I see Her Majesty’s Press is doing what it does best and trying to sow discord at West Ham. The papers have various stories alleging that Manuel Pellegrini has alreayd fallen out with David Sullivan over player signings. Take THIS story from the Mirror, which is based on a translation of an interview the new manager has given in Chile.
All he seems to have said is that he wants West Ham to loosen the purse strings a little and enable him to buy the players he needs to make the team a success. Well, hold the front page! He wants a marquee signing to pour encorager les autres to sign as well. A good strategy I’d have thought. The fact is he knows he will have upwards of £75 million to spend, plus revenue from sales. Javier Pastore seems to be the player he had his mind set upon, but the Argentinian winger is on close to £200k at Paris St Germain and is, to put it mildly, injury prone. On his day he’s a worldbeater, but too any of his days have recently been spent in the injury room. One day we may be able to pay that sort of money, but we’re not there yet.
I agree with Pellegrini that we need to sign a world class player which will set the club alight – someone who will do what Payet did in his first season. I’m sure there are plenty of candidates but are they getable?
I gather the new manager returns to England to start his job properly later this week. It’s absolutely vital that he and David Sullivan agree on the goals, the players to target and that we sign one of them very quickly. It is clear that the priority is a central defender, a midfielder and a winger, and a goalkeeper too, although it’s unclear whether Pellegrini will stick with Adrian as his number one. If he doesn’t we’ll need two goalkeepers, as I suspect without that guarantee Adrian will want to go back to Spain.
Interesting times.