After just three wins from his opening 10 games in all competitions, Julen Lopetegui is under immense pressure already.
West Ham appointed the Spaniard to build on the foundations laid by David Moyes over a hugely successful four-and-a-half year period.
But so far, it just hasn’t really worked. He was backed in the transfer window with nine new players recruited for close to £150m, and it was that kind of financial outlay that got fans excited for what they might expect to see under the former Porto, Sevilla, Spain and Real Madrid boss.
But performances have been disappointing, disjointed and, in some cases, disastrous, and that has led to some corners of the fanbase already calling for another change in the dugout.
It has been really difficult to work out exactly what Lopetegui’s style of play is and many have already called into question whether the type of players signed in the summer were right for what Lopetegui wants to do.
These question marks have only been underlined further after West Ham’s 4-1 thrashing at the hands of arch rivals Tottenham last weekend, in which an eight-minute second-half spell led to three goals conceded and completed killed off the Hammers’ chances of getting a result from Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
With 10 games gone, many are now asking whether Lopetegui really has what it takes to be a success in east London. Even if you’re of the belief that he deserves more time to make things work, it’s still right to have concerns about what has happened so far and whether there has been enough evidence to suggest things will improve.
What is Lopetegui-ball?
And that was what the analysts on The West Ham Breakdown Podcast discussed on their episode this week, where they asked whether Lopetegui-ball was the right fit for West Ham and, more importantly, the profile of player the team has, especially those the Spaniard signed in the summer.
They said: “We have to ask the question at this stage of the season, fundamentally, does Lopetegui-ball work for us?
“We have to factor profiles within our squad, the overall quality of the system. From an in-possession perspective, from an out-of-possession perspective, does it enable us to generate high-quality chances? Does it enable us to stop the opposition from generating high-quality chances? And ultimately, are we able to control games? Because that’s, fundamentally, what Lopetegui has been brought into this football club to do.
“He’s been brought in to give us a platform by which we can control games.
“This is the first point in the season where we have to really take a stark look at things and say, is that working? And from my side of things, I think it’s impossible to look at West Ham at the moment and arrive at any of those questions with positive answers. I think the answers to all of those questions are questionable at best and flat no’s at worst, really.
“I think we’ve seen glimpses of each part of the system. My concern is that in order to see one part of the system work, you’ve had to sacrifice, essentially, the other parts.
“We’ve not seen any of it come together all in one. There’s been chunks of games where we’ve looked solid out of possession, but we’ve offered nothing in attack. We’ve not created any high quality chances and we’ve not controlled possession.
“We’ve had moments where we’ve created high quality chances, but because of a combination of the system and individual performance or players being asked to do things that they’re not really perfectly capable of doing, we’ve looked incredibly vulnerable in transition and therefore conceding super high quality chances, which is why we sacked Moyes, because he’s a manager who made his bread and butter on limiting teams to low quality, low volume chances but it wasn’t working and we were conceding far too many. The big thing needed to be that that changed and I don’t think we’ve seen that change, which is a huge issue.
“It’s kind of been possession for possession, but without actually having the impact in the final third. So we’ve kind of got three pieces of a functioning system, but none of which have functioned together. That’s really not what you want to be seeing at this point, because you need to see week-on-week progress.
“What we’ve seen is a week-on-week showcase of part of the system, but not really any progress, because they’ve all been separate and distinct. There’s been such glaring issues.
“That is potentially the biggest concern. It’s because there’s not been any proactivity, game-on-game, to address these weaknesses. It’s more of a, ‘right, this week, it’s going to click.’
“If it was clicking, fine, I’d be like, yeah, I respect that, but we’re seeing it week on week, the same issue, which is a real concern.
“To come into a group that yes, needed change, that yes, had gone a little bit stagnant, but had good players, players that were performing at a good level as individuals. And for all of those players to be looking not too good is not great in terms of the input that they’re getting.
West Ham v Man United will be tactically interesting
And the analysts go on to compare Lopetegui’s failure to impose a system that suits his players’ abilities up to this point with Erik ten Hag’s similar struggles at Man United, who happen to be our opponents in the Premier League at London Stadium on Sunday.
“At the moment, I’m seeing a very ten Hag-esque system at the cost of the players in the team, rather than to the benefit of the players in the team,” they added.
“I am very worried about that.
“We’ve got Man United next. I’m not sure they know what they’re doing. So let’s look forward to that and hope that is the starting point for the change that this football club desperately, desperately needs at the present moment.”