The battle to reach Europe is almost a matter of personal pride for Manuel Pellegrini as we approach the business end of the campaign!
It’s become a matter of honour that he takes his teams into Europe after making a habit of it during his long managerial career.
With important players players returning from injury and a run-in less daunting than some of the others our chances of landing the seventh spot which may be enough are looking quite reasonable.
And Pellegrini will be stressing the need to keep the momentum going as the team head into Manchester for a seriously tough encounter against his former club..
Were we to achieve seventh place it would be a remarkable achievement given the ups and downs of this topsy turvey season.
Any sort of result against City would inspire terrific focus in the squad which has, after all, been far better against superior opposition this season than against those teams they may have been expected to beat.
Discussing his Euro ambitions with reporters the boss said:”It will be a very important achievement for the team, the players, for me and for everyone.
All the years I work here in Europe I have always qualified for European competitions. We have an option [to qualify] and that is why we need to play so well these 11 games.
If we don’t reach that achievement we will work next season to try to do it, that must always be our mentality to try to arrive in one spot for European competition. I think that this season if we do it, it would be great for the club and the fans.
Co chairman David Gold had tweeted earlier that last Friday the West Ham bench was the best in decades and the squad may be ready for Europe.
Pelle – commenting – said: “If you review the bench of the last game we have some important names. Andy Carroll, Samir Nasri, Manuel Lanzini, Marko Arnautovic. But not all of them are 100 per cent fit.
If we can play with all of them in a good moment, of course I think we are going to have a strong squad. That is what we are working towards and that is why we are looking to achieve European competition which would be very good. If not, we must continue working. I agree with David Gold.
Yes we have had a few good results against the top 6, except against Tottenham,Man City and Liverpool.
We should of beaten Liverpool at home but lacked the killer instinct.
The only way we will get even a point is City have annoff day, but they have such a good squad that each player coming in will be playing for his place . I would be happy with a point, ecstatic win a dream win but can’t see it…but then I couldn’t see Wimbledon beating us.
The players owe us a performance after the Cup exit.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
This new format where we can’t read a short article, read a full single comment or add our own without an extra click is CRAP.
We are trialling the new format for a week but we welcome feedback from everyone during the trial period
Unusable until I put an advert blocker, pop up blocker on my iPad, just about useable on my pc, again with Adblock, nothing wrong with previous version
I hear you whufcfan. WE have our own doubts for sure
“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
Various factors to weigh up Hammer_Rite. Wasn’t done for zero reasons
I’m not averse to change but this feels awkward somehow. Much preferred before. Sorry.
Same as the others Hugh, very difficult to get past all the adverts. Reading this story on my mobile I had to wait for 6 adverts to fully load and then I could skip past them. I’m sure you have your reasons but not liking it I’m afraid.
I think we will be going back mate – I don’t like it much
Agree with all the others, the situation with ad’s and the difficulty to add comments if there isn’t one has failed. Definitely think its good to try things which may be improvements from the user perspective if it makes adding comments or viewing the pages harder then it detracts from enjoyment viewing and responsing to the posts.
its sorted comments will move above ads soon
We don’t know if they are improvement until we try them. They aren’t so we dropped the idea.
We need to try things 64 . If it doesn’t work we aren’t dog in the manger as shown here 🙂
Would assume one of the reasons are increased click-rate thus increased revenue, which makes complete sense as we definitely need this site to be up and running:) very glad you reverted as the user experience was not ideal. A prime example of testing something gents!
That’s all it was Iokfaen