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By Ian King
It certainly felt like the international break came at a good time for Julen Lopetegui, with a win to warm some hearts following a difficult start to the season. Not that the international break has been good for all West Ham players. Lucas Paquetá was named in the starting eleven for Brazil’s World Cup qualifier against Chile on Wednesday night. By half-time his team was a goal behind and he’d picked up a yellow card, and he was substituted.
Paquetá has been under a cloud for much of this season so far, but the question now facing West Ham and Lopetegui is whether the Ipswich win was the sound of a corner being turned or a blip in an otherwise slightly underwhelming start to the season. Because prior to that match, the pressure was already starting to build after taking just two points from their previous four matches.
But how bad, exactly, has their season been? Their three league defeats so far have come against Aston Villa, Manchester City and Chelsea, who have only lost three games so far this season between them. They drew away to Fulham and Brentford. Not sparkling results, exactly, but perfectly acceptable. And their wins, 2-0 at Crystal Palace and 4-1 against Ipswich Town, have been fairly clear-cut, albeit with the caveat that these two teams are third and fourth from bottom in the League respectively and without a win between them.
And what a way to welcome themselves back, with a trip to the surgery to see Doctor Tottenham. West Ham’s 2-1 win at The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last season was their first in six away from home against Spurs, with the last coming in April 2019, the first League meeting of the two teams at the new Spurs stadium. Prior to that they were unbeaten in the League at White Hart Lane against Spurs since 2012.
And in sharp contrast to West Ham United, Spurs’ own inconsistency hit new heights in their last match before the break when they managed to show the two sides to their coin within the same 90 minutes by racing into a 2-0 lead at Brighton before tamely surrendering it to their opponents in the first twenty minutes of the second half and losing 3-2. This, of course, came off the back of arguably their best performance of the season, albeit against an extremely limited Manchester United.
For all the clucking about Lopetegui following West Ham’s run without a win, by the time the rest of the Premier League kicks off at 3pm on Saturday afternoon, they could be in the top half of the table and above their London rivals with a win. Their goal difference ensures that they may not be by the end of the day even if they do, but even a very brief stay above the halfway marker would send out a message that things might not have been as terrible at West Ham so far this season as had previously been believed.
This, of course, is largely a consequence of the hastening of the news cycle. There is less patience ever offered to managers or head coaches nowadays, to the point that any who fail to win in three or four games will legitimately be considered to be at risk of getting the sack. Lopetegui is a good coach. He’s highly experienced and knows what he’s doing, and while there were valid questions to be asked concerning the wisdom of deciding that David Moyes had reached the end of the road at the end of last season, there were none concerning his replacement, who’s previously of, among others, Real Madrid, Spain, Porto, Sevilla and Wolverhampton Wanderers.
So the 24-hour news cycle requires constant sustenance, and kick-starting a mischievously pressure-raising story based on extremely threadbare (and usually anonymous) ‘speculation’ is not difficult for national newspapers in need of an extra click or two. Online fans, social media and certain elements of the press have become symbiotic in recent years, feeding off each others’ energy. It really doesn’t take long for rumour to become fact any more.
So the very nature of modern football culture dictates that knees jerk almost immediately should results even start to turn sour. The sacking of managers used to always be a long, drawn-out process akin to some sort of psychodrama, and while that does still exist today (consider, for example, the tortured journey that Erik Ten Hag and Manchester United have been on together this last couple of years), it’s increasingly rare.
Fuses are shorter, nowadays. The short-term fix is very much in vogue. And that means that, no matter how ridiculous it may all look at times, the simple fact is that a newly-appointed manager is in trouble should they go three or four games without a win because it has already broadly been decided by the culture of the game that any semblance of defeat cannot be tolerated.
And West Ham are among the more patient of clubs within this climate of hiring ‘em and firing ‘em. Lopetegui is only the third manager they’ve had since Sam Allardyce, and he was a full decade ago now, although it should be added that David Moyes had two spells with the club during that time. It was never likely that the West Ham owners were going to freak out and pull the trigger after four or five slightly disappointing results at the start of the season, and the Ipswich result offered an indication as to why this can be the best policy.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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