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Any Old Iron 12:15 Thu Dec 20
Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2018/12/20/think-fans-clubs-feel-one-manuel-pellegrini-has-west-ham-fans/

With his head bowed against the London sleet, Manuel Pellegrini made the long walk from the dugouts to the dressing rooms at Craven Cottage with a new sound ringing in his ears. For the first time this season, the West Ham United supporters had begun to sing his name. The chants had started during Saturday’s game, as Pellegrini’s side cruised to a commanding win over Fulham, but they grew louder and stronger at the end, when he crossed the pitch in front of the away supporters.

It is unusual for West Ham fans, who are notoriously hard to please, to give such a vocal show of support to a manager. Slaven Bilic had a chant, but few others in the past decade have inspired much affection. For Pellegrini, though, this would have been nothing out of the ordinary. Such endearment is little more than what he has grown used to over a managerial career spanning three decades, three continents and 14 clubs.

It is a source of great pride for the 65-year-old that, almost wherever he has gone, the supporters have responded. He maintains a strong relationship with the Manchester City fans – who famously dubbed him their “charming man” – and with those at Villarreal and Malaga, in particular. “I think that the fans feel that I am one of them,” he says. “Not this important person. I try to continue with that low profile.”

Pellegrini’s fondness for a “low profile” has been a regular source of criticism. He is naturally averse to dramatic headlines, to the extent that during his time at City he once felt compelled to insist he was “not as boring as everyone says”. He does not tend to give interviews, and his demeanour has led to accusations of grumpiness.

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“It is not that I am unhappy,” he says. “I am always happy. What I don’t want to be is the most important person of the club. If we win a game, it was the players who played very well. I never say ‘yes, it’s because of the tactics’. I don’t believe in those things. Of course, I was so happy when the fans sung my name against Fulham, and when we were losing against City and the City fans shouted my name. I go to Malaga and I have a big name there, and Villarreal. When I finished my first season at Real Madrid, 75 per cent of the fans did not want me to go. That is why I don’t change.”

Manuel Pellegrini banner - ‘I think the fans at my clubs feel I am one of them’ – Manuel Pellegrini has West Ham fans finally on his side
Pellegrini is remembered fondly by Manchester City fans where the Chilean, in reference to the 1980s song by The Smiths, was known as their 'This Charming Man' CREDIT: EPA

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West Ham
At this point it should be said that, for a man who usually does not like interviews, Pellegrini makes for engaging company. He regularly raps the table with the tips of his fingers to emphasise his points, and he speaks with warmth and insight about a lifetime spent imposing his footballing ideology around the world. He is a product of his experiences, of the great teams he has built, the wonderful talents he has managed and even the tragic death of one of his players, which provided one of his most challenging moments.

Throughout all this, Pellegrini has remained committed to his principles, both tactically and culturally. “I continue thinking in the same way,” he says. “You will never run more than the ball, the players that don’t lose the ball are the most important in the team, and good players decide the game. There are lots of different ways to play football, I choose one in my career. I believe in that one.”

Pellegrini has three requirements of all his players. “Respect, commitment and performance,” he says, banging the table with his fist in time with each word. But he also has standards to which he holds himself. “I always find when things are not going the correct way, it’s my fault,” he says. “I never have excuses with other people.”

Having moved to China following his departure from City in 2016, many assumed he was approaching the end of his time as a top-level manager. But Pellegrini was “absolutely sure” he would return to Europe, and West Ham provided an opportunity he could not turn down.

Manuel Pellegrini - ‘I think the fans at my clubs feel I am one of them’ – Manuel Pellegrini has West Ham fans finally on his side
Pellegrini had a roundabout named in his honour in Málaga CREDIT: MALAGA CF
Looking at his career, the appeal was obvious. For Pellegrini, it means more to have success with teams such as Villarreal or Malaga than with the giants of the game. “When you manage a big team like River Plate or Madrid, they are used to winning titles. The people are happy, but they are used to it. When you have an achievement like I had in Villarreal, reaching the semi-final of the Champions League, finishing second in the league, it’s more than winning a title. It’s more.

“It is the same with Malaga, when we reached the Champions League and then lost to Borussia Dortmund [in the quarter-final] with an offside goal. We had thousands of people waiting for us at the airport. If you win a title with a big team, it’s different. It’s one title more.”


Pellegrini says his Villarreal team of the mid-noughties, in which the mercurial Juan Roman Riquelme was such a key player – “he had the whole pitch in his eye” – was the best embodiment of his ideals as a manager.

Twelve years on, he still thinks back to their Champions League semi-final defeat by Arsenal in 2006, when Riquelme missed a last-minute penalty. “We were the better team,” he says, his voice tinged with lingering frustration.

Still, those agonies in Europe were formative experiences in a career in which he says he is “always learning”. There have been testing moments, too, not least the death of one of his players, Raimundo Tupper, in 1995, when Pellegrini was managing Universidad Catolica in Chile. Tupper was just 26 when, suffering from severe depression, he took his own life on the club’s tour of Costa Rica. “It was one of my most difficult moments as a manager,” says Pellegrini, puffing out his cheeks and shaking his head. “It was so unexpected. You can never understand what was happening in his mind.”


Pellegrini has brought all this experience to West Ham, who had been in a state of drift since the move from Upton Park to the London Stadium, but are now in the process of rediscovering their identity. The Fulham victory was their fourth in a row, and they are just two points behind Manchester United in sixth. “There are a lot of things that I tried to change when I arrived here,” Pellegrini says. “The first thing was the mentality, to understand that this is a very big jump when you play with 60,000 fans behind you. It’s not the same as playing with 25,000.”

It took some months, but Pellegrini has clearly had an impact on the players as well as the fans. For him, though, coaching is a two-way street. More than 30 years after starting his managerial career, he is still developing, he says, and still improving. “I don’t feel that because I have so many years managing different teams and a good career that I know all about football, all about people. You are always learning about people, and the players are always teaching you.”

Mex Martillo 9:05 Fri Dec 21
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

Pellegrini embodies all that I like about football, it really is great fun to have him managing our team.
Very enjoyable, long may it last.

Far Cough 8:35 Fri Dec 21
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

Man Yoo?

Gentile 8:35 Fri Dec 21
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

The danger with Pellegrini is him being poached by a top top club.

theaxeman 4:09 Fri Dec 21
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

The best endorsement i can give El Pel is i actually look forward to going to going to games and not dread watching the turgid shite served up by allardyce and to a lesser extent moyes. Lovely to see us try and play and try to win even if sometimes it fails.
The man has brought a bit of dignity back to West Ham and thats no mean feat with our board

, 1:09 Fri Dec 21
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

Neilalex and Crassus, you two are breaths of fresh air on this thread. I still urge caution and say we need to wait a lot longer to make a judgement on Pellegrini with WHU and tomorrow's game with Watford will give us some better evidence to enable this.

I always considered that our owners would not take on a comparatively well known big name manager because he would come in expecting a budget that complimented his reputation. Then unexpectedly they land Pellegrini and confound me/us. As mentioned we will need to spend again in the summer and I would expect little or no spending in the January window [ unless we get a team weakening injury situation ], the owners keeping their powder dry for the close season.

A good point about the standard of player needed to play the Pellegrini way but we don't need to break the bank to find these players because look at how the likes of Snodgrass is performing as an example.

Finally let's hope for a good cup run and if/when we do lose let it be a best eleven going out on its shield rather than a token second eleven exit.

jakehammer 12:00 Fri Dec 21
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

crassus, i couldn't agree with you more.
well said chap.

Crassus 10:48 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

Comma

Lets have this straight, I had enough to say about the transfer policy this summer and the obvious weaknesss given his players and system

I am happy to say fair play, I was wrong, albeit sort of right, in that he has optimised his attacking flair and in the two CB's, aquired total diamonds, we can only assume that he will address the FBs and CM moving forward

This bloke is an absolute gent, a football achiever and most of all, underlyinglt steely - he has shut the crap down from above and has his man as director of football

Now this was not a coincidence, he was clearly coming when Moyes was appointed, paid close attention whilst in China and we as a club cleared the decks for a spend up

My gut feel is that not all arrivals were his, but I bet a pound to a pinch of shit they will be from now
Bloke is class, end of

neilalex 10:40 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

Yes, agree with that . The thing about Pellegrini is that he wants to play in an attractive way and win, that's his default mode. BFS and to a lesser extent Moyes simply don't want to lose and therefore the football produced is simply worlds apart, even if the players are largely the same.

You need very good footballers to play that way though. I have a mate who's a Man City season ticket holder and he reckoned Pellegrini could conceivably take us down because our players wouldn't be able to play the way he wants to play. Thankfully that would appear to be behind us but I can see what he means.

Pellegrini being a dignified, likeable sort of bloke certainly helps as well.

We are, however, still several players away from being a consistently good side. It might not feel like a false dawn but I haven't felt confident in any of the four wins we've had. We don't go out and dominate and control games. We have the beginnings of a decent spine to the side but another big window needed in the summer in my opinion.

Queens Fish Bar 10:27 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

East Auckland Hammer 10:25 Thu Dec 20

Agree.

East Auckland Hammer 10:25 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

As others have said, Moyes was a pragmatic improvement on both BFS and Bilic, and probably would have improved us this season, albeit incrementally.

I don't think we would be playing the way we are now, with the players we have at our disposal though.

I'm not sure Anderson or Yarmolenko are Moyes-type signings.

He might have picked up a couple of CBs, but would they have been as good as Balbuena and Diop have turned out to be?

There have been a couple of false dawns over the last few years where I've been wooed back into getting up in the middle of the night again to watch us after some absolute shite periods, but this feels different.

We're now playing how we've always wanted West Ham to.

We've now got a number of different attacking threats coming from all over the pitch.

We're (mostly) working hard as a team to pressure and win the ball back, and trying to turn it into a counter-attack.

These are things we've only ever done in fits and starts for years, but now they're our bread and butter.

Personally, I don't feel that we'd be playing like we are now, if we had Moyes still here, and even though we're likely to get the odd battering, I'm enjoying every minute of this season (now!)

East Auckland Hammer 10:12 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

Alfs 7:38 Thu Dec 20

Yeah, but Salah has time on his side.

He could reach Cole's heights if he keeps putting in the effort.

Queens Fish Bar 8:22 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

He's getting:
1) players to perform
2) players to play as a team
3) quality players in (going to be interesting to see how Nasri turns out)
4) the team to look good in attack
5) a resurgence of the West Ham way (ups and downs)
6) us to believe in him


I haven't got enough data/evidence yet to take a definitive position on him, but the direction of travel is good imho.

COYI 5 from 5 please.

Alfs 7:38 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

I didn't mind Moyes, who was certainly an improvement on the Walrus but he's simply not in the same league as Pelle. It's like comparing Mo Salah to Carlton Cole.

bill green 7:24 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

, 7:06 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph
Good mention of Fellaini, signed by Moyes and used regularly by Van Gaal and Mourinho.

And all three were sacked...

, 7:06 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

Good mention of Fellaini, signed by Moyes and used regularly by Van Gaal and Mourinho.

Eerie Descent 5:41 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

Comma, you're not questioning me are you, you tit? You're asking a general question, to which no one knows the answer to. And in any case, I gave you my speculative answer.

Let's look at some FACTS. Considering how Moyes spent the money he had available at Man Utd, a team that had won the league the previous season (signing FELLAINI for fuck knows how much - utterly unforgivable) and considering he spend about £40mil 3 years ago (probably the equivalent of £60mil in today's money given the rate of recent change) at Sunderland and got them relegated without so much as a whimper, I will SPECULATE that he would not have done as well as the former Valencia, Real Madrid, Man City, Premier League winning manager Pellegrini?

That's just a HUNCH though. I'm sure given how much in demand Moyes is, we might find out soon when he lands a job at a Premier League club.

Side of Ham 5:35 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

They wouldn't no comma but i'll leave you to mince about that one as every other West Ham supporter sees why they wouldn't when given the choice of him and Pellegrini.

, 5:04 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

I don't think that our owners would have given anywhere near that sort of budget to Moyes for starters.

Jasnik 5:03 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

I just like the way he wants to play football.

Side of Ham 5:01 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

It's easy to speculate what Moyes would have done with the £100 million, he would have looked at our recent history and tried to plug the gaping gaps in the squad with grafters and workhorses and then loaned a good few exciting players who are not doing well at bigger clubs or are young and trying to make a break through.

Pellegrini came in tore up the recent history of playing styles and spent it on getting players who want to play his way and that only and used all his experience and reputation to get them on board.

, 4:54 Thu Dec 20
Re: Pellegrini interview from Telegraph

ED, don't be so sensitive all I asked was would you care to speculate. And why is it a stupid question because "we will never know"?

We will never know how Moyes would be doing if he had stayed on with a £100M kitty but that has not stopped you from speculating in comparison with Pellegrini has it?

Are you one of those insecure people who does not like being questioned?

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