Julen Lopetegui, West Ham’s recently departed coach, is a man clearly still licking his wounds from his time in East London.
The former Irons coach of less than six months has just given a very insightful interview to The Guardian, which is well worth a read.
In many respects, it’s quite sad to read about a man clearly at a low ebb following the death of his father and the loss of the West Ham job he was evidently ill-suited to do.
The full ramifications of how Lopetegui was selected for the Hammers hot seat are yet to be felt, but someone at the club mucked up big time with his appointment.
During the interview, the Spaniard alluded to ‘toxic elements’ at The London Stadium, which is unsurprising given comments from other sources preceding his dismissal.
Julen Lopetegui usually uses trusted friend Guillem BalaguĂŠ as his media stooge, and it was the former Sky Sports presenter who first hinted at ‘dark forces’ behind the scenesâwhich many, myself included, took to mean former Director of Football Tim Steidten.
The fact that Sid Lowe’s Guardian article followed a section on the toxicity behind the scenes at West Ham, then Lopetegui’s comments on Steidten, left little to the imagination. âI prefer not to talk about the Tim subject. Thatâs the past, internal issues,â was Lopetegui’s attempt at not saying much.
Potter may have been wise to ditch Tim given his run-ins with Moyes & Lopetegui
Regretful Julen Lopetegui hints at Tim Steidten unrest
Of course, what he didn’t say implied a great deal, and I do wonder if the severance of his contract and subsequent payment was on the condition he remained hush-hush.
My personal thoughts on Steidten have changed little. Any Director of Football who managed to fall out with successive managers and get banned from the Hammers’ training ground TWICE was cause for concern. As a result, I wasn’t in the least bit surprised to see the German get the elbow from new gaffer Graham Potter who is a known associate of Moyes.
There was far too much binary, black-and-white chat surrounding the Lopetegui-Steidten row at the time, with many rushing to pin the blame on one person. However, it was perfectly plausible for both men to be unsuited to their roles at West Ham rather than looking for one pantomime villain.
As for Loppy… as unsuited as he was, it’s hard not to feel sorry for him, and his recollection of the phone call from Brady and Sullivan notifying him of his dismissal is unfortunate.
The interview is well worth a read, and Lopetegui makes his case well, but I can’t help but conclude that we’re better off without him
Yep making steidten right?
everyone and his uncle ALL knew JL wasn’t the man for the job That being said ANY coach can only do a job if he gets what he wants NOT the Director of Sport that was totally useless If 2 managers have fell out with him says a lot about him He was full of his own self importance and his ego was over inflated The blme lays on Sullivan BUT only for employing him and JL in the first place
I can only assume literacy is not your strong suit and not being aware of the reason for that, I feel I am obliged to make allowances. It is quite difficult to understand precisely what you are trying to say most of the time, what with the liberal use of misplaced capitals, lack of punctuation, missing letters, poor spelling and so on. Werenât you one of those campaigning to give Lopetegui more time to try and prove himself? Being as perceptive as I am, I take it you thought quite highly of Mr. Steidten?
Wrong man. Wrong place. Wrong time.
There is a time and place for Julen and his men somewhere. Tim can never settle anywhere. Tim was only ever agency staff.
Hope we never repeat these mistakes at West Ham.
COYI
another gonzo steidten hitpiece – is that the price of having little tid bits fed to you by your “club source”?
there’s one person responsible for the lopetegui f**k up and that’s sullivan, who used steidten as his firewall. you used to point this out all the time but now are mysteriously quiet about it.
tim was an excellent dealmaker and actually had the xxxxxxxto spell it out that lopetegui was an awful choice. unlike sullivan he wasn’t content to watch this project get rammed into the dirt by a completely unfit for purpose manager and tried to facilitate a change. should he have just kept his mouth shut and not tried to explore other avenues?
you think your readers are idiots who can’t see through what you’re doing, but the comments consistently prove you wrong.
Write what you like but please, don’y use offensive language or you’ll be gone.
LOSEpetergui scammed Sullivan into believing that he could coach possession based football ( never ever anywhere has he ) and conned the fans into believing that academy players would be groomed and advanced . No due diligence whatsoever ( sacked by Real Madrid in 14 league games , told to F off by AC Milan fans and Spain/Wolves debacles ) . Steidten was a good deal maker/clincher but not capable of weaving a cohesive squad together . In Potter we trust . He’s shown that he can successfully implement multiple systems to get a good result even with a threadbare squad not of his choosing .
Why do you waste sympathy on a man that was the sole architect of his own downfall? He can blame Tim Steidten or anyone else he chooses, but he applied for the job, he told lies to get it, he was paid a fortune to do it and he failed himself, the club, the players, his own staff and most of all, the fans, by making decisions that were his alone to make and failing on all counts. From day one, he has blamed players and staff and probably the press and the fans as well, anyone but himself. He is a fraud and was an absolute disaster for WHU. Now you use his whining, as a new excuse to repeat your own digs at Steidten,, on the grounds that he must be guilty because two consecutive failures said so.
Tbh Gonzo, Sullivan has cost us our season with such a poor choice in JL. He took the cheap option and the fit was never right.
Potter now has time to work with this bunch and bring in a few of his own in the summer.
I think we will be decent again next season.
I do however hope the board sell up soon we are in desperate need for change and new guidence with new ideas.
The article doesn’t give any new insights does it? He didn’t get on with Steiden and he thought the team was moving in the right direction.
Steiden seemed pretty good at his job. The question maybe is doescthe the club want someone doing that and how the targets are identified.
He mostly got the players he went for, the process seemed confused by separate people choosing and not a common agreement so a muddled selection of players who didn’t compliment each other.
Zero evidence from a fans perspective the team was developing under him. He didn’t play his transfer picks like Soler or academy players and changed tactics like underwear. Sent good players out like Aguerd, maybe JWP and academy ones.
He was confused and uninspiring in press conferences and that carried through to the team.
I can’t see anything would have turned round and he seems to be one of the worst ever West Ham managers.
Nobody in their right mind thought that Lopetegui was the right appointment. Just one of umpteen deranged decisions that mean that we will never attain our potential, we’re only ever a moment away from the next one. The culprit who should be sacked never will be.
The fact that this was a 2 hour interview and only 2 sentences were in English, with one being “no comment” should be a clear red flag and identified before his appointment. No wonder players struggled to understand his methods and tactics, and this is evident from interviews with players after Graham’s coaching sessions. I certainly don’t think he should have been given the job and to be fair to Tim he is reported to.have preferred another candidate , so it was never going to end well. The fact that Tim was tasked to identify his successor but then wasn’t even part of the interview process made his position untenable.
Can we move on now as it is pointless speculating what really.happened and learn from our previous mistakes.
Some managers are not the right fit, this one is on Sullivan, Steidten may have been ill suited to the senior role he had but he got deals done, was exceptional at that. Todibo, AWB, Summerville, Soler, Rodriguez, Guilherme, Fullkrug, Kilman the last three imho we overpaid for, letâs not also forget Kudus and Alvarez the season before, so I can thank him for that and if we get Aguerd back next season and Potter waves the wand that gets us on track we could be a force again.
I feel sorry for Loppy also on a human level, though he was never going to please us, he isnât as good as Moyes at the negative football and that was failing us, he was awful and upset most of the team at some points, which may have been affected by his personal circumstances, who knows either way, we can wish him well, he has certainly done well financially out of it and hopefully we have a manager now for many seasons to come.
Come on you irons !!!