Dazed and frazzled, West Ham United fans are scratching their heads after Julen Lopetegui came out with a truly bewildering statement after their cataclysmic defeat to Liverpool.
To be candid, although the 5-1 score-line may well have flattered Liverpool a bit in the end, it was undeniable that The Hammers just weren’t good enough as a whole in the Carabao Cup third round tie.
Admittedly, there were actually times in the game when Lopetegui’s side looked fairly decent, right up until Mo Salah scored Liverpool’s third goal and Edson Alvarez’s sending off two minutes later.
Ultimately, however, the Hammers completely collapsed like a house of cards in the final 15 minutes of the game. It was from all viewpoints a pathetic capitulation from the players in the end, one that many of them should be most ashamed of.
The 5,812 travelling Hammers fans deserved a whole lot more than what they were served up last night, despite it not being their side’s best performance of the season, having lost the game 5-1.
However, it appears that Lopetegui himself has opted to sees things very differently. The Spaniard dissected the defeat at the hands of the Reds at Anfield and came out with a truly baffling statement.
Lopetegui said, “It’s not easy to say after this kind of loss, but it’s true that we did very good things for 75 minutes at Liverpool on Wednesday night.“
“But after the red card and the third goal it was a very different end. In the rest of the match I think that we did good and positive things and we were, in my opinion, very close to winning the match.“
Regardless of how desperately Hammers fans needed to see some real progress from the team, yet even the most patriotic fan would attest that there is no chance that Lopetegui’s side were ‘very close to winning the match’, as he bizarrely put it.
Lopetegui needs to be realistic about how poor his team have been so far this season as West Ham have been miles off track so far this season.
West Ham fans would be most eager to see big improvements against Brentford this weekend and Ipswich seven days later.
Hopefully Lopetegui realistically finds a system that works, and sticks to it without chopping and changing things again.