Pelle calls for more PL defensive stability

Manuel Pellegrini’s emphasis on defence and the clean sheets emerging from the team was clearly one of the first things on his mind after arriving at the club.

On becoming the club’s new manager he was acutely aware of the number of gals the side had conceded in the previous season and was determined to stamp it out.

It has of course taken a while but – allowing ourselves to forget for a minute the midweek disaster – we are getting there despite conceding five goals in the opening day defeat against City.

Since then the lads have conceded just two with the Diop/Ogbonna set up at central defence looking the business with Balbuena having been forced to sit things out since the first day.

There’s work to be done of course and it would be unfair to judge the team’s defensively abilities too harshly with no Rice or Noble in front of a reshaped back four at Oxford.

And speaking at his pre-match press conference the manager said: “I saw how many goals West Ham conceded two seasons ago – it was around 67, 68.

Last season we reduced that by ten goals but it was still too much, so we’re continuing to work from pre-season to try to reduce that amount.

For the moment in the last games we are doing well, but we need to concentrate. We are defending well with intensity and concentration and I hope that we can continue in that way.”

And he clearly expects a big improvement on the Oxford match when the team meet Bournemouth tomorrow (Sat) saying of the Carabao Cup defeat: “Not always the big team wins the game.

It’s unfair to take away the merits of Oxford because they played a good game. Until 55 minutes it was very tight. We must understand that we have to play against every team with one hundred per cent concentration.”