Manuel Pellegrini has insisted he’s happy with his squad options, particularly those in midfield – ahead of this weekend’s Premier League opener against champions Manchester City.
Pellegrini faced questioning from the media in his first press conference of the 19-20 campaign yesterday afternoon, where he addressed how the summer transfer window went, the Hammers’ style of play and how he sees the season unfolding.
On the club’s transfer business, which including the exciting arrivals of Pablo Fornals, Sebastien Haller and Albian Ajeti, Pellegrini is content with the squad depth he has at his disposal.
I’m happy because we’ve completed the squad in the way I wanted: we have two players in each position – good players. I always think that the best way to deliver good performances from players is to have competition for their positions in the starting eleven, so we’ve done all that we needed to do.
With his former club Man City visiting the London Stadium tomorrow lunchtime, the Argentine is confident his side won’t play with fear and abandon their style of play against the back-to-back English champions.
We know that we have a tough game against Manchester City, but we are confident that we will not play with fear just because we’re playing the champions. We’re trying to work as we need to do against that team, while not abandoning our style of play. If we can retain that style, I hope that we can have good results.
Despite Mark Noble being ruled out through injury, Pellegrini is happy with his midfield options which include plenty of new and returning faces, and pinpointed Jack Wilshere as a star he hopes has an injury-free campaign.
We have, now, Jack Wilshere coming back – and I hope that he will have a normal year. We also have Yarmolenko, who was a player we missed a lot last season. Manuel Lanzini played the last games of the season, but it is not the same when you are just coming back from an important injury. We also have technical players like Pablo Fornals and Robert Snodgrass, so we have different options in midfield.
Last season, we saw the likes of Wolves, Leicester City and Everton closing the gap in quality on some of the ‘top six’ clubs, and Pellegrini believes West Ham can be part of that pack this time around.
In the Premier League, some of the twenty teams have stronger squads. We know that here, there are six big teams who have a lot of good players. Other than that, we have four or five clubs that are very near their quality, so it will be, as always, a very tight Premier League.
Read West Ham’s verdict
There’s not really a tougher way to start the new season by facing the best team in the country, but West Ham must see it as an opportunity to get off to a flying start to the campaign.
Make the London Stadium a fortress and the sky truly is the limit for this exciting squad. It certainly seems like Pellegrini is very hopeful his side can impress over the next nine months.
It feels like the question of who starts in midfield at 12:30pm tomorrow is anyone’s guess, but fans should be excited to see the boys in claret and blue take to the big stage once again.
