West Ham 0-0 Everton
LONDON STADIUM — On the half hour mark, with West Ham yet to attempt a shot on goal, Julen Lopetegui sprang into life. Gesticulating wildly beyond his technical area, the screams will have been heard several rows back, in an otherwise eerie vacuum of quiet.
Lopetegui was frantically urging his players up the pitch, his very reason for being here in the first place and an articulation of what 60,000 others in the ground were thinking. Yet a stalemate with Everton leaves him teetering on the brink. Even as dirges go, this was as bad as they come.
His departure would not solve all of West Ham’s problems; he is one symptom of the malaise and lack of clear direction rather than its sole cause, but the whole purpose of this experiment cannot be forgotten. This was supposed to be an improvement on Moyes-ball, a transition which necessitated time. The upcoming international break would be an obvious moment to bring it to its natural end.
The grace period is certainly over. Everton came at them time and again and had they not lacked the finishing touches, the sit-in-and-bear-it mentality would have had graver consequences. Crysencio Summerville was unlucky to hit the post, there were flashes of inspiration from Jarrod Bowen and Danny Ings was thwarted by a brilliant injury-time save from Jordan Pickford.
But by the second half, when a disconnected cable meant some of the small screens in the press box had cut out, staring into the blank void was just as entertaining and nobody really missed anything. Aaron Wan-Bissaka might have fluffed another pass; Summerville may have come hurtling back to save him again. Who really knows.
There are good things about this West Ham squad, but there are also many things wrong with it, chief among them the failure to sign a centre-forward who could play more than 63 minutes in the Premier League this season.
The inspiration of Mohammed Kudus, whose suspension for striking two players in the 4-1 defeat to Tottenham has been extended to five games, was sorely missed here. Lukasz Fabianski has reemerged as first choice in goal at the age of 39, not that he showed his age with an acrobatic stop from Jesper Lindstrom’s header. In 2024, Tomas Soucek is still traipsing back to provide cover for an otherwise porous defence.
Which, in a certain light, is pretty unforgivable. Unlike David Moyes, Lopetegui was given £132m in a statement window, enough to buy players into the double figures. And that is a problem for him too, because the root of the power struggle that saw him exit Wolves was a recruitment policy that veered from mad spending to miserliness and misery.
It was not unforeseeable, therefore, that it should come to this. Before his arrival at Molineux, the main snippet of pub trivia many English fans could recall about him was his sacking by Spain on the eve of the World Cup. It was not only that he had already agreed to take the Real Madrid job, but he had done so without telling his employers ahead of time.
What all these stints tell us is that Lopetegui is a coach who craves ultimate control – something which was always going to be unattainable at West Ham, where sporting director Tim Steidten has a key role overseeing transfers.
Sean Dyche too came into this weekend under pressure but Everton’s imminent takeover allows for a little light at the end of the tunnel, and a clear turning point to halt the slide (in theory). For West Ham, there is no obvious silver bullet manager who comes next, only more adaptors.
It is genuinely incredible now to think that Hansi Flick, the architect of Barcelona’s revival, was formerly a candidate. When Moyes was still in the job, Ruben Amorim came to London for talks – though he now insists he was never serious about taking up the role and even if things do not work out at Manchester United, the severance pay will suggest he made the right decision.
So what now? Lopetegui is hopeful of being given a stay of execution which will keep him in place until the Newcastle match on 25 November, but then it is Arsenal, followed by a couple of six-pointers against Leicester and Wolves.
The trouble with going from one type of manager to a totally different one is of course that it starts as an admirable endeavour but when it does not work, it looks awfully like there is not a coherent plan to go forward. Booed off at half-time and full-time, this was a miserable experience barring a frenetic final 20 minutes when it looked like West Ham could have nicked it.
Lopetegui’s exit over the coming weeks is not inevitable, but it feels increasingly like the logical endpoint.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3S7X9yH
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