For any Hammers looking in, my summary:
Lopetegui did a fine job here in keeping us up, we were rock bottom at Christmas and he had to repair so much damage caused by that prick Lage. However - he was given a huge January budget to do it, and you wouldn't say it was serene progress. He got very little out of Neto and Cunha who have been brilliant this season, we still had Neves running midfield and Moutinho as an option off the bench which is quite the luxury for a team fighting the drop, and while it was definitely needs must in our position, you wouldn't say the football was stunning (although again, we just needed points and we had 77 year old Diego Costa up top). Signed off with a 6-0 defeat at Brighton (genuinely the worst performance I have ever seen in 36 years of watching us) and 5-0 at Arsenal, we'd just given up once we were safe.
A few green shoots in pre-season with what looked like a more attacking style but then it's friendlies, how can you judge. The kicker though was him getting that fat beardy wanker Balague to do his dirty work in the press not once, but twice, inside three months. Now it's true that our board were probably less than honest about our financial situation but did he really think we could keep spending £60m+ every window without selling anyone, as we did in January? If he did then he was epically deluded. Also kept moaning about players leaving who he wasn't even using, we can't have £300k/wk sat on the bench or in the stands. Sulked away and left four days before the start of the season.
I haven't missed him which is testament to the job O'Neil has done, I think he'll be fine for you but I wouldn't expect a huge shift in style - even his Sevilla teams weren't especially attacking, he's very much a 1-0 first manager. Communication wise he's not very good, his English isn't great at all (though I suppose it might have improved in the last year as he's carried on living here). He's definitely very keen on having an impact in the PL as opposed to anywhere else so motivation shouldn't be an issue, if Sullivan starts being Sullivan though...he will very likely rock the boat. Personally I couldn't be arsed with the hassle once he kept doing it here, whether you like our owners or don't (I don't, particularly).
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