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“Dissatisfaction” at West Ham could lead to change as Lopetegui prepares for Brentford

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David Sullivan

There’s a lot of dissatisfaction at West Ham at the moment, especially when it comes to the performances so early on in Julen Lopetegui‘s tenure. 

Just one win from the Spaniard’s opening seven games in all competitions has led to questions over whether he’s the right man to take the club forward.

But there also appears to be dissatisfaction higher up at the club, with boardroom level issues being touted, via Football Insider.

Speaking to FI’s Insider Track podcast, former Everton CEO Kieth Wyness hinted that he’s heard that there are some issues among the most senior people at West Ham.

“I have a feeling there is a bit of rot starting to set in behind the scenes at the London Stadium,” Wyness said.

“I’m hearing a lot of things from the club about dissatisfaction in the boardroom. The club are looking to bring in new investors.”

That last point isn’t exactly a secret, with reports earlier this summer suggesting NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal was weighing up an opportunity to invest in the Hammers. That came after it was revealed last year that Vanessa Gold, David Gold’s daughter, was planning to sell up to 10% of the family’s 25.1% shareholding.

David Sullivan remains the club’s major shareholder with 38.8%, while Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky bought a 27% share in the club back in November 2021.

It’s not quite clear what the current issues are behind the scenes, especially given the success the club has enjoyed over the past four years, but it does point towards more change happening at the club in future, following a summer of transition in the playing squad, as a new manager came in and around £150m was spent on nine new first-team players.

Major West Ham shareholder getting richer by the year

Despite fans passionately calling for David Sullivan to sell the club for the best part of a decade, there is no indication that a full takeover is lined up at this point, although Wyness’ comments will no doubt have many fans hoping this is the beginning of the end of the Sullivan era in east London.

This also comes as Kretinsky’s net worth over the last year sky rocketed, with him going from 47th to 33rd on the Sunday Times’ Rich List this year. His net worth is now estimated to be just under £13billion, which makes him wealthier than the owners of both Man City and Aston Villa.

In contrast, Sullivan is ‘only’ believed to be worth a little over £1bn.

However, with Kretinsky getting richer by the year, only Newcastle and Man United have richer owners than the Hammers in the Premier League, according to HammersNews.

After Kretinsky bought his stake in the club, there was some speculation that this was the Czech’s first move before eventually buying for of the club and eventually becoming the majority shareholder.

There’s no indication that this is about to happen but given his ever increasing net worth, it’s not like he can’t afford it, is it?

West Ham’s Anfield curse continues, with special thanks to Andy Madley

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Julen Lopetegui

This time there were positives, but the outcome was ultimately the same. 

There wasn’t any expectation of getting a positive result against Liverpool on Wednesday night. West Ham simply don’t win at Anfield, given we’ve won just four times there in our entire history.

But all fans wanted to see was an improvement on the performance against Chelsea last weekend, which led to many fans losing their minds and calling for Julen Lopetegui to be sacked just six games into his West Ham career.

It’s not the normal reaction you would expect to get from fans of a club which has just lost to Chelsea, but it’s exactly what happened. It’s a reflection of the modern game when supporters expect success immediately and react petulantly if they don’t get it.

Anyway, there was a a very visible improvement on Wednesday night.

We took look, albeit via a stroke of luck thanks to a goalmouth scramble leading to an own goal, and looked dangerous on the break and at set pieces. Out of possession, we were organised, compact and seemed to be dealing well with Liverpool’s pace.

The Reds’ equaliser came despite there being a clear and obvious offside in the build up. For some bizarre reason, presumably to hand the country’s biggest clubs even more of an advantage (as if fixing draws and giving them early round byes isn’t enough!), VAR is not active in the Carabao Cup until the semi-final stage.

So we were robbed there, no doubt, summed up by Jamie Redknapp on Sky Sports at half-time when reviewing the first-half highlights, who said: “There’s maybe an offside in there, but we’ll let that one go.”

Their second came moments after we had a penalty shout waved away by referee Andy Madley. Conveniently I can’t find any highlight reels of the game that show it. Admittedly some fans on social media believe it wasn’t a penalty, but given the farcical inaccuracy in which the handball rules are enforced these days, you have to wonder whether luck may have been on our side with this one. Although, we were playing against Liverpool at Anfield, so maybe not.

Their third came during a really positive period for West Ham. We were keeping possession well and getting into Liverpool’s final third. Jarrod Bowen, Crysencio Summerville, and substitutes Michail Antonio and Lucas Paqueta, were all having a really positive impact on the game.

We thought we’d won a corner when a shot deflected off a Liverpool defender and Bowen cleverly ushered it out of play. The sheer fact Bowen didn’t try to keep it in play, when he was inside Liverpool’s box and had an opportunity to hold it up and put a cross in, says all you need to know about what he was trying to do, which was make sure we won the corner. But Madley, seemingly not happy with the way in which West Ham were growing into the game and threatening an equaliser, pointed for a goal kick. From that resulting goal kick, Mohamed Salah scored Liverpool’s third.

Two minutes later, Edson Alvarez let everyone down by picking up a silly second yellow card and all but ending our feint chances of causing an upset late on.

By this point, the momentum is swung back into Liverpool’s favour and they score their fourth and fifth goals in the 90th and 93rd minutes when, quite frankly, it seemed like the players had just given up all hope.

Between the red card and Liverpool’s late flurry, we did have a couple of opportunities on the counter-attack, one of which Summerville should’ve done better with when Antonio layed it off to him 12 yards out, but he pulled his effort wide.

So despite the scandalous officiating, bizarre lack of VAR and one of our players losing his head in the second half, the overall performance on the night was a big improvement on those previously, especially in comparison to the games against Fuham and Chelsea.

But this is a results business and despite Lopetegui only losing to four of the current top five teams in the Premier League, fans and pundits alike are already heaping loads of pressure on him in a way that suggests they expected him to lead his new West Ham side to victory over all of Aston Villa, Man City, Chelsea and Liverpool.

There can be not other explanation for it, to be quite honest.

Yes, there are issues that need to be fixed. The midfield was already a lot more organised against Liverpool than it was against Chelsea, which is a good sign the Spaniard has begun to find a solution to that conundrum. Defensively we need to be a lot more solid, but people forget this defence is made up two brand new centre-backs and a new full-back. But that’s my bad, we should expect them all to click straight away and be done with it.

So now we go into two ‘must win’ games against Brentford and Ipswich, and we’re not even in October yet.

As things stand, Lopetegui’s win percentage after just seven games is the lowest in the club’s history. If he wins the next two, it’ll be the second best in the club’s history, just one percent short of his predecessor.

I wonder what the feeling amongst the fanbase will be if that happens?

For what it’s worth, I think it’ll be impressive when you consider the teams Lopetegui has had to face so early in his West Ham career.

West Ham boss takes responsibility for “mistakes” v. Chelsea, names player involved

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Lopetegui

Julen Lopetegui has admitted it was his fault that West Ham were thrashed 3-0 at home to Chelsea last weekend. 

The Blues found it very easy to play in behind our midfield, especially our first half, as well as exposed our defensive shape on more than one occasion.

The midfield issues led to Lopetegui hauling Guido Rodriguez off in the first half, replacing him with Tomas Soucek, with many already pointing towards the Argentine midfielder as one of the main reasons Chelsea found it so easy to play through the middle of the pitch.

And Lopetegui, in his pre-match press conference ahead of the Carabao Cup 3rd round clash against Liverpool on Thursday, admitted that it was a mistake to play Rodriguez from the start and that he is learning from his mistakes so soon in his West Ham career.

He said: “After the game on Saturday, I said the result was my responsibility.

“There were mistakes, and in football there are always mistakes. We made a change at half-time, but when you do that it’s not about the player’s form, but rather to do with my first decision.

“It’s not something I like to do, but we have to be honest and accept when we can do things better.

“Always, we are learning from mistakes. But the more important thing is that we are working to do better. We have big commitment from the players, and we are all doing everything we can to get better results, starting with Liverpool tomorrow.”

Lopetegui also stressed that while a trip to Anfield, where West Ham have won just four times in their entire history, is going to be tough, he has hope that his players will have the right level of mindset, ambition and hard work to try and pull off a positive result.

“We’re going to need all of our strengths to come away from Anfield with the result we want,” he added.

“It’s not going to be an easy task, but we have to have the mindset that it’s possible. We will go there with big ambition and enthusiasm, for sure.”

“Like a man possessed” – West Ham podcasters call for Lopetegui to make key midfield tweak

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West Ham's Tomas Soucek comes on against Chelsea

Despite there being so much excitement and optimism around West Ham‘s summer transfer window, one player in particular has not had the best of starts to life in east London.

Guido Rodriguez joined on a free transfer from Real Betis and has since started every single game so far this season.

But many are now pointing to his role in the midfield as one of the biggest reasons why the start to the season has been so underwhelming.

The Argentine has admittedly looked very slow out of possession and while he hasn’t really put a foot wrong with the ball, his lack of pace and positional sense has often left us exposed in the middle of the pitch, which Chelsea ultimately took advantage of on several occasions last weekend.

Incidentally, the midfielder was hauled off before half-time in that game and replaced by Tomas Soucek, who was able to add a bit more steel and bite in the midfield.

Once Soucek was introduced, we looked tighter and a lot more organised in midfield.

And the We Are West Ham boys aknowledged that this week by calling on Julen Lopetegui to replace Rodriguez with Soucek in the starting XI, at least until Carlos Soler is up to full fitness.

Speaking on this week’s show, Will Pugh said: “I think, just for that issue alone, of covering a bit of ground and getting stuck in, I want to see Soucek back in there.

“Have him alongside Alvarez, the deeper lying one, but then Soucek was usually one of the top three runners in the Premier League last season, let alone just at West Ham.

“I just think, get him back in there. I know he’s not great on the ball, he really isn’t…”

Co-host James Jones then then interjected by pointing out just how impactful Soucek was against Chelsea.

“You say that, but when he came on against Chelsea, he was like a man possessed,” he added

“I thought he had a really good game. Ok, we conceded that one right at the beginning of the second half while he was on the pitch, but we didn’t concede again with him on it, and they only really had one stonewall opportunity towards the end, where it just went wide, but beyond that, in the second half, Chelsea barely threatened us in the same way they did in the first half.

“So maybe that is the answer and he’s the one [Rodriguez] that loses out. We won’t see him for a while, I don’t think, from the start.”

It was one of only a few things James and Will agreed on on this week’s show, as they clashed heavily on their thoughts about Lopetegui.

“It’s mental, absolutely mental!” – Podcaster slams negative West Ham fans after Chelsea defeat

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Only at West Ham would fans start calling for the manager to be sacked just five games into his job.

That’s what some corners of the fanbase have been calling for since Saturday’s 3-0 home defeat to Chelsea.

Admittedly, we’ve been incredibly spoilt for success for much of the last four years under David Moyes, especially in his first two and half years in charge. It turned ugly and toxic towards the end after the Scot oversaw only a couple of league wins after the turn of the year, which led to the club finishing ninth and not in the top six.

Despite how his reign ended and the form in which the team were in when he left, Moyes’ most loyal supporters have begun pining for him to return already.

That’s the case on the We Are West Ham Podcast this week, with co-host Will Pugh opening the show by signing “we want J-Lo out!’ and then spending the entire podcast complaining that losing to Aston Villa, Man City and Chelsea just isn’t good enough.

Meanwhile, his co-host, James Jones, was passionately defending the new manager and showing a bit more understanding and acceptance of the transitional period the club finds itself in.

Jones explains that while he’s very aware there are issues Julen Lopetegui needs to fix, he doesn’t believe for one second it’s time to start getting annoyed with the manager, especially when you consider the teams West Ham have lost to.

And that’s the thing. The level of negativity surrounding the club from some corners of the fanbase seems absurd given the only three teams Lopetegui has lost to so far are two of the so-called ‘big six’ and a team that finished in the top four last season.

The way some fans have been speaking over the last few days, it’s like expected West Ham to win every single game, including against Man City. And Jones has called those fans out this week.

Speaking on the We Are West Ham Podcast this week, Jones said: “We should be used to this, especially when you consider that those three defeats have come against Champions League Aston Villa, the best team on the planet in Manchester City and a team that’s just spent £1.5bn on players over the last three years in Chelsea.

“So, let’s put it right, it’s not as if we’ve just lost to Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich in a row, is it?

“I’m just slightly baffled at the whole discourse around Lopetegui and a defeat to Chelsea if I’m honest. The geezer’s managed five Premier League games for crying out loud.

“It just makes the club even more of a laughing stock!

“I acknowledge that it’s not perfect and there are issues that need to be ironed out but there are so many reasons why it’s way too early to be even remotely upset about the fact that Lopetegui is in charge and David Moyes isn’t.

“It’s mental, absolutely mental!”