Wilshere injury increases woe for West Ham
Club face worst start despite £100m outlay Pellegrini insists his new signings will get results
It felt emblematic of the frustration at West Ham United that on the day Manuel Pellegrini came out fighting, it was confirmed one of his key signings, midfielder Jack Wilshere, was out injured.
Not just that but there was uncertainty as to how long Wilshere would be absent after having felt discomfort in his ankle during training – and ankle injuries are always a concern for the 26-yearold given his chronic injury record. “It could be one week, it could be three months,” said one exasperated senior source at the club, with an assessment due on Tuesday.
By then West Ham, who are away to Everton tomorrow, may well have suffered a fifth successive Premier League defeat. That would represent the worst start to a season in the club’s 123-year history and would come on the back of a remarkable £100 million being spent in the summer on nine new signings under Pellegrini, who is also West Ham’s highest-paid manager, on a basic salary of £15million over three years.
Wilshere arrived as a free signing, after the end of his Arsenal contract, but it was at Pellegrini’s insistence that he was given a three-year deal by West Ham, who had their misgivings because of his previous injuries and had initially proposed only a 12-month agreement. That was a sign of the desire to back Pellegrini – and the signings are his – and the line from inside West Ham, despite their terrible start to the season, is that the club remain fully behind the 64-year-old Chilean and believe he will turn things around.
Even so, there is shock at the start to the campaign and not least how the team do not seem to work as hard as their opponents. In those four matches, they have been outrun by a total of 20kilometres and while a larger, temporary gym has been built at the club’s Rush Green training ground, at Pellegrini’s insistence, fitness is a worry.
The backing was something that Pellegrini himself picked up on as he insisted that not only would he not “change” but that he was “more confident that ever” in his ability to get West Ham out of trouble.
“Of course I have been in this position before,” Pellegrini said, bridling at any insinuation that he may not have the stomach for the fight, before drawing on his experience in Spain.
“I started with Villarreal and we had three points from the first 15 and we finished third in the table,” he argued. “After that, with Malaga, when I arrived in the first season, the team was in the relegation zone. We lost five or six games in a row but we continued in the same way… It didn’t happen like that at Real Madrid or Manchester City, but when you lose two games at those teams it is the same as losing four or five games somewhere else. I am more confident than ever.”
Villarreal did, indeed, start the 2004-05 campaign with just three points after five matches – but they drew three games and lost only two – while, after Everton, West Ham face Chelsea and Manchester United at home, then Brighton away before the next international break, before Tottenham Hotspur visit the London Stadium. If the