Manuel Pellegrini has plenty of options as he ponders his team selection for the Bournemouth game on Saturday.
The manager – speaking in his pre-match presser – gave little away but maybe indicated that it’s unlikely either Carlos Sanchez or Lucas Perez would be involved.
He said: ““I can’t tell you now [if Perez and Sanchez will be involved]. Carlos arrived just last week on the last day [of the transfer deadline] and has had just a week with us, and Lucas Perez similar. We will see if they are good to go onto the bench, but I cannot say at this moment.”
He added: “Every week is important in this moment, when you bring in so many players and have so many changes.
“We will try to win as many games as possible, starting with Bournemouth now, and we won’t be changing our final target. We have a solid team .”
“We have nine new players and every week that you have you are working with them to try and improve. When you build up a squad, you know you need to let players go out also. Young players like [Toni] Martinez knew this from the beginning and they were going to go on loan.
“The squad we have now is our squad for the season; I don’t think we are going to have any more going out at this moment.
“We have brought in good players; players like Felipe Anderson who are creative players. Lucas Perez, Felipe, Yarmolenko, they are creative players and they will bring a lot to our team.
“Felipe is a good player. Before we bought him, we saw a lot of games he played. He’s a fast player, a mix between a winger and midfielder.”
If Felipe can play in midfield & is fast then play hm there. Noble & Wilshere are too slow we need more pace in midfield otherwise teams will again just run past our midfield
If Pelle is the manager we are told he is, then I expect changes this weekend to the team from the performance last weekend. I still believe the best system for the players we have is a 3-5-2 but lets take it Pelle will stick to his 4-2-3-1 system. I would agree with Claret, put Anderson in the 10 role at the top of the midfield. Then we cannot afford to have Noble and Wilshere as our midfield engine – that was apparent to everyone from last weekend (and to be honest from the preseason games). The second change probably is Obiang or Sanchez in for either Noble or Wilshere. At the back I would keep Fab, the next big change is at RB Fredericks (he has to learn to defend before he is given another run out at RB). Either Rice or Zaba in at RB. I actually Balbuena and Ogbanna did ok considering there was no protection in front of them. I would bring Cresswell in if fit and move Masauka to left side of midfield with either Antoinio or Yarmo on the other side with Arnie up top. Pelle has built up a squad with sufficient quality on the bench – there is no point in keeping faith with players when you have options like we have. We will find out a lot about Pelle come this weekend. I would still like to believe he is the right man to bring us to the next level. Another performance like last weekend and I will beging to have my doubts.
Pelle said he see’s Wilshere as a holding midfielder with freedom, I wouldn’t disagree with that, if when Wilshere goes forward the other two sit in we should be fine the problem was a bit like when we had Kouyate there no one had the discipline to stay back there is no cohesion, the same can be said for any position in any team to be honest if one player vacates the rest of the team should move to accomodate that is how to keep the shape of the team, our midfield when we saw it on Motd looked like an inverted triangle leaving huge wedges of space for Liverpool to exploit.
I agree but to enable us to do this we must bring pace into our midfield. Pelle made a terrible call last weekend to start the midfield 3 he did start with, no pace and no link to Arnie. At half time he made another terrible mistake leaving Noble and Wilshere to protect our back 4. If he makes the same mistakes this weekend, goes with the same 3 in midfield with Noble and Wilshere as our holding players, it is just my opinion it is time for us to become really concerned as he does not see the obvious. I hope I am not right and he picks a pacey attacking player at the top of our midfield – after all we are at home !! What about this midfield 3 Obiang at the base of Masauka (as left sided mid and Anderson (as right sided midfielder) with Yarmo and Antonio supporting Arnie. No Noble or Wilshere happy days !!!!!