The game against Newcastle United was for high stakes- the mood from the board was that Lopetegui had to get something out of the two games or face the bullet. After a long drawn out period of high stress, the Hammers’ coach looked animated and drawn for large parts of the game, living every moment with shredded nerves.
His over zealous complaining got him booked, for which he will now serve a touchline ban against Arsenal – so how he gets his message across to the players on Saturday will remain to be seen.
However animated and stressed his demeanour at St James’ Park he sought to avoid transmitting that to the players and in fact, according to theathletic’s Roshane Thomas, was working on actively calming them down to manage the latter stages of the first half to protect that goal advantage.
Thomas, tweet/ X’ing from his @roshanesport account, confirmed:” No surprise Lopetegui kept shouting at his players to calm down towards the end of the half.
Some bright moments from Soler, Bowen and Summerville + Fabianski showing why he deserves to keep No 1 jersey. But just need to be more composed defensively.”
Maybe someone on the coaching staff needs to shout the same message to the Head Coach to preserve his well-being and prevent future touch-line bans. It’s already his third yellow card of the season – and that’s just fourteen league and cup matches. I’d guess that a few more results like the away victory we witnessed will do wonders for his stress levels.
