Whether it is a bit early to praise the head coach following Manchester United’s defeat at London Stadium, or whether we have to see positive results going forward – time will tell. Having been criticised for ‘negativity’ against Lopetegui in recent weeks, in the balance of fairness I thought it best to report on the flip side as the standard.co.uk today felt sufficiently optimistic to offer a heading of: “Decisive Julen Lopetegui: Decisions offer encouragement that Hammers can make up for lost time” – and continued –
“Lopetegui got some big calls right as Sunday’s win over Manchester United gave West Ham a lift ahead of a key run of games”.
Perhaps Dom Smith who wrote the article hadn’t seen West Hams’ nosedive against Spurs after beating Ipswich town 4;1 the week before. Perhaps if he had, he’d be a little more cautious in assuming Lopetegui has seen the light and the recovery has begun.
The decisions were, indeed, decisive, I’ll give him that: But they only rectified the poor starting selection and awful choices made in the first half, surely? No Matter. Let’s give Lopetegui and The Standard the benefit of the doubt until we at least see the eleven announced to play against Nottingham Forest away, next weekend.
I’ll be absolutely delighted to see Crysencio Summerville starting instead of Carlos Soler on the left hand side. Then I might share Dom Smith’s optimism that The Hammers really can start to make up for lost time. As Lopetegui said after the game :“There were two different halves”, he said. “In the second half we changed, and we were better than them.”
Maybe we can start like this and continue for a full 90 minutes next week?
“Lopetegui got some big calls right as Sunday’s win over Manchester United gave West Ham a lift ahead of a key run of games”.
In my opinion the biggest call was the referee’s VAR assisted decision to award that penalty. That allowed us to nick a win that we hardly deserved. It had little to do with Lopetegui’s foresight.
I think Ten Hag would still have been sacked if it had ended 1-1 anyway.
Amorim? Shouldn’t someone tell Manchester United that you’re not allowed to pay compensation to get a manager out of another club? You’re only allowed to choose from those currently unemployed.
I think we need to accept that coaches like Amorim want Champions League football so will never come to West Ham (or will only come after we qualify for Champions League).
I don’t think that J Lo was the best coach that we could have got but he is our coach now so we have to hope that it works out – he starts playing Summerville and finds some compromise with the full backs that allows them to defend properly
Given Sully’s history if we fire J Lo mid-season he will bring in Moyes or a Moyes clone (even Steve Bruce) which would be a disaster
So let us hope that we now find our way
After Sunday if I were Ten Hag I would feel really badly done by – fired because his players missed a bunch of sitters – probably they were just waiting for an excuse to fire him
Lopetegui has played this game before. Give in to public opinion with your starting lineup and that is exactly what you stand accused of but leave it until half time and you’re a tactical genius with the courage to make essential changes.
Stick your heads as deep in the sand as you like (or up some other dark place), but Lopetegui has not made a single change that wasn’t previously recommended days earlier by the majority of “armchair critics” and pundits everywhere. It is just a matter of time, watch.
I can’t be certain but I’m quite sure you’ll be proven right over the next couple of weeks.
A good second half doesn’t counter what 10 previous games showed me or rule out the mistakes in the starting lineup. Apart from that the level of luck we had in the first half plus the ridiculous VAR penalty that wasn’t can’t be relied upon to pay us another visit any time soon.
We shouldn’t accept some poor decisions from JLo purely because other teams have done the same with previous managers. He seems to know the best formation having switched near to it a few times after 45 minutes.
Hopefully soon he commits…
Add Forest to that duo.
Cooper didn’t survive but look at them now.
Summerville (left wing) / Kudos (centre) / Bowen (right) all to start.
Do not start Antonio but use as super sub for last.30 minutes.
OH MARTIN…YOU GIVE WITH ONE HAND AND TAKE WITH THE OTHER.
Your clear feelings of frustration that J-Lo is our coach just keep coming through in your blogs. I guess you can’t help yourself.
He’s our coach and we should be intelligent enough to understand that he has his way and slowly and carefully he will get there.
Commenting negatively on him you sometimes begin to sound like some hack from the Sun .
Before we keep piling the relentless pressure on poor Julen Lopetegui, just remember how woeful Chelsea and Bournemouth were this time last season, and where they ended up. It’s not how you start a marathon, it’s how you finish. It’s not even a quarter of the season yet, and we have played all the tough buggers other than Arsenal.
Amorim could bomb at man u as easily as anybody else ,keep the faith with what we have. Man u spent huge and how much better than us are they . Do you fancy taking Casimiro from them 300k a week or anthony or any of their ridiculously over paid players. Give me the grafters at 75k anyday . All I want is improvement.
We got the points but it looks like Man Utd are going to get Amorim as their new coach.
It’s hard not to be jealous.