Manuel Pellegrini may liken Jack Wilshere to Andrea Pirlo but what West Ham really need in midfield is legs
The football the new manager is trying to teach West Ham to play – ‘now trying to play forward’ – needs good, technical, creative midfielders to make it work
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Two games and two defeats into his West Ham United tenure, Manuel Pellegrini has told the fans to relax: he always starts jobs badly. “If you review my career, at Villarreal, at Malaga, at Manchester City,” he explained on Thursday afternoon, “the first games I managed were never good games. I remember in Manchester, we lost two and drew one of our first three away games.”
Manchester City went on to win the Premier League that season, and Pellegrini achieved great things at Villarreal and Malaga too, getting small clubs to compete with the biggest in Spain and deep into the Champions League. Pellegrini wants to do “similar” with West Ham this season, as hard as that will be.
But look back at those teams where Pellegrini had success. At Villarreal he could build around Juan Roman Riquelme, the last great classical No10 of his generation, helping the team to the Champions League semi-finals. Pellegrini wants his teams to play expansive football in the opposition half, but it is far easier when you have a man like Riquelme to cohere around.
At Real Madrid Pellegrini oversaw the first season of Florentino Perez’s second galacticos era, before moving to Malaga. There, Pellegrini had Santi Cazorla and an unknown teenager called Isco to set the tone on the pitch. Malaga nearly reached the Champions League semi-finals.
Pellegrini left Malaga for Manchester City in 2013 where he inherited a squad at its physical peak, players still hungry to prove themselves and desperate to open up after the frustrating restrictions of Roberto Mancini. And in David Silva and Samir Nasri he had two more brilliant play-makers, at the top of their own games, willing and able to make his style work.
This is not to say that Pellegrini is not a good coach. But the football he is trying to teach West Ham to play – “now trying to play forward” – needs good, technical, creative midfielders to make it work. And with Manuel Lanzini, West Ham’s best player, out with a knee injury, Pellegrini has no one to do that for him.
Asked how much of a problem this would be this season – Pellegrini football without Pellegrini players – he admitted it would be hard. “Maybe I agree,” he said. “That is what makes the injury to Lanzini so difficult for us. But I think that every good player can play with others. You cannot play with just one kind of player. We have good midfielders. [Andrei] Yarmolenko, [Robert] Snodgrass. Maybe we don’t have clear technical, technical midfielders, but we have good midfielders. I am not worried about that.”
But if West Ham have good midfielders, that has not been apparent in their two games so far. At Anfield on opening weekend, Pellegrini picked Jack Wilshere, Mark Noble and Declan Rice, hauling Rice off at half-time, as West Ham lost 4-0. Last weekend, Pellegrini decided to open up, going to 4-4-2, trusting Wilshere and Noble to run the midfield themselves. They lost 2-1.
If a midfield partnership gets run off the pitch in a home game against Bournemouth it is probably not sustainable, but Pellegrini insisted that Wilshere and Noble could play together in a 4-4-2. “Without any doubt.”
Pellegrini admitted that Noble and Wilshere cannot provide much pace between the two of them, but said that they do have other strengths. “If you need fast players they cannot do it,” Pellegrini said. “If you need good technical players, that they don’t lose any balls, they can play together. In football there are a lot of things you can do.”
Pellegrini pointed to the example of Antonio Conte’s Juventus, who used Andrea Pirlo as a sole holding midfielder. He was never known for his running or tackling and yet he found a way to guide Juventus to three consecutive Serie A titles. “Pirlo is the same as Jack,” Pellegrini suggested. “He has the same characteristics.”
That may be an optimistic comparison, but Pellegrini sees Wilshere’s role in a similar way: a deep-lying playmaker who starts moves. “Jack Wilshere must play as Jack Wilshere,” Pellegrini explained. “He is not a defensive midfielder to hold the line. He is a midfielder who is more comfortable when he comes to the ball from our own side [in our half], and not receiving back from the other [opposition] goal. He is a player you must leave him to play alone, to make the movement, to receive the ball, because he is going to make you a very [good] buildup.”
That may be the answer, or part of the answer, in the long term. But until Pellegrini finds more legs in his midfield, and a high-class No10, there is no guarantee that a slow start at West Ham will turn into anything better.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments