Julen Lopetegui has come out and publicly stated what he will demand from his West Ham players.

While it was an extremely controversial appointment, Julen Lopetegui has done well at getting fans on his side. Everything he’s said in the build up to his first preseason as West Ham’s new head coach has been spot on. He speaks with conviction, with passion and, above all else, like he genuinely has a thought out plan on how he wants to build towards a better future in East London.

Obviously it’s not going to be easy succeeding the club’s most successful manager in the 21st century, but if he is to succeed he needs every single player to buy into his system. In order to make things work, he has publicly laid out what he expects from his players over the coming months.

“To play in the face of 62,500 here, that’s our capacity,” the Spaniard began explaining to Sky Sports, “you need to have personality, of course in the same way we need quality players, but we need passion, we need ambition, we need good mentality – the right mentality – to level up the different steps in our work.”

“That’s why we highlight this part of the skill, because for me this is a skill, it’s about the mentality. We need the right mentality to stay here and level up to [achieve] all that we want to.”

Thankfully, this is the biggest demand that fans at West Ham have too. You can be the most talented player on the pitch, but if you’re not going to back it up with hard work and determination to help the team then you’re not going to be loved in the same way the real grafters are.

Wherever he’s worked, Lopetegui has had an excellent relationship with his players and that will be key in getting them to play the way he wants them to. If he can impress them as much as he’s impressed us fans then there’s no reason they won’t be prepared to go to war for him each match.