Manuel Pellegrini made his competitive debut as manager of West Ham this weekend as the Hammers visited Anfield for the season opener for the 2018-19 Premier League.
The Hammers were on the end of a 4-0 defeat as the final whistle was blown after previously vowing to play his own game, rather than defending against the might of Liverpool.
Talking on the official West Ham website, he revealed how frustrated he was with the team, not only with their defending but also their attacking performance.
I was so upset with the way we defended and I was not happy with the way we attacked. We didn’t create too many chances, except for a ten-minute period in the first half, and we didn’t have good possession of the ball, so we need to improve in that.
While it is very early days, Pellegrini is confident in his tactics and with nine new players coming in over summer, believes that time will help the team gel.
Every time that you bring in so many players it is difficult to adapt to a new system but we are just starting the season, we need to continue working hard, analyse this game and think about the next game where we will be better and which players are in their best moment.
The Chilean didn’t single out any players in his evaluation of the match, preferring to blame the team as a whole.
I don’t analyse the individual players. I think that our team, we conceded four goals because we made some mistakes in our defending. It was one of our targets to get some points at Liverpool away, but we didn’t so now we return to the pitch on Tuesday and start thinking about Bournemouth.
The Hammers will face the test of Bournemouth for their next match, who beat Cardiff in their opening game of the season.
