West Ham have made a poor start to the season and pressure is growing on head coach Julen Lopetegui, who faces the sack if the Hammers’ rotten form continues after the international break
West Ham have made a poor start to the season and pressure is growing on head coach Julen Lopetegui, who faces the sack if the Hammers’ rotten form continues after the international break West Ham have made a poor start to the season and pressure is growing on head coach Julen Lopetegui, who faces the sack if the Hammers’ rotten form continues after the international break
Julen Lopetegui is fighting to save his job at West Ham, with upcoming games against Newcastle and Arsenal set to be decisive.
The former Real Madrid boss, 58, was only appointed by the Hammers in the summer following the departure of the long-serving David Moyes. But Lopetegui has failed to hit the ground running or win over the club’s fans.
West Ham have won just three of their 11 Premier League fixtures so far this term, leaving them five points above the relegation zone. And while the club’s majority owner, David Sullivan, is reluctant to make a managerial change midseason, there are now serious concerns among the club’s powerbrokers over their poor start to the campaign.
West Ham have spent the international break talking to and lining up potential replacements, as they give serious consideration to making a change.
As first reported by The Guardian the likes of Edin Terzic and Kasper Hjulmand, formerly of the Denmark national team, have been the subject of internal checks, as have Roger Schmidt and Stuttgart’s highly-rated head coach, Sebastian Hoeness.
And Lopetegui is likely to pay the ultimate price if West Ham record poor results against Newcastle and Arsenal, with the possibility that his fate is decided sooner if the fixture against the former results in a heavy defeat.
Questions have been raised over Lopetegui’s tactics in the wake of West Ham’s poor start to the season. Fans have not been shy in voicing their dissent, either, and as far back as September they booed Lopetegui over substitutions the Spaniard made in a 3-0 defeat to Chelsea.
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Lopetegui’s previous stint in the Premier League was also a brief one. He stood down from his role as head coach of Wolves at the start of last season after just nine months at the helm.
The Hammers boss recently addressed the pressure on him before insisting there was plenty of time to turn things around. He said: “I have lived with extra pressure from my first day as a coach. I know my job, what we are doing here and what we can do.
“I try to put the focus on the daily work and the next match, this is the main thing I do as a coach and the players too. But I understand the question – always we work under pressure and we have to accept that it is normal in our job.
“I am sure that we have a lot of time to change and to turn this bad moment into a good moment.”
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