he players: The Telegraph reported on just such an issue last season with Arteta making the admission that “My touchline antics are bad for [his club’s] image – but I’m working to change”
Asked about his own behaviour on the bench, Arteta said: “I think I am changing. I have made a conscious effort: Basically I don’t want to get sent-off. Sometimes when I look at myself and I’m so agitated I think it can sometimes give an image that is not the best, mainly for the club.
Sometimes it’s difficult with certain decisions when you are in the heat, because you are representing the club and you want to defend them. That is what drives me. It’s to defend the players to defend the club. Nothing else.”
Arteta’s antics on the touchline have landed him in trouble too
What Arteta could have added – as we’ve seen with Lopetegui’s antics – is that this all transmits to the team who become over-revved, replacing cold, calculating mental toughness for heat of the moment rash mistakes and rushes of blood. It is very easy to blame the clichee’d’ ‘latin’ externalising of emotions compared with Brit ‘stiff upper lip’ but that doesn’t cut it.
Lopetegui needs to take a chill pill, become a leader by action as well as job title and look to get the best from his players with a little more planning, preparation and performance and a little less passion. He’s got it in him, of that I’m sure. Take a breath, Julen, and learn from Arteta. We want you to succeed.
How do you know he isn’t planning Martin ?
He is trying to radically change the way we play football, it isnt working so far, I thought against Liverpool before the sending off was the best I had seen us this season, albeit our second team against their second team, we actually played in triangles which was refreshing, everyone was mostly pressing, which went missing for their goal.
Let’s be honest their first goal was offside, the Gomez one was a clear penalty because his arm stopped our player from getting to the ball, we should have had a corner prior to their third goal, there was another debatable penalty was less convinced about, on another night we are 3 – 1 up against them and Alvarez doesn’t make a stupid tackle.
Things weren’t better under Moyes it was absolutely atrocious, the other clubs doing well with new managers like Brighton and Liverpool haven’t changed their style, the foundations were already in place, Lopetegui has ripped up the old foundations and is trying to rebuild some new ones.
If Lopetegui has made a mistake I would say it was in not keeping Nolan at the club which might be resulting in a lack of togetherness of the players many of whom are new, as for results this is always a possibility where there is a lot of change, Forest would be a good example of this and Chelsea, it is more likely than getting off to a flier especially when you consider how challenging our opening 3 months are.
I expect Brentford to beat us, they are well established and well drilled, we are not so it will be a tough game.
Hopefully though things are a litle bit better again and we can get some points, if we can finish mid table this season with a strong end to the season, will give us a platform for next season COYI
interesting points well made. Not sure about keeping Kevin Nolan, at the end of the season the whole ‘old regime’ looked pretty shot of ideas tbh
Martin thank you for not adding your voice to rumors and conflicts, and rather focusing on the hope for improvement and better results. Let’s hope that given time Lopetegui can still the results we are all waiting for. Our players are good players, but other teams have them also (and at times probably have even better ones), and it will take time for the coach to get the team to perform at their best level, but now he can concentrate fully on the PL.
I said under LIMPING AWAY please give the coach some slack MARTIN . to give him some time and space to work things out . he’s got enough xxxx to plough through without you throwing more in his way , I am sure many of us can refer to his mistakes so far . But he’s been trusted to put things right and he probably needs all the support he can get, so can you not help , for the sake of WEST HAM
We are scraping the barrel here.
Nothing wrong with passion, making crap decisions is down to the player.