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.”
