Manuel Pellegrini has received some timely advice on how the Hammers may not only cope with, but beat Manchester City at the London Stadium tomorrow (Sat).
And it comes from a man who has already done it with Shaktar Donestk in the Champion league last season – a guy who was interviewed for the Hammers job before Pellegrini arrived at the club.
Fonesca in an interview with ESPN FC said: “When they have the ball, they keep it exceptionally well. And they have so much quality.
If you press them high, they have the quality at the back — including the goalkeeper — to simply pass the ball through your press.
“Or they can also go long and in players like [Leroy] Sane and [Raheem] Sterling they have very fast players. So you have to find another way to defend.”
Fonseca has also given them some advice on how to deal with Guardiola’s increibly good forward line.
He said: “The basic philosophy is to keep our team high up the pitch but also very compact. I want the distance from my last defender to my furthest forward attacker to be short, and also the distance from one wing to the other.
“The idea is to be high and narrow, therefore compact, with a lot of density. That makes it more difficult for them to pass through us.
“At the same time, without pressing high and losing our shape, we need to ensure they don’t go deep because, as I said, they have a lot of quality and speed there.”
ClaretandHugh says: It seems hard to imagine that even if we are at out very best and they have an off day the Hammers can get the result they need but Fonesca’s words are interesting from one point of view. He declares that we must be high which is very much the approach Pellegrini wants to adopt in every game so no trouble there 🙂 The real issue is the incredible quality City possess all over the pitch but as mentioned previously there’s always the memory that we held Chelsea at bay when they arrived at the London Stadium and attacked us. The worry of course though is specifically down the wings where it’s likely that Aaron Creswell will be deployed in a game where there can be absolutely no weak links. Diop and Balbuena with Rice in front can cope and we must hope Zaba’s legs don’t find his out. If we press high as Fonesca suggests we have the pace and movement of Arnie coupled with the trickery of Anderson who could just cause a few issues for them.
This is Paulo Fonseca, you forgot to introduce the geeza, just went straight to his quote!
I don’t think anyone in this league expects to pick up points against City, so these are bonus games. The league is effectively 36 games a season! 🙂
I think we have enough about us to rattle them, but I’ve thought that before. If we’re going to lose, I want us to lose well, like we did last season when we almost beat them during a period when they looked invincible and we doomed! COYI!