West Ham’s win over Burnley must be followed by a second at Huddersfield next weekend if they are to show they are not a one-off team.
Inconsistency has been a problem for the Irons, a charge that could even be levelled at them during the London Stadium on Saturday, even during the 90 minutes itself.
To allow themselves to be dragged back from a lead twice was not great but in the end they continued to follow the manager’s attacking policy and grab the three points.
Now comes the next test, a win over Huddersfield, and one thing is for certain in the manager’s world, they won’t be achieving it by nicking a goal and sitting back.
Pellegrini was obviously pleased to see his regular attacking words turned into actions as the team won their valuable three points by staying on the front foot and ensuring they chased more goals.
It’s a refreshing change of attitude under a manager who has made it clear from Day One this is the way he wants the team to play.
He told the London Evening Standard – he declared: “You don’t need to continue to play towards your own box if you are level or losing, you must continue to play in the same way, and I think that today was a test for the players.
“We were twice in advantage, they drew twice, then we scored the third and then wanted to score a fourth, not just defend our advantage.”
I think nearly all of our problems revolve around central midfield and left back, we don’t create enough from central midfield, we don’t score at all from central midfield and they don’t provide enough defence either add to that a lack of pace other than Rice and it’s not a great combination.
I agree. We lack a goal scoring midfielder. We haven’t had a goal scoring midfielder since Kevin Nolan have we?