The West Ham United fans seem to have incurred the wrath of Spanish football pundit Guillem Balague.
Our crime in Guillem Balague‘s eyes? Criticising his Julen Lopetegui it seems.
The West Ham fans have been highly critical of the Hammers head coach this season, and rightly so.
Up until West Ham’s win over Newcastle on Monday night, Lopetegui and his players had seriously underperformed.
That all changed with a fantastic display against the Magpies, but that doesn’t mean that Lopetegui is immune from criticism going forward.
Balague may well disagree with that sentiment though!
The Spaniard ripped into the Hammers fans back in September, when he accused us of ‘not being able to see past our noses’, regarding Lopetegui’s future vision.
That came after he championed Lopetegui for the West Ham job back in May.
However, we haven’t heard much from Guillem over the past couple of months regarding Lopetegui and the Hammers’ plight.
Unsurprisingly, he came out of the woodwork on Monday night after our win over Newcastle…
Guillem Balague aims sly dig at West Ham fans
The Spanish journalist is well-known for having unwavering opinions.
The 56-year-old regularly offers staunch support for those who have granted him access to interviews.
And Lopetegui is certainly one of his favourites.
Balague hasn’t posted about Lopetegui on X since late September – more than two months ago!
It’s funny how quiet he has been throughout that period isn’t it.
Now Balague – the notoriously biased pundit – is back taking swipes at the Hammers fans on social media once again.
That final sentence is clearly a sarcastic dig from the Spaniard, especially when taking his swipes at us in the past into context.
A great win but Lopetegui still must convince West Ham fans
The performance against Newcastle on Monday night was truly incredible.
Every single West Ham player, aside from Jean-Clair Todibo perhaps, was at the peak of their powers.
The Hammers were too good for the Toon, as Julen Lopetegui produced a tactical masterclass up on Tyneside.
The high energy, high-press playing style is something we haven’t witnessed so far this season – so is that our identity now?
I really hope so.
However, West Ham still have a long way to go, and that performance last night absolutely cannot be a one-off.
We have some tough games coming up, and a few defeats over the course of the next couple of weeks would render that result against Newcastle as pretty much pointless.
Guillem Balague needs to tone down his criticism of the West Ham fans, or at least be more consistent with his comments on our situation.
The Hammers have been awful this season on the whole, and the criticism aimed at Julen Lopetegui has been more than fair.
However, at the same time I can admit that Monday’s night’s performance against Newcastle was one of the best and most complete that I’ve seen from us in well over a year.
It’s fine to criticise Lopetegui for previous mistakes, but praise him for the performance he extracted from his players against the Toon – the two things are not mutually exclusive, and Guillem Balague should know this!
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