West Ham United manager Manuel Pellegrini has claimed that he doesn’t regret allowing former goalkeeper Adrian to leave this summer.
The Spaniard departed upon the expiration of his contract at the end of last season, having lost his number one status in east London to Lukasz Fabianski. However, Adrian has gone on to star for Liverpool in place of the injured Alisson in the early stages of the season.
Pellegrini has lifted the lid on the veteran ‘keeper’s departure: “No regrets because we did everything we could to keep Adrian,” he said, as per the Evening Standard.
“He was a player who played six or seven years at West Ham and was a goalkeeper I trusted a lot, but for different reasons he did not arrive to reach a new contract. I do not have any regrets about that because I have a lot of trust in Roberto.”
OPINION
You can’t really blame Pellegrini for Adrian leaving. It’s reasonable to assume that he would have kept the 32-year-old if that was what the player wanted because, as we have seen on Merseyside, he is about as good of a back up goalkeeper as you could expect to have. Pellegrini’s assertion that ‘for different reasons’ Adrian didn’t sign a new contract suggests that it was the player’s decision to move on and seek pastures new. However, he obviously traded one substitute’s bench for another, but has gotten lucky early on in Liverpool with Alisson’s injury. Clearly Pellegrini has no regrets and feels like he’s just as strong with Roberto backing up Fabianski as he was with Adrian at the club. We will soon see if his trust in the former is warranted, because Fabianski’s injury suffered against Bournemouth means that the summer signing will be thrust onto the big stage in a similar way to how Adrian has been at Anfield.
