by Staff Writer
Wednesday, 4th December 2024
Julen Lopetegui claimed it was "difficult" to understand how West Ham were beaten at Leicester City having created a season-best 31 shots at goal during the match.
And a frustrated Head Coach, who was greeted with chants of "you're getting sacked in the morning" by travelling fans at the King Power Stadium blamed his team's inability to defend effectively as cause for his team's seventh defeat in just 14 league fixtures.
"The clean sheet is key," he said, speaking during his post-match press conference. "We worked in two matches recently with two clean sheets and we have to be more consistent, trying to threaten the opposition’s goal, but at the same time defending better.
"In the first half they had one chance - and they scored from the one chance we conceded at the start of the match. We have to avoid this kind of action. It was one bad decision but after this, I repeat, we did everything we had to do but we didn’t score -although we had a lot of chances."
And Lopetegui - whose immediate future has been the subject of discussion at the club since the defeat - believes that the key to turning the corner is to continue playing in a similar fashion.
"It’s a hard night to talk about football," he said. "Sometimes football is simple but tonight I think it is difficult. We created a lot of chances, we had 31 shots at goal and were in the opposition’s box a lot of times but we didn’t score.
"Normally, when you do what we did, you are going to win the match, but we didn’t do that and it’s hard to explain. It’s hard for the players, for us and for the fans. To change this situation, we have to play as we did for 65 or 70 minutes with this attitude.
"Talking about football, it’s the only way that I know to change the situation - to create a lot of chances, to be able to play in the opponent's half and to have this attitude. In this case, I think that we are going to be able to change this situation, for sure.
"We have to try to avoid conceding goals like this in the first [few] minutes but after that, l I think that we did all we could do to score - but we couldn’t do it.
"I'm sure that if we are able to have this number of chances, we are going to win a lot of matches. Today it was good to go forward but we need to do better, not concede the first goal and be more effective in the opposite box.
"When you have this number of chances you are going to score normally, but in the Premier League the level of the teams means they are going to have one or two chances. When you are losing, you are going to concede more space - and that’s what happened today."
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