It is little wonder Saturday’s defeat to Tottenham was met with further calls for the club to part ways with Julen Lopetegui after just 10 games in all competitions. Many insist it just will not get any better under the Spaniard and claim to have seen enough to warrant another change of manager.
But my question to those fans is this: If the club sacks him after three wins in 10 games, how long does the next manager get before you start calling for him to go?
What happens if he also delivers three wins from his first 10 games? How many managers do we need to go through before we accept 10 games is not nearly enough time to make a definitive judgment on the manager’s ability to succeed?
Here is what most fans are forgetting – when David Moyes returned to the club for his second spell, he oversaw just two wins in his first 10 games in all competitions. That’s one fewer than Lopetegui.
In that time, we lost to Sheffield United, Leicester City and West Brom in the FA Cup. We went from 16th in the Premier League table to 18th. Where we would be and what would we have missed out on had we sacked Moyes after those 10 games? It does not bear thinking about, yet the stakes were a lot higher then than they are now. Still, Moyes was given more time to get things working, and boy did he do that!
So that’s why I am calling for more patience with Lopetegui. He has only lost to teams who finished in last season’s top six and has had just one window to overhaul an old, thin squad and completely change the style of play. It needs much more than 10 games for that to work.
Yes, it has been frustrating up to this point and there are lots of issues that need addressing, but a change in manager does not necessarily fix those issues. All it does is take us back to where we started, from scratch once again. I am not saying Lopetegui is a guarantee but it would be absurd to sack him now.
A lack of patience in the short term to get things working only serves to appease those who expect success immediately, without compromise. Sometimes you have take one step back to take two steps forward.
That’s where we are right now.
Find more from James Jones at We Are West Ham
