Brutal Sam Allardyce makes damning claim about what West Ham players think of Julen Lopetegui

The 57-year-old has headed back to Spain to get away from his Hammers hell for a few days.

But he did so in the misguided belief he’s not in danger of being sacked.

Meetings will be held to not only decide his immediate future but how long the Spaniard will be given to turn West Ham around.

Were it not for an extremely fortunate win over Man United, West Ham could have gone into the international break off the back of three heavy defeats and a dismal draw labelled the worst game of the Premier League season.

The club’s owners have made it clear ‘performances are not good enough’.

Whatever is decided this week on Lopetegui, his departure is starting to feel more of an inevitability than a possibility.

One look at West Ham’s fixture list will tell you that.

Newcastle away comes next before Arsenal at home.

Fans who have woken up from their slumber induced by the draw with Everton are already bracing themselves for two chastening defeats.

Lopetegui future in the balance at West Ham

The hope for Lopetegui, if he survives the international break, is that he can somehow pull off an early Christmas miracle and get positive results from those games.

Right now that looks like the only hope he has of saving his bacon.

He has a monumental problem, though, according to one very opinionated former Hammers boss.

Brutal Sam Allardyce has made a damning claim about what West Ham players think of Lopetegui.

If West Ham’s players are playing for the manager then they’ve got a funny way of showing it.

Usually when a club gets a new man at the helm you see a honeymoon period or some semblance of a new manager bounce.

If only from the initial burst of extra effort from players in a bid to impress.

There has been none of that for Lopetegui or the Hammers, though.

Many have pointed out West Ham were actually very fortunate to beat Palace in the league and Bournemouth in the cup too.

Alex Crook recently revealed there is unrest in the Hammers dressing room and that several players are ‘unconvinced’ by Lopetegui.

Brutal Allardyce’s damning claim about what West Ham players think of Lopetegui

A number of Hammers stars have showed dissent towards the manager publicly including Lucas Paqueta, Edson Alvarez, Guido Rodriguez and Aaron Wan-Bissaka.

Then of course there has been the bust-up with star player Mohammed Kudus and costly indiscipline on the pitch from him and Alvarez.

Now Allardyce has put the boot in on Lopetegui big time.

He suggests the former Spain boss only got the job because foreign managers have an unjustly superior reputation.

Allardyce also claims West Ham’s players simply have no connection with Lopetegui.

“Obviously the coach with a good reputation, and not all foreigners are great coaches like everybody seems to think they are,” Allardyce said on Seaman Says.

“You look at the ones who have come and gone here.

“There’s far more come and gone than been good enough.

“They are not good enough and they soon get forgotten, though.

“At the moment, he’s struggling badly to connect with the players.”

Disconnect and fixture list point to the inevitable for Hammers

Lopetegui had better hope David Sullivan doesn’t see this as he ponders what to do about the manager.

Whatever people think of Allardyce, he did a fantastic job at West Ham overall.

He was the bitter medicine the Hammers needed at the time to make them better.

Allardyce has a very respectable win record of just under 38 per cent over his four years in east London.

There were 68 wins, 67 defeats and 46 draws.

He makes a very salient point too. Everyone can see the players look bored and uninspired.

And West Ham’s players would not be alone.

A Brazilian who played for Lopetegui at Porto described him as an ‘uninspiring’ manager who played ‘boring’ football.

Evandro, now a manager himself, also said Porto’s players at the time were not convinced by the man now clinging to the West Ham job by his fingernails.

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