Worst managerial record since 2010 - Lopetegui hoping to turn around poor West Ham start

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West Ham fans will be praying for a miracle on Wednesday night, as their difficult start to the season looks set to continue with them making the unenviable trip to Anfield to face Liverpool in the third round of the League Cup. Arne Slot’s team have looked impressive lately, having won five of their last six games, and will be hoping to make short work of a West Ham team that are undoubtedly out of form. Unlike their upcoming opponents, the Hammers have struggled under their own new manager, Julen Lopetegui, with just two wins from their first six games of the season. With the most recent of which, a 3-0 defeat to Chelsea in the Premier League, leading some to question whether the Spaniard was the right appointment by the London club in the summer.

West Ham’s poor start under Lopetegui

After a somewhat tepid spell at Wolves in the 2022/23 season, Lopetegui replaced David Moyes as West Ham manager in May 2024 and oversaw the club spending no less than €144.4 million on new players as the Spaniard looked to revitalise a team that had slumped to ninth under his Scottish predecessor. But that hasn’t exactly gone according to plan so far. The Hammers kicked off the new league season with a 2-1 defeat to Aston Villa, before  2-0 win over Crystal Palace restored some confidence in Lopetegui and his new players. However, that has since been severely tested by a 3-1 defeat to Manchester City, a 1-1 draw with Fulham and then the aforementioned defeat to Chelsea on Saturday. Which now leaves West Ham sitting uncomfortably in fourteenth position and fans feeling aggrieved at Lopetegui’s inability to even match Moyes’ record at the club last season, never mind improving on it. 

Drop off from Moyes to Lopetegui?

As we can see in the table above, Lopetegui’s current record of just 1.17 points per game is a considerable drop off from the 1.53 points per game Moyes averaged during his four-and-a-half-year spell at the club. It’s also worse than Manuel Pellegrini’s average of 1.30 points per game and Slaven Bilic’s 1.43 points per game average. In fact, when we take a look at the records of every previous West Ham manager we can find that Lopetegui’s current return is the worst of any West Ham manager since Gianfranco Zola’s two-year spell in the dug-out, which ended in May 2010. And while the Spaniard could point to a tricky start to his first season at West Ham, some may note that it was these big matches that Moyes tended to thrive in as West Ham manager. 

Indeed, over the course of the previous Premier League campaign, Moyes managed to avoid defeat in no less than half of the games West Ham played against the eventual top six in the English top-flight. Although Man City took all six points off Moyes’ West Ham, they beat Arsenal 2-0, drew 2-2 with Liverpool, drew 1-1 with Aston Villa and managed to beat Tottenham 2-1 and draw 1-1 with them in the league campaign, alongside a 3-1 win over Chelsea in front of their own fans to boot. And when we couple that with a 3-1 win over Arsenal in last season’s League Cup fourth round, it certainly suggests that West Ham were far more resolute in the big games last season than they have shown thus far under their new manager. Perhaps Wednesday night’s clash at Anfield may prove to be the perfect opportunity for Lopetegui to turn that unfortunate record on its head and prove that he can be just as tenacious as his predecessor when the odds are stacked against his team.