Postecoglou jumps to second in Sack Race after Spurs’ latest clown-car effort against Liverpool
As Gary O’Neil and Russell Martin London bus their way to the exits at. Wolves and Southampton respectively, the Sack Race spotlight falls on. Julen Lopetegui but with a pair of big beasts also feeling the heat.
1) Julen Lopetegui
Stormed out of Wolves days before the season began a year ago and West Ham is a club that could test the patience of a saint. Really does have some of the very best attacking players outside the Big Six to work with, which hopefully reduces the potential for huffing off at the first sign of trouble.
Which is just as well, because the first sign of ทางเข้า ufabet trouble duly arrived. It’s all a bit feast-or-famine for the Hammers at the moment, with their last five Premier League results including a 4-1 thrashing of Ipswich and a very, very funny Ten Hag-dooming win over Manchester United but also absolute paddlings from Tottenham and Surprise Package Nottingham Forest, as well as a soulless goalless draw with Everton. It’s the sort of maddening run that could easily fray a character like Lopetegui.
The fact a sacking or huffing are equally acceptable in this market does make this feel like it could be a goer, given Lopetegui’s reputation. However, when apparently handed (ludicrously) two games to save himself he promptly won the first of them at Newcastle and then lost the second heavily to Arsenal. If that left the Hammers hierarchy on the fence, you’d have to imagine a 3-1 defeat at Leicester would get them back off it, but he lived to fight another day and got a very necessary three points against Wolves that has at the very least (and quite probably the most) delayed the inevitable.
2) Ange Postecoglou
Just an endlessly fascinating manager of a wild football team. There is a growing sense that while it’s all quite fun (for neutrals at least) he really is just building – at, it should be note, huge expense – the most ‘Lads, it’s Tottenham’ Tottenham team yet.
That sensational dismantling of Man City was Spurs’ 10th win in 14 games across three competitions after being outwitt by Arsenal in the NLD, and yet the defeats were all unbelievably stupid: from 2-0 up at Brighton, at a Palace team that hadn’t won a league game in their first eight attempts, a Europa schooling at Galatasaray that somehow ended only 3-2, and at home against an Ipswich team looking for a first win in their 11th attempt.
And since that magnificent win at City, Spurs have been, frankly, sh*t. They’ve drawn snatched a draw from the jaws of victory against Roma, drew a game they should have lost at home to Fulham and then produced an abject display in defeat to Bournemouth which got the away fans’ backs up and Ange’s back up at the fans’ backs being up. And then done another real big stupid v Chelsea, attempt a feat of staggering self-sabotage against United in the Carabao which Ange thought was all a great laugh and then succeed in a mission previously thought impossible: suffering a 6-3 defeat in which that scoreline could be reasonably preced by the word ‘only’. And in amongst all that they also managed to go 5-0 up before half-time against Southampton.