Darren Bent has claimed that Rafael Benitez is much-better suited to West Ham United than current manager Manuel Pellegrini.
The Sky Sports pundit has slammed that Hammers’ boss for not being able to get anything out of his squad this season, and admitted that Benitez is clearly a better manager as he proved while in charge of Newcastle United.
Bent questioned whether Pellegrini only achieved success at Manchester City because of his players rather than his tactics, whilst stating that the competitions Benitez has won put him above the Chilean in manager rankings.
“Look at the differences between Benitez and Pellegrini, Benitez has won the Champions League, the Europa with Chelsea, he’s won a lot of competitions,” he told Football Insider.
“He’s been at Real Madrid so he easily could see himself as a high-flying manager and he could have viewed Newcastle as beneath him, but he didn’t.
“And now we’re seeing that Benitez is clearly a better manager than him as West Ham have better players than Newcastle had when Benitez was in charge, and yet Pellegrini can’t do anything with them.
“So that shows me, take budgets out of it, Benitez would be much more suited to West Ham than Pellegrini would be.”
OPINION
It is hard to argue with Bent’s opinion for a number of different reasons at this moment in time. Any involved with West Ham right now will appear like a broken record, just adding an extra week to the timescale in which they haven’t managed to pick up a single victory in the Premier League. Pellegrini doesn’t really have any defence either, because he has been given the money by David Gold and Sullivan, and he has used that to break the Hammers’ transfer record three times in the past couple of seasons. Benitez, on the other hand, proved at Newcastle can he can deliver results without exactly having a big budget, so imagine what he could do at the London Stadium with the money that Pellegrini has had since arriving in the capital. The Spaniard was reported by TEAMtalk to be targeting the Hammers’ role before January, so the ball appears to be in West Ham’s court, and they should take advantage of that sooner rather than later.
