Julen Lopetegui insists players are backing him amid West Ham sack pressure

Julen Lopetegui insists he has the backing of the West Ham players amid growing pressure on his position.

The Hammers fell to a 3-1 defeat at Leicester on Tuesday night, their seventh in 14 games this season, to prompt further questions over his future ahead of the visit of former club Wolves on Monday.

Lopetegui pointed to West Ham's 31 shots during the game, which is a club-record in an away league game, as evidence his gameplan was the right one and left a deeply frustrated mood in the dressing room.

“Reflection today is not easy, because I think that we deserved much more,” he told reporters. “We had 31 shots on the opposite goal, many, many chances. The first goal of them has been key. We have to do better than this. We have to avoid this start of the match, because after this goal they believed more.

“Normally if you create even fewer chances, you are going to win. We didn’t do it, so we are very frustrated. The players didn’t deserve this.”

Asked if he fears for his job, Lopetegui said: “The only thing I’m worried about now is to go to the training session tomorrow and to prepare the players for the next challenge. I understand your question. We have a lot of matches. I am sure with this attitude we are going to be able to achieve many more points. We are very frustrated.

“At the end of the season, maybe we will be talking another way. There are a lot of matches in front of us, a lot of points. I believe in these players, I believe in the team, and I believe the second half of the season is going to be much better.”

He added to Amazon Prime: “The [players] want to win for them, for me, for the club. This is about football, about winning. I told the players that we deserved much more if you are able to create this number of chances."

He added: "For me each match is very important and the next match is going to be the most important. We have to be focused and do a good performance to win the match."