West Ham have got worse since David Moyes left – they are the Premier League’s great underachievers

Though plagued by bad luck, Julen Lopetegui always looked an odd fit in east London and West Ham are paying the price

As West Ham were defeated, they got a glimpse of what they have lost. David Moyes was at the Etihad Stadium, the scene of his last game as their manager. West Ham were beaten then, just as they were in Julen Lopetegui’s latest match in charge. There are ways of comparing the Spaniard’s tenure unflatteringly with the Scot’s but a record against Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City is not one of them.

Lopetegui was entitled to feel a 4-1 scoreline was harsh but another number, and another reference to West Ham’s past, reflected poorly on him. His win percentage as their manager has now dropped below Avram Grant’s. And if the Israeli’s statistics were padded by some cup wins, his lone season in charge brought relegation. Lopetegui’s debut campaign will not, reducing the need to parachute Moyes in as a firefighter for the third time, but his has been an expensive brand of regression.

West Ham have spent recent weeks with Tottenham and Manchester United as their neighbours in the table. Were that the scenario presented in the summer, they may have assumed they would be competing for a top-six finish, perhaps higher. Instead, they have not escaped the bottom half since August. They had been a fixture in 14th, rising recently to 13th.

The Hammers have largely been in dismal form this season (Getty)

Which, it is safe to say, is not what they envisaged when they committed around £140m to signings in the summer. Lopetegui was initially excited by the sheer scale of the budget. Now that ambition has come to look incoherent. West Ham wanted better and got worse.

The identity Moyes gave them, of a club defined in part by Europe, progressing far in continental competitions every year, seems confined to the past. It was uncharacteristic of Moyes, however, that West Ham were porous in his final season. The fastidious Lopetegui arrived with a reputation for defensive excellence, yet only Southampton, Leicester and Wolves have conceded more league goals this season. “We have suffered a few big defeats,” said the stand-in captain Tomas Soucek. They have lost six matches by at least three goals already. In isolation, the score at City felt misleading, but there is a pattern.

West Ham have lacked the structure and coherence that could be expected from a Lopetegui team. More predictably, his lack of charisma feels an issue; it also offers an echo of Manuel Pellegrini, a previous antidote to Moyes and another grey character somehow chosen to add glamour. The peculiarity is that, for a manager who seems to be struggling to connect with his players, Lopetegui seems capable of getting results when he most needs them. He appears to win whenever apparently one loss from the sack, but rarely otherwise. He may wish every match could be a game of brinkmanship.

An injury sustained by captain Jarrod Bowen at the end of last year is a major blow (Getty)

Yet with an FA Cup tie at Aston Villa next, Lopetegui could soon be facing another must-win game: perhaps in the home double-header against Fulham and Crystal Palace. There seems to be a regular threat the stop-start reign will grind to a halt. If so, it will be with a hint of misfortune. The loss of Jarrod Bowen for six weeks, like Niclas Fullkrug’s inability to play between August and December, deprives them of a potential scorer. More seriously, Michail Antonio’s car crash has had footballing consequences. It would be understandable if there was an emotional cost, too. And Lopetegui lost his father, Jose; under such traumatic circumstances, it is harder to ask him to motivate others.

Yet it is hard to see Lopetegui and West Ham as anything other than a mismatch. They – perhaps with sporting director Tim Steidten helping choose a strategy – seemed to be going for short-term success. Three of their summer signings are now in their thirties, one 28 and two 27. They have the oldest team in the division. Yet the season is shaping up as a failure.

Summer striker signing Niclas Fullkrug has struggled to make an impact amid injury issues (PA)

Some of it is Steidten’s fault. This squad may not have been compiled for a defined style of play. Fullkrug may want a different supply line to Bowen, and Lopetegui seemed to find Antonio a comfort blanket in attack. He opted for a high defensive line, though it scarcely suits Max Kilman, the £40m buy from his former club Wolves. Lopetegui has struggled to find a midfield combination. A raft of half-time substitutions – or 38th minute, in the case of Guido Rodriguez’s removal against Chelsea – is a sign he gets the starting 11 wrong too often.

And if West Ham’s spending spree was not completely coherent, it – and Moyes’ reign – has nevertheless given them a quality of player to mean they should expect more and to indicate part of the problem is the manager. They are less than the sum of their parts. And if they are squeezed out of the top half by the depth of talent, West Ham still had the fifth biggest net spend in Europe last summer. They were speculating to accumulate, not to deteriorate. And while few of their fans really want a third spell under Moyes, he conjured two top-seven finishes. West Ham only have one other in the top flight since 2002. If the hope was that Lopetegui would tap into their traditions of entertaining, he may have instead revived another: of underachieving.