Before the Chelsea game, Julen Lopetegui spoke to BBC News about Lucas Paqueta, the betting investigation, his attitude and how the Head Coach tries to help Lucas improve his contribution ti the team. Obviously in the light of the teams’ performance on Saturday and Paquetá’s stuttering form this season, the spotlight falls on anything which might contribute to West Ham United’s poor showings so far this season.
There’s no doubt that Paquetá is falling short of the ‘playmaker’ label for most of the games he is playing at present. It’s understandable when his whole future hangs in the balance and it is no co-incidence that the team are also struggling thanks to his form: Of course, in addition West Ham are struggling now because of a whole host of other well documented flaws and challenges which have been aired since yesterday’s result.
Despite Paq-man’s poor form, Lopetegui professes to be happy with his commitment. From the BBC interview:
“I’m happy with his behaviour and his commitment,” Lopetegui said. “He’s working very hard, he’s trying to understand what we want. We’re trying to help him to be better and better. He’s an important player.
“I don’t want to put this kind of responsibility on one player. He has to do the best he can about the offensive phase and defensive phase.
Interesting that Lopetegui is spending time coaching Paqueta on his defensive duties:”When he is focused on the defensive work he is a much better player and we try to encourage him to always be focused in a defensive way as well as an offensive way. “We don’t talk about [the charges]. We talk about football, about the next match and about life. But not about this.”
Whatever the conversations, something clearly is not right with the player’s form and the head coaches’ attempts to develop him isn’t succeeding at the moment.
It needs fixing pretty quick. I wonder if we, and the club, are overlooking how important this corrosive, damaging investigation might be, and the toll it is taking on Lucas Paquetá’s game and the form of the team around him.