West Ham boss Manuel Pellegrini has flagged up record signing Felipe Anderson for his defensive work after their 1-0 defeat by Tottenham, according to club insider ExWHUemployee.
Speaking on the latest episode of The West Ham Way show [4:04], Ex claimed that Pellegrini had singled out £100,000-a-week star Anderson [Silly Season] for his poor tracking back during the game and made the Brazilian watch video clips of his mistakes.
He said: “Pellegrini this week pulled him up for it and made him watch videos of himself not tracking back, I know that factually, and he was brought off after 48 minutes, so he obviously thought the same as I did.”
OPINION
This is an interesting claim from Ex, who is usually an extremely reliable source for insider information surrounding the club. It would not be a surprise if Pellegrini did actually do this, with Anderson showing a huge deficiency in his game with his defensive work against Tottenham. Far too many times he was beaten on the left too easily, and then failed to track his man back after that. He was weak in the tackle, and also showed his inexperience in diving in far too much. This is obviously a part of his game which requires a lot of attention, and this will be what makes or breaks his West Ham career. In the modern-day Premier League attackers cannot get away without doing some defensive work. The football that is played these days is far too intense for that not to happen, and Anderson will not last long if he fails to address these problems. In truth, he was not even that great going forward against Spurs, and his all-round performances need to improve after the club shelled out £40million on his services. Obviously it is far too early to be passing final judgement, but that improvement is needed at some point in the next few months.
