West Ham travel to Newcastle United for their Monday night showdown in a pretty desperate state of affairs: Lopetegui has been given ‘two games to save his job’, Niclas Fullkrug appears permanently damaged and Mohammed Kudus is banned. Last night we wrote of the rumoured identity of the two ‘doubtful’ players Lopetegui tried to sneak past us at his pre-match press report: The ‘two little problems’ as he put it were believed to be issues for Jarrod Bowen and Lucas Paquetá.
This morning’s outlook is apparently, much more positive: We hear on the grapevine that both have travelled and should be ready to take th pitch to try and do their part -in Paquetá’s case, if selected – to keep Julen Lopetegui in his job for another few days at least.
That is good news, which has been in short supply of late!
Claret and High will be publishing our own forecast of Lopetegui’s team selection ahead of the match starting line-up, as well as Lopetegui’s actual XI – both will be posted this evening , the squad announced and live on our site 75 minutes before the 8pm kick off. So we will look forward to Jarrod Bowen’s and – perhaps – Lucas Paquetá’s names being on the team sheet and not on the sick list.