Former England international Danny Mills has revealed that West Ham United vice chairman Karren Brady told him that manager Manuel Pellegrini was appointed because of his style of football.
The Chilean is under severe pressure at this moment in time after claiming just one win in the team’s past 10 games in all competitions, but Brady and her Hammers cohorts are – or were – fans of his way of playing.
“I spoke to Karren Brady ahead of the season at an event I was at, and she was saying they were looking to play attacking football and that the manager had brought a new style of football to the club, and that’s what they wanted to go with,” Sky Sports pundit Mills told Football Insider.
“And everything was very very positive, they then got walloped by Man City, which can happen to the best of teams, but off the back of that, you’d have to say he is an interesting character as he isn’t outspoken and his English is broken from time to time. I thought he was brilliant in his press conference the other day, by saying ‘I’m surprised I’m still here’, so he obviously has a sense of humour about it.
“He has a fabulous track record, maybe that’s working with slightly better players, he knows he is under pressure and if he doesn’t turn results around, he knows the axe will fall.”
OPINION
It doesn’t come as any great shock that an attractive playing style was one of the things the West Ham board were looking for when they brought Pellegrini in in the summer of 2018. ‘The West Ham Way’ is something trotted out with regularity, this mythical, ethereal style of football that looms ominously over the shoulder of every manager in charge of the east London outfit. It’s prominence in the minds of David Gold and David Sullivan is really what saw Sam Allardyce’s successful reign at the club come to an end, and is likely why the Hammers didn’t keep David Moyes around after he steered the team to Premier League safety prior to Pellegrini’s arrival. So the Chilean’s reputation for playing attractive football was part of the reasoning behind his appointment, but he’s clearly failed to implement that. He sticks doggedly to his 4-2-3-1 formation despite plenty of evidence that it doesn’t work, and the Irons have been tough to watch for much of this season. So if that’s what Pellegrini is hanging his hat on, he’ll be off soon.