Newcastle’s home record is a little less tidy thanks to West Ham United’s visit on Monday night. The Hammers 2-0 victory came out of the blue but was thoroughly deserved. Julen Lopetegi, looking tired and drawn, was an animated figure on the touchline trying to inspire West Ham in a way he’d failed to achieve in his first eleven Premier League games.
The Hammers’ Head Coach was understandably tense. Seeing as the board had labelled these next two games ‘must not get Hammered’ matches and were expecting West Ham to pick up points or else, Lopetegui may have gone too far in his complaints and frustrations. He earned himself a yellow card for arguing with the fourth official which was his third such card of this season.
Having also been cautioned on the touchline in the Everton game and the Carabao Cup dèbacle against Liverpool, Lopetegui now faces the consequences and will have to sit out the Arsenal game, suspended from his dugout as are two of his playing squad members.
The Premier League have confirmed a one match touchline ban for Lopetegui meaning he will have to watch from the stands. No doubt he’d have taken that as a small price to pay for a 2-0 defeat but coming in advance of the visit of Arsenal, Lopetegui will have to try and get his message across via telephone- in view of the numbers of changes he tends to make to his team from half time onward, that is a pretty tall order.
After a morale-boosting victory against Newcastle, this one game suspension for Lopetegui could not have come at a worse time as he strives to begin the turnaround of his team’s form and results, since this is their toughest challenge in the next five games.
One on-line ‘wit’ who shall remain nameless commented that the Hammers team would perform better without the distraction of the windmilling arms and unintelligible Basque-accented instructions yelled from the side anyway.
