Latest Opinion

It didn’t take long , did it? Julen Lopetegui has gone from being flavour of the month, the saviour of football as we know it, to being branded a fake and a fraud.

Five games in and our delinquent social media and the loony “news” fans’ sites that frequent it have already started to doubt the 58 year-old coach, the Basque employed to make the memory of David Moyes fade away in an avalanche of flowing, attacking football. The West Ham way.




All so much nonsense, surely? There are always two version here, though. We’ve lost to two Champions League sides at home, the Aston Villa defeat to a wonderful goal from Jhon Duran - more of him later - and produced a more than decent second half against champions Manchester City before Erling Haaland struck his customary hat-trick.

The win at Crystal Palace and the draw at Fulham, London derbies where we shipped ten goals last season in losing both games. This time we’ve managed four points. So we are three points better off than the comparable games from last season. So it’s not as bad as some will try to make out.

On the other hand, though. Those that were expecting vibrant, high pressing, front foot aggression - sort of Arsenal Light - have been disappointed. They have a point, the lack of a clear new pattern, style and a side bristling with pace and newly installed confidence has not been evident.

Fair to say that some fans feel we were very fortunate to get away with a point, even if that last ditch Danny Ings goal was worth celebrating. As for the League Cup win over Bournemouth, how did we not get badly stuffed in that one?

The new players are taking time settle, but where the hell is Jean-Clair Todibo, one of France’s brightest young stars and the jewel in the Tim Steidten's summer transfer road show?

It’s that omission which concerned most of the travelling army at Fulham. OK, he didn’t look too sharp against Bournemouth and he doesn’t seem to have been involved in any Nice games this term, but he’s had a pre-season you would assume and there’s no injury issues. In fact, he’s only missed three games in two seasons.

Dino Mavropanos is mistake-prone and was at it again at Fulham, failing to work the offside trap efficiently. Fair to say most of us at Craven Cottage were expecting the French lad to play.

He only didn’t join Manchester United because of Jim Ratcliffe’s dual ownership of Nice and the Old Trafford club and was on his way to Juventus before Steidten jetted in with his sales pitch. Now the kid has seemingly swapped Turin for the bench in Stratford.




He would also surely have benefited from two weeks of intense training during the international break, and would have worked with the entire Hammers new backline - Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Emerson and Max Kilman, who all avoided any international call-ups. Maybe there’s something else going on we are unaware of? Let’s see whether he faces Chelsea on Saturday after what must be six weeks training with West Ham.

I think we would all expect a better performance against Chelsea than we saw at Fulham, regardless of how satisfying that last ditch equaliser was. The international break can hardly have made life easy for Lopetegui, the travelling must be a killer for players and coaches.

With Lucas Paqueta playing two games for Brazil, home to Equador and then in Paraguay on the Wednesday, it meant he could not have got back to London until late Friday. The reason that Tomas Soucek was in a pedestrian central midfield with Guido Rodriguez and Edison Alvarez, who had been omitted by Mexico because their coach felt he wasn’t fit enough.

Rodriguez was on the bench for both Argentina matches, at home to Chile and then in Columbia. Michail Antonio had two matches for Jamaica, scoring the winner in the match in Honduras, while Mo Kudus had played twice for Ghana against Angola and Niger. Everybody has similar issues, but this amount of travelling and internal flights does little to help their clubs.

It’s why there are reasons, not excuses, for the overall display at Fulham. Mavropanos, Alphonse Areola, Jarrod Bowen, Soucek and Vladimir Coufal all were involved in two matches for their countries, but in Europe.

I did feel it was amusing to hear Spurs defender Cristian Romero, who had been in the same Argentina squad as Rodriguez, moaning that Spurs did not send a private jet to bring him back to London.
It made me recall a match in Prague when I was working, the Czechs against Republic of Ireland.

Manchester United sent a private jet to bring Denis Irwin back for a crucial cup tie, and fans and officials watched him race from the dressing room, into a cab and on to the airport. He was probably back in Manchester before his colleagues were out of the bath. Not sure many clubs do that, although I could be mistaken there!

So the reasons for the Fulham display are clearer, but with Chelsea and Liverpool next the Premier League is unforgiving, so I don’t accept for a second the concession that “it’s work in progress”. “Players have to gel, it has to take time.”

Because Lopetegui, is, well, not Moyes, too many folk are prepared to fall into the theory that we’ll have to see what it’s like at Christmas or, even worse, that we can have a mid-table season and go for Europe again next time around.




The Premier League doesn’t allow for that. It’s the richest, most marketable, exciting and most watched league in the world. The cash rolls in, the TV deals are massive. If you want to work in this league you have to reach a higher standard and achievement than anywhere else.

And it is possible. When Slaven Bilic took over in June 2015, nine new players arrived that summer including Dimitri Payet, Manu Lanzini, Michail Antonio, Alex Song and Victor Moses. Bilic won his first three matches, European ties, and when the league started West Ham won at Arsenal on the first day and after six games had also beaten Manchester City, Liverpool and Newcastle.

A victory over Chelsea was a couple of weeks away. So it can be done, there was no “let’s see how it goes,” then.

This season, Brighton are a good example. Fabian Hurzeler took over as head coach in June, nine new players arrived, 20-plus left and they are unbeaten and sixth in the table. That’s the standard we should be aiming at.

The failure to sign Duran has been key. The drama went on for weeks, Aston Villa played hard ball and even our brightest young star Lewis Orford’s name somehow appeared across the negotiating table as we tried to find the extra £4m between us and Villa.

That situation caused fury amongst our fan base, and that idea died a death very quickly and now the lad has a new four-year contract. It took a day before Villa were being blamed for that, Unai Emery had made the suggestion, it seems, not us. You can believe what you like about that but the whole thing was in the public domain far too quickly before it was killed off.

That extra few million would have got the striker Lopetegui wanted, we’d have avoided signing - probably - a 31 year-old German, Niclas Fullkrug with a worrying catalogue of injuries over the years.
And we now have Ings digging the side out of a hole and Antonio likely to be axed soon.

Most of our fans would like to see Bowen leading the line against Chelsea with Kudus back on the right and Ceysencio Summerville on the left with Paqueta as the number 10 and Carlos Soler in a midfield role. And Todibo somewhere in the defence. Then we may start to see the changes in approach and style that has been promised.


* Like to share your thoughts on this article? Please visit the KUMB Forum to leave a comment.

* Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the highlighted author/s and do not necessarily represent or reflect the official policy or position of KUMB.com.