Time not on your side, Mr. Sullivan

Something has to be done now, surely, because doing nothing cannot be an option now that the Premier League is taking place without us. You must have noticed.

A couple of days after the debacle at Spurs and that sickening feeling won’t go away. You just cannot lose like that at our bitterest enemies, it’s unacceptable. Pretty much the same feeling after being cut to pieces at home by Chelsea, mauled at Liverpool and cruelly mugged by Aston Villa.


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This cannot go on. And the nagging feeling is, can Julen Lopetegui cut it at this level? Is he good enough to survive in the most competitive league in the world? He may have an impressive CV and plenty of backers claiming he’s a genuine top-class coach, but results speak louder than words.

Plenty of top coaches have failed in the Premier League, and what frightens me is how he is failing. Is he really the modern day coach we were let to believe he is?

What plenty of our fans wanted was an upgrade on our previous, pragmatic manager with a style that many hated. Can a 58 year-old who, putting it kindly, is on the downward slope of a career that has seen him average just 1.6 years in any post.

They wanted the intensity of a Jurgen Klopp or Mikel Arteta, the cunning and genius of Pep Guardiola, the experience and achievement of Unai Emery, the youthful adaptability of Roberto De Zerbi, Marco Silva, Thomas Frank, Enzo Maresca, even young Kieran McKenna. But we aren’t getting any of that.

Attempts to impose a possession based, high line, with a quick tactical mind in the heat of battle just are not there. The constant repetition of mistakes, from a goalkeeper (Alphonse Areola) who can’t play out from the back without panic setting in, to a former England full back Aaron Wan-Bissaka who is trying unsuccessfully to perform like the outstanding Rico Lewis as an inverted full back. It’s just not happening.

I’ve got a few Manchester United fans as mates (someone has to do it) and they were upset he left Old Trafford where his strengths were in defence, not charging forward, they said. I left White Hart Lane on Saturday just wanting the coach sacked before I got home to Manchester. It’s an obvious reaction to such an embarrassing shambles. Another one.

It’s best though to give it a couple of days, despite knowing the dust will not settle on this one, before demanding any action, anything, from a board who do not do this sort of thing well. If you can wait for Avram Grant’s contract to expire, after relegation, before axing him, you’ll stand for anything.

And of course our great leader must be petrified of having to do anything that will cost us more money. David Sullivan doesn’t do mid-term sackings unless it’s the very last resort. The thought of the cost of axing Loopy and his sinking Spanish armada of faceless coaches now will be giving him sleepless nights.

And of course we have had the usual grifters with their usual platitudes thrust into action. All too predictable stuff... "no knee jerk reaction", "next three games are vital" or "lose to Manchester United on Sunday and he’s toast"... they’ve all been briefed in some way or another.

The funniest though is a plea on Loopy’s behalf to "judge me at the end of the season". Fans do make valid opinions, of course. How can you sack someone after eight league games? Well ten matches really, three wins in ten is the figure.

He’s been manager now since June and had plenty of time to get his style and methods sorted out. The plea is for him to be given time, but there really isn’t any. Three more games, Manchester United, Nottingham Forest and Everton takes us past the next international break. Lose two of those and the mucky stuff really will hit the fan, so a board view that he should be given until January is so much nonsense.

It’s not all his fault. You cannot blame Loopy for the Niclas Fullkrug situation, that’s squarely on Tim Steidten for taking a huge gamble on a player he knows well and was well aware of his decade long injury record, 1,000 days training lost in that time and 23-plus injuries.

But the coach wanted Guido Rodriguez and Carlos Soler, neither of whom appear to have the pace for the Premier League while Soler still cannot even get into the side. Big-hearted Michail Antonio is having to turn on Trojan performances because of yet another miserable mess of trying to sign a top class striker. Lucas Paqueta trying to break the record every game for the amount of times he concedes possession is not helping.

Hindsight is easy, buy the coach was happy to sacrifice James Ward-Prowse to get Soler in. And that’s an issue. A midfield that was good enough to win in Europe and play in it for three seasons has been dismantled. Last season Tomas Soucek, Ward-Prowse and Edson Alvarez contributed 35 goals or assists - 19 goals in all. We are not even beginning to replicate that.


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And then we have to address what the objectives for this season are, and "let's give it a season to regroup" is just not acceptable. Being out of Europe for one season is bad enough after the feel-good factor of the previous regime in that department. But to miss out again would be a hammer blow.

To be fair, the new regime have made it clear that Europe has to be the goal. Steidten has said so, so has Lopetegui, so have a galaxy of players. But to do that we are probably going to have to finish sixth or seventh.

Now over the last four seasons, in which we finished in those positions twice, the average amount of games that can be lost is 11 defeats for sixth spot and 12 for seventh. Now we have already lost four in eight. So the minimum performance now is to go 30 matches and only lose another eight, seven if we want sixth spot. The margins are now getting serious.

We are told that our previous boss won only two of his first ten in both instances. Not really comparable, though, is it? He saved us from relegation twice and left with the team in 9th spot. Loopy has seen a £150m overhaul and we have painfully regressed.

Last December, we finished the month in sixth spot, had just beaten Arsenal, Spurs and Manchester United and were still in Europe. The excuses for regression and where we are now, 15th, are running out.

You can understand Kevin Nolan’s view that four years of hard work to get West Ham back into regular European competition have been wasted, although he was predictably abused by the anti-Moyes lobby for having the effrontery to mention it.

History will not look back and care a jot for the rantings of our fans who wanted Moyes out at any cost. It will look at how that legacy has been squandered, how we got there and how it all fell apart last season. That collapse ensured and required a change, but now it’s here surely folk can wonder if this was the best choice.

The damage long term could be massive. Fail to get back into Europe will cost us our star players - Paqueta, Mo Kudus, even Jarrod Bowen maybe. And Steidten knows that the pool of players willing to join us will diminish in numbers and quality. All because we made the wrong choice.

We already know that Lopetegui was not the Technical Director’s first choice, if on his list at all. And it is even suggested that the first contacts with the Spanish coach may have been as early as last October, with the involvement of Sully’s favourite agent Walt Salthouse.

So rather than a progressive, young coach we end up with Loopy, with a CV that leaned heavily on the time spent with Spain, Real Madrid and Wolves - of which he was sacked twice and walked out on another. It would be very unfair not to mention 90 wins in 170 games in charge of Seville, but he will need that sort of return here with West Ham now, if he’s given the time - and time is running out.

The problem for him now is that he is being judged on this poor start at West Ham, which does not seem to have convinced the players or fans. Spurs was a watershed moment for many.

You just cannot lose like that, with your team looking easy beats. Jacob Steinberg of the Guardian, friend of KUMB and a very sympathetic ear for us fans, spelt it out. His brutal report from Spurs said it all, and I make no apologies for repeating some of the key words.

A “So called revolution”... was he the ”right coach”... the team was a “mess” with “vast gaps in midfield and defence“. The “resilience under Moyes has evaporated“ and the “Indiscipline without the ball was staggering”. That just about sums it up, and when the coach himself describes us as “uncompetitive,” you sense the time may be up. Every team that plays us now can see that.

Many feel you need to make a decision now, Mr. Sullivan, not next year. It will be way too late by then.

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