West Ham are going backwards under Julen Lopetegui – Hammers are at risk of slipping into insignificance
ROUGHLY two minutes before the end of an easy night’s work, Liverpool reserve keeper Caoimhin Kelleher strolled behind his goal and took a sip from his bottle.
A rough Cockney voice just a few yards away in the Anfield Road End called out: “Why are you thirsty? You ain’t done s**t.”
The Irishman laughed along. He could afford to, because his mix ’n match team on Wednesday night had become the latest to stuff West Ham.
Having been taken apart by an average Chelsea team four days earlier, West Ham’s response was to crumple from a winning position.
They shipped five goals and ended the game with ten men thanks to the indiscipline of Edson Alvarez.
Since Julen Lopetegui took charge of the Hammers, they have won two of seven games. The Carabao Cup is over after two rounds and they sit 14th in the Premier League table.
Losing matches is not unusual for West Ham, particularly at Liverpool.
But what is concerning to many more than the 6,000 who made a 400-mile round trip from East London, is the fear of a slow rot taking root in their team.
It is barely a year since former manager David Moyes skipped along a touchline like a spring lamb gambolling through a meadow having clinched the Uefa Conference League trophy.
It seems more than 478 days ago since that heady night in Prague when then captain Declan Rice lifted silverware with a traditionally flaky club on the cusp of building something big to reflect the vast stadium in which they play home matches.
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Instead, as Lopetegui plots his way out of the current malaise via Brentford tomorrow, there is a sense that West Ham are going backwards, slipping into insignificance.
Fading and dying as the taunting Chelsea fans sang with great joy time and time again to an empty London Stadium last weekend.
From being within touching distance of making serious inroads into the top six of the Premier League, it will soon fall apart unless Lopetegui can turn it around.
And all just as the board of directors approved the removal of virtually all concession-priced tickets for kids and OAPs. As marketing strategies go, it ain’t great.
Spaniard Lopetegui was brought in to move on from the Moyes era, which, in many people’s eyes, had become stale and past its sell-by date.
There were, of course, some spectacularly awful results in the Scot’s final campaign last season. Ironically, December’s 5-1 pummeling in the Carabao Cup at Liverpool.
The difference being that last year’s humiliation was sandwiched between a 3-0 win over Wolves and a 2-0 victory over Manchester United.
West Ham were also competing in the Europa League. B-list domestic cups like the Carabao were expendable back then. They won their group in Europe last winter.
West Ham have worst stadium in Premier League
By Andy Dillon
All that has been achieved under David Moyes has made West Ham forget that they have by far the worst home ground in the entire Prem.
A stadium totally unfit for staging regular football matches.
One that can work on big European nights when the fans have electrified their voices in the nearby Carpenters Arms before kick-off.
But one which drains your soul during routine home games against the likes of Burnley or Everton.
A home ground where giant trampolines separate fans from the action.
With temporary seating and scaffolding trying to bring the players and crowd closer.
When West Ham are playing badly but winning, issues with the rented stadium are pushed aside.
If they are playing badly and losing, the whole festering sore surfaces and the frustration will be aimed once more at chairman David Sullivan and vice-chair Karren Brady.
It wasn’t long ago that fans were invading the pitch, that 8,000 protested against the owners, that Sullivan was hit in the eye by a coin thrown from the crowd. Moyes has been an effective human shield with his consistent, if not entirely pretty, brand of success.
This is what incoming boss Lopetegui has to contend with.
Lopetegui is there to herald a more open, dynamic and adventurous approach to football in comparison to pragmatic Moyes. It’s certainly been that — for the opposition at least.
Picked off by Chelsea. Pulled apart by Manchester City. Lucky at Fulham with an equaliser six minutes into stoppage time. A heavily rotated Liverpool team scoring at will by the end on Wednesday.
The lifelessness of the performance at home in a London derby against a vulnerable Chelsea side the week before was especially worrying.
It harked back to the insipid, weak, worst days under Manuel Pellegrini when the top teams lapped up the wide open spaces of the former Olympic Stadium and regularly rolled in fours and fives for fun.
West Ham have a nasty habit of almost getting there and touching the sun before falling away.
After their fabled third-place finish in the old Division One in 1986, they finished 15th, 16th and were then relegated.
Having won the FA Cup in 1975 they slowly but surely sank out of sight, dropping into Division Two in 1978.
However, in those times, it wasn’t financial Armageddon to drop out of the top flight as it is now.
Having spent £30million more than Arsenal, £87.5m more than Liverpool and £106m more than Manchester City on players this summer, money needs to be made.
West Ham will have to go cap in hand to those OAPs and kids stumping up full price for a ticket now if they ever did go down.
Lopetegui retains the full support of chairman David Sullivan for now and rightly so in these unsettling but early days.
He even muttered an apology of sorts for his tactical blunder against Chelsea, which is something.
But Arsene Wenger once proclaimed that every football team mirrors the personality of its manager. It’s about time Lopetegui showed some.
King’s respect
TYSON FURY claims boxing has not shown enough respect for Daniel Dubois, who retained his IBF world heavyweight title at Anthony Joshua’s painful expense.
The Gypsy King rapped: “He was world champion and everyone treated him like a bum.”
Yet Fury was soon complaining the result means he won’t cash in on a fight with Joshua, ranting: “That’s cost me £150million, the silly c***.”
How’s that for respect?
Keir just can’t win
KEIR STARMER’S choice of team is not to everyone’s taste.
But when the Gooner PM is pictured in the posh seats watching football week in, week out, shouldn’t it be that bit more reassuring that this country has a leader genuinely into the game?
Starmer’s response to the cynical smears about attending games in the VIP section is spot on.
Were he to sit in the stands at Arsenal, taking up four seats to accommodate his security, he would be accused of forcing out ordinary fans.
When he is invited into an executive box he gets caned for living the hi-life. Like Everton, he can’t win.
If there is to be a football regulator, I would rather have a committed supporter in on it, instead of someone who refers to our national game as “footie” and thinks a free-kick is something you give the working classes up the backside.
Glass half empty
FOOTBALL is now a game of two halves — of your scarf that is. They are bloody everywhere.
It was bad enough seeing dozens of the darned things at West Ham v Chelsea — once a feisty London derby, where the dislike between two sets of fans made the air crackle with electricity.
But word is they were even on sale for Brentford’s Carabao Cup tie with League One Leyton Orient last week.
One for the purists I think.
Chelsea United?
INTERESTING to see a gaggle of hooded youths infiltrate Chelsea’s dugout on Tuesday night.
But as I was about to hand over my phone and wallet to the fearsome-looking gang, I realised the group was made up of Blues stars that had not been named in the squad.
They included Jadon Sancho and Robert Sanchez and at full-time they all shuffled out to backslap their team-mates for a 5-0 win over Barrow.
A very public exercise in camaraderie to make it look like the players are as one?
Or a genuine act to nurture togetherness in an improving squad that has had its fair share of issues lately?
Only boss Enzo Maresca can really tell us.