OPINION
West Ham United manager Manuel Pellegrini must be ruthless against Manchester United on Saturday and realise that Argentine playmaker Manuel Lanzini simply isn’t back up to speed yet.
It seems harsh to talk about the 26-year-old in this way because he is still in the early stages of an injury comeback, but he hasn’t been good enough of late, with his horror show against Chelsea on Monday surely the last straw for the West Ham boss.
Lanzini must be axed, and youngster Grady Diangana is the man to replace him in the starting line up. The 20-year-old has been starved of first team football recently and now is the time to move him back into the fold.
He hasn’t started a first team game since January’s FA Cup defeat to AFC Wimbledon and he’s actually been playing for the Under-23s side a lot recently. That’s quite the fall from grace for a player who burst onto the scene in electric fashion earlier this term.
However, having had his time on the sidelines, and with Lanzini struggling, it’s high time that the speedster was brought back into the team. You must possess pace to trouble the United backline and Diangana arguably has more of it than anyone else at the London Stadium.
You need brave youngsters against the top teams, and Diangana’s direct approach and hard running would certainly cause Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side problems.
At this stage of the season you might as well give your youngsters some game time. The Hammers have nothing to play for, meaning that giving young players the experience of first team football and a chance to impress should be the priority for Pellegrini.
Diangana shone at times in the first team, but he has also endured a fairly pronounced exile in recent months. United are the perfect opponent for him to be reintroduced against, with the established Lanzini the obvious candidate to drop out.
