Sometimes over reaction and intense knee jerks become boring.
That’s the summer for you when the merest of molehills is presented as a mountain bigger than Everest allowing a fever to descend on some in claret and blue.
Last night some quotes emerged from Manuel Pellegrini claiming he was trying to get the Hammers owners to loosen up and invest in a top player.
Fine – nothing wrong with that – exactly what most of us would expect and hope. That’s what good managers do – demand, demand and demand.
However, when the name West Ham is attached to these stories it immediately gets spun into power battles with the board when in reality it’s the NORMALITY at every club in the land.
Were Manel Pellegrini involved in a power battle it seems hardly likely that he would be holding it after just a few days at the club before flying off to Chile for a summer break.
It also seems unlikely that at 62 and having managed all round the world, the man isn’t long enough in the tooth to have settled these issues before accepting a job which many saw – and still do – as one of the most difficult in football. The fans are rightly too demanding for it to be otherwise.
Maybe we should just hold on a bit and see what happens over the next few weeks before helping to do an unsympathetic media’s job for them.
This may or may not be the first step in a clever man’s strategy to build up the pressure.
He’s bright and knows what he’s doing so let’s just relax a little because he’s hardly likely to have accepted the job if he wasn’t aware of all the pitfalls he may have to circumnavigate.
I think he is quite capable of fighting his own battles without too much help from anywhere else.
COYI
Mourinho never stops calling for more money. Also Conte. Guardiola probably doesn’t need to go public but without doubt puts in a regular list of demands. Pellegrini will need to badger the owners- I would be very worried if he wasn’t doing so! But yes, on a quiet news day why not start on about a negative West Ham story. I was amazed at the end of last season when relegation was becoming an issue again that certain journalists began every match report with ‘fans not wanting to leave UP’ ‘LS is a soulless environment’ ‘fans fighting among themselves’ ‘pitch invasions’. Easier than actually saying something original about the team or the manager’s tactics. Nobody blamed it all on Tevez but it would hardly have surprised me if they had.
Social media makes it so easy for newspapers and online sites to create a ****-storm out of nothing. Tweets are repeated without any provenance, and lie after lie gets repeated until it becomes indistinguishable from the truth. Anybody can put WHU or the Hammers symbol into their username and straight away they are accepted as a West Ham fan with an axe to grind. Stick a year on there and suddenly their a fan from way back, whose opinion is somehow even more valid. It really is the age of Fake News.
Would echo what AOL says, there is a lot of speculation out there, perhaps Pastore or Veratti are the supposed big names, certainly Felipe Anderson is not, am probably not alone in never having heard of the guy before last week, if there is any truth in it which is unlikely this early in then good on Pellegrini for calling DS out, the news reports that Pellegrini wants a genuine marquee signing to attract others which is right, if we did sign a world class player and two or three more very good ones it would genuinely send a message out that things are changing, I am not convinced Fredericks is that player or will be even a first team regular. At the minute we need a new goalkeeper, central defender, a defensive midfielder, a productive left winger and probably a creative central midfielder also, they won’t come cheap with the right quality.
1st time post, long time visitor to the site….. I totally agree aol! My mate sent me the article from the The Mirror – there is absolutely no substance to the story, how can Pellegrini saying he wants a top player and the board need to loosen up the purse strings turn in to a power struggle – he is going about his job and pointing out something that is bleeding obvious! We have been an easy target for too long to this sort of media crap, I’m hoping with Pellegrini at the helm it will start to change…. COYI
At last a man talking some sense. All this overreacting is getting boring.
Nicely put Hugh,too many fans are panicking at the slightest hint of news in the red tops that isn’t favourable,and too much expectation of a tenuous link to a big name signing.Of course it’s how the papers and social media work,but as you say Pellegrini ain’t no mug and this is where he is going to earn his money,a little bit of faith and patience required at present.COYI