West Ham: Julen Lopetegui sacking leaves Tim Steidten with little place to hide

Crowing about the success of the club’s transfer raid on Ajax in the summer of 2023, Hammers supporters sang a fictionalised account of Steidten’s trip to “Dam”, where he picked up Edson Alvarez and Mohammed Kudus, while indulging in some of the Dutch capital’s, erm, cultural curiosities along the way.

While some, on social media in particular, still lionise Steidten’s transfer market credentials, amid West Ham’s messy season, the German has found himself the figure of growing scrutiny. That persona has perhaps become a little too public for his own benefit, with one report this week suggesting he could even be next to follow sacked manager Julen Lopetegui out of the door in a shakeup of the Irons leadership.

Steidten has been the common denominator in successive fallouts with West Ham managers, the final days of both David Moyes’ and Lopetegui’s tenures panning out with the director steering clear of the first-team training ground.

Tensions between Steidten and Lopetegui reflect particularly badly. Where Moyes always seemed wary of the club’s move towards a more European-style hierarchy, Lopetegui had no issue, having signed up to work within it and enjoyed success in similar structures elsewhere. Still, though, his relationship with Steidten soured.

New manager Graham Potter, appointed this week on a two-and-a-half-year deal, committed to “absolutely” working with Steidten when asked directly in his introductory press conference, but was not exactly bullish. He never mentioned Steidten by name, instead honing on the need for “alignment” and “togetherness” across the club and its staff as a whole.

That, presumably, includes recruitment, the source of numerous tales of friction over the past two seasons (in fairness, every club has internal disagreements in this arena - and that is not necessarily a bad thing).

There have been individual success stories since Steidten joined the club 18 months ago, none more so than Kudus. But viewed as a collective, last summer’s spree, which saw nine players signed and around £130million spent to launch the post-Moyes era, has not aged well.

A £25m fee paid for youngster Luis Guilherme, the fruit of several trips made by Steidten to Brazil, may pay off in the long-term but certainly did not help Lopetegui’s cause, the 18-year-old playing just 38 minutes by the time his manager was sacked.

Niclas Fullkrug, the marquee centre-forward signing from Borussia Dortmund, is yet to prove he can shatter that position’s West Ham curse, with only two league goals and a tale of injury misfortune to show for his time so far.

None of Max Kilman, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Jean-Clair Todibo look outright bad buys, but then nor have three-quarters of a new back-four fixed the defensive flaws that emerged in the latter part of Moyes’s reign. So far in the Premier League this season, the Hammers are conceding an average of two goals per game.

When Moyes left at the end of last season, Steidten was given greater control over transfers. Exactly what proportion of each of those deals were his doing - and in the cases of Guido Rodriguez and Carlos Soler, it seems Lopetegui was the driving force - is unknown, but really is moot now.

Two managers have gone in eight months and the club’s board will not sack themselves; should there need to be more accountability and further repercussion, Steidten’s may well be the only head left to roll.