• 2 days ago
A look at West Ham’s biggest changes.

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Transcript
00:00Yeah, and then obviously Graham Potter comes in, as you say, a change that probably could
00:05have been made a bit earlier than it was. He's ready for his second, well, third shot
00:11in the Premier League, in the top flight with another club. Do you sort of have to maybe
00:18think back to his Brighton days rather than his Chelsea spell? Obviously there was so
00:22much going on with the turmoil of the amount of players, how he said he struggled to even
00:26get a training session on with 40 senior players. There was a lot going on there, so you can't
00:32really judge him too much on the Chelsea job, I don't think. What are West Ham fans feeling?
00:39What's his sort of biggest changes so far and the biggest challenges that he faced coming
00:43into West Ham after, obviously, the disappointment of Lopetegui?
00:48Well, first and foremost, after four games of Graham Potter being in charge, we've got
00:53an identity. Now, it's not the identity that we're going to have in a year's time under
00:57Graham Potter, but he's come in and we've got, there's very clear roles and responsibilities
01:04for the players. There's very clear tactics against Aston Villa in the Premier League
01:08on Sunday evening. Yes, he hasn't got a striker, he's got a makeshift defence because of injury
01:14problems. He's kind of come in and already been faced with a lot of problems, but the
01:19team played really, really well and probably deserved to win the game in the second half.
01:23Under Lopetegui, after conceding in the eighth minute, we probably would have gone and lost
01:27that 2-3-4-0. So, there's the big change already. He's got the team playing with a system that
01:34suits the players at his disposal and it's working. Yes, it's going to be up and down.
01:40We're not going to win every game and we're going to lose a few that perhaps we felt like
01:45we shouldn't lose on paper. Crystal Palace the other day being the big one at home, we
01:50went into that thinking we've just beaten Fulham who are brilliant this season. We should
01:53be beating Palace at home and we lose that game 2-0. It was kind of like, oh, that's
01:59not what we were expecting. Then you have to take a step back and go, well, like I said,
02:04he hasn't got a striker, he's got a makeshift defence, he's got a very slow and ageing midfield
02:08there, which was one of the biggest problems under Lopetegui. He's got a lot of problems
02:12to fix, but already just by putting the players in the right positions and using these players
02:19to their strengths, to their actual qualities, we've got a team that can compete against
02:24the likes of Aston Villa away from home, even with four, five, six first team players out.
02:32So long term, there's a lot of hope and a lot of promise actually that Graham Potter
02:36can come in and with a few transfer windows and a little bit of money to spend, can really
02:41build a team that can compete where West Ham fans and the club in particular really feel
02:47like it can, it should be, based on the last three or four years that we've had, and get
02:52back into the top ten of the Premier League. If we can get back into Europe, that's what
02:55the fans want desperately. We've had such a great time over the last three years.
03:00And there's now promise and hope that Graham Potter is the guy. There's a lot of fans going,
03:06he should have been the guy in the summer, because look what he's achieved in two weeks.
03:12Think of what he could achieve if he had the £150 million to spend in the summer and he'd
03:16had the whole season. So it's still early days, but there's a far more positive feeling
03:24around the fan base at West Ham now than there was perhaps, what, three or four weeks ago.

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