Pellegrini Confirmed as West Ham Manager (22.05.18) - already (September) there are doubters

jay_in_cpt

Hammerwombat

Were you a big fan of Hayden?



Stand away from the pot plants please ;whistle

MrsGrey

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45806264

The boss has a roundabout named after him in Malaga.

(A road feature, not a merry-go-round ;wahoo ;whome )

Are there any other features that you would name after well-known football managers?

Expat_Hammer

Maybe rename the wailing wall after Mr Moaniho ;whistle

MunichHammer

Any blind alley could be named the Arsene "I didn't see it" Wenger Boulevard

secrethammersfan

MunichHammer said:

Any blind alley could be named the Arsene "I didn't see it" Wenger Boulevard

The problem is that they're dead ends, and have been reserved for Avram Grant!

MunichHammer

Secret - I am sure there are enough for both of them.

OldCastleSwift

jay_in_cpt

So what points do we need and what position are we to finish in to think that Pelle has had a good / acceptable 1st season, I;m sorry i know I'm in a minority here, and yeh we do need to give managers a time, but in my heart i do not feel he is right for us.

Fortuneseeker

7th would be acceptable as Slaven got us a route into the Europa League qualifiers. :whistle:

alderz

Before the season I wanted to see some attacking football, some young players getting opportunities and a season where we weren’t in a relegation battle. It’s been up and down, but he’s delivered that.

This was always a transitional season for us. He’s totally changed the style of football, and a lot of the playing staff. He needs time to imbed that properly, and will have learnt a lot this season.

I think it’s been a decent job by him, I’m haopy with him as the boss, and things will get better.

thornburyiron

I don’t think anyone could dispute the football has been better (when we’ve actually played it) but my only problem is that he hasn’t seemed to be able to instil a proper mental attitude and approach. Unless of course his philosophy of thinking like a big team has been taken to extremes and they all think they’re better than they actually are and feel in some games they only need to turn up to win.

Pearces_Left_Foot

I’m happy with him I think the summer is very important if we can get a few positions strengthened we will have an exciting team. We have had a lot of injuries this season ,if we can get yarmalenko Balbuena etc back will be like another couple of signings. The football has been better and more enjoyable to watch overall this season . The inconsistency is probably the most frustrating thing

jay_in_cpt

My problem is that he literally bought a whole new team ( in numbers ), a new keeper, who is surely HOTY, Which imo always tells the story, a new RB who never plays, 2 new CB's who in general we cant moan about, Diop, has been good for most, but when bad,is bad, the general, when played after a poor start, has been solid.
Midfield, we blew our dosh on Anderson, a poor start, a great mid season, and a cool end ( of recent ), Other signings have not worked well, Sanchez was the worst signing of the lot and only injury has saved us watching that drivel play, Wilshire & Yarmelenko, unfortunate injuries has seen very little of them, fair enough...
Perez a waste of space...

But if you look at that lot, he's normally played over half his signings, and half " his" team, yeh when we played well, we played well, but IMO when we played well under Bilic, we played equally as well if not better.
Some of our wins have been more than fortunate IMO and not always deserved, sometimes due to luck or just the quality of the oppostion and their strikers, or their strikers having a bad day, Home v Arsenal, Newcastle come to mind, Arsenal on another day could have scored a few, and Newcastle same in 2nd half, I am lucky, or sometimes not! that all 380 PL games are live on TV out here, so I rarely do not miss them play..

I am not saying that we should get rid of Pelle, but IMO he is somewhat having an easy ride, can you imagine if Moyes ( who i never wanted ) would have been able to spend what Pelle has had at his disposal and we are where we are he would have got also only a small amount of blame, I think not...

I dont accept that our play has improved that , that much, sometimes yes, but as Thorn said, so inconsistent he's not really improved anything overall IMO..

A clear out is needed in the Summer, and next season will be the make or break for him, no more excuses, I dont expect a top 6th finish, but I do expect the team to actually be a bit consistent and not easily buckle to teams around and below us time after time.

I will always be a Hammer and always give the team/ manager my support, but hey they do make it hard sometimes.....

Yeoldhammer

Going to need a hell of a summer if this is his transition season. He has players who want out and players who are not good enough. Good luck with that Pelle.

imagelost

It’s up the board

OldCastleSwift

For a top manager he's struggled to get the best out of what he's got. When you look at the teams that we've lost to this season, a good number of them are teams that, on paper, are worse than ours.

But the biggest problem is not Pellegrini's. It's the lack of investment in the areas we've needed the most. And I'm not talking solely about financial investment. Not enough effort has been made in identifying and bringing in the right players in key positions. We've struggled at full back for a good few seasons now and continue to do so. We've been crying out for a centre midfielder for at four windows, and our only significant signing was Wilshere, who many had reservations about when we brought him and they've been proven right.

Pellegrini, Husillos and Sullivan have a big summer ahead of them. The manager will have had a full season to judge the squad and move on those that aren't up to it (at least six by my reckoning) and bring in players that suit his style of play.

He deserves another season to try to take us forward but he has a long way to go to convince me that he's the same manager that he was in pre-China.

Lukerz

It’s a seesaw at the moment. At one end is Pelle, at the other are the players.

He wants a winning mentality & he is used to managing the best. The players are not used to being ‘winners’ & not used to working for a manager of his experience. The seesaw has not levelled out yet.

The regular sloppy starts are starting to wear a bit thin now. It’s getting boring.

But he is gonna need more time & smart investment. Not mega bucks, but the money we do spend, we need to spend wisely.

Fabianski
RB - Balbuena - Diop - LB
Rice - CM
Yarmolenko - Lanzini - Anderson
ST

Obiang, Perez & Carroll need to go. They offer nothing. Question marks over Zab, Fredericks, Masuaku, Sanchez, Wilshere, Nasri, Arnie, Hernandez too.

Is where I think we need to strengthen. Those players who are in the 11, with the exception of Diop who is still growing & for me it is 50-50 whether he will be good enough in a couple of years to be a first choice CB (he is nowhere near as good as even an out of form Reid at the moment), are more than good enough to get us moving forward but I do fear we are going to have too many luxury players.

OldCastleSwift

Yeah, Yarmolenko, Lanzini and Anderson will leave the midfield two horribly exposed.

For me we need to be a 4-3-3 rather than 4-2-3-1. Rice sitting with two CMs in front. I would be looking at:

Fab
Fredericks Balbuena Diop LB
Rice
Nasri Wilshere
Yarmolenko ST Anderson

So for me, the priories for the first XI are a striker, a CM (Wilshere is just too unreliable) and a LB.

Arguably the bigger problem is what's behind them. A lot of mediocrity in the squad (Snodderz, Antonio, Sanchez, Diangana, Cresswell, Obiang, Ogbonna) that will need replacing.

OutcastLondoner

I didn't think I'd say this at the beginning of the season but I think having Balbuena back will make a big difference to the defence and Diop in particular. I expect him back for the next game.

steve

Dont really understand why Balbuena did not play after all hes been on the sub bench for a few games now .So he must be fit .Diop looks lost without him

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years

He's done good all things considering

What I have been thoroughly unimpressed with is some if his team selections

Everytime we've gone 442 we've been awful, and he doesn't notice it

And he plays Perez....Perez who is already out the door in the summer

He needs another summer where we give him a large transfer kitty but it doesn't look like we will see a similar investment to last year

Lukerz

A good interview on Sky, presumably ahead of tonight’s game, with Pellegrini where he touches on several things including changing the mentality and style of play at the club. :ok:

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/11687286/manuel-pellegrini-exclusive-ex-manchester-city-boss-trying-to-transform-west-ham

grey_til_I_dye

InPelleWeTrust

Lukerz

What is interesting is that stat set which suggests slight improvement in all main areas, but clearly no revolution overnight. His impact has been small at the moment, but I think any real influence will start to surface next season. I think if by the end of next season we have regressed, we could probably think of his time here as uninspiring, but I expect us to be a lot better next season beyond the slight improvement we have seen this season.

I think he is the ideal manager for us right now and to be honest think he would have been the perfect fit for us after Sam went or before we moved into the OS. Think we may have adjusted to that new ground a lot better with him in charge. I like his philosophy, I like his signings, I like his focus on youth when they are good enough, he comes across well and doesn’t bring us any unwanted media attention or negative press.

Adam

Just imagine how further up the table we would be if we had taken points against teams around us. I looked at this around January and it’s just as stark now. The middle 6 are Leicester in 7th, down to Bournemouth in 13th.

chicagohammer

Interesting stat - you would have hoped for a better return than just two wins out of ten against our peer group.

Eight out of thirteen against the bottom seven is probably above average and better than expectations, especially as for a chunk of the season the bottom seven were our peer group.

All in all it shows how just a little improvement can potentially make a big difference.

chicagohammer

Just a second thought/conclusion, it goes some way to prove that the league does not lie, we appear to be clearly better than the bottom seven but stubbonly below average when compared to the middle six.

Adam

If we lose against Chelsea tonight, we will have the same record against the top six, compared to the teams around us!

And it’s even more annoying because if we had a win rather than a loss in a game against the middle 6 (I’m looking at those 4 lost home games), it would have given us a six point swing against the opponent.

Adam

I decided to do one for Wolves, who have supposedly had a far better season than us.

They’ve done much better than us against the middle six, meaning they’ve take a lot of points off teams around them. While their record against the bottom teams is actually worse than their record against the top six!