Sky Sports pundit Graeme Souness has slammed West Ham United manager Manuel Pellegrini’s mistaken tactic of playing a high defensive line in their battering by Liverpool on Sunday.
The Hammers fell to a heavy 4-0 defeat yesterday at the hands of Liverpool, who ran out winners with goals from Sadio Mane, Mo Salah and Daniel Sturridge.
He was quoted by the Sky Sports ‘Super Sunday’ podcast as saying: “Liverpool were fabulous. It’s what I expected. They just blew West Ham away. Too much quality, too much energy, especially up front, the mischief they cause in the final third.
“From back to front they were just far too good for West Ham, who got caught in a revolving door and they couldn’t get out of it.”
Irons’ boss Manuel Pellegrini started five of his new signings – including club record buy Felipe Anderson – but they evidently failed to make an impact upon the game as Souness highlighted how their tactics were exposed.
He added: “West Ham won’t play a team like Liverpool each week. They were exposed time and time again by trying to hold a high line. They have to work on that. They must work on that.
“This is a policy that Manuel Pellegrini employed when he was at Manchester City, but he was playing with better players. Not just a back four of better players, but also the boys pressing the ball were better.”
OPINION
Souness is right – West Ham were exposed time and time again by defending in high line. Evidently this was ineffective against a team like Liverpool, who have the pace to run behind the defence as a result. If the want to begin getting positive results each week, they need to work on their defensive issues imminently, otherwise we will see another episode like we did on Sunday. Based on their signings, the Hammers are a lot better than they showed yesterday, and they did not do themselves justice with their lacklustre defending. The fans know that their team are capable of more, but they will need to prove that against Bournemouth otherwise they will start to grow impatient. Fingers crossed that they can come back fighting, or else they will face an extremely long season ahead of them. It is never nice to see a team get thumped in their season opener, but as Souness says, “they must work on that.”
