West Ham will provide the first opposition for newly appointed Newcastle boss Steve Bruce as we look to finish third in the Asia Trophy on Saturday evening.
The Hammers go into action against the Geordies looking for a more positive 90 minutes than they enjoyed against Manchester City on Wednesday.
Whilst the first 45 minutes was encouraging and VAR would have been helpful, Manuel Pellegrini admitted mixed emotions as the result went against us.
He wasn’t overly disappointed with the performances and was ready to dismiss defensive mistakes as “usual” at this stage of things.
The match is being shown on Sky and the fans will be looking for an improvement overall after the team moved to Shanghai where the humidity in particular ill be less.
That clearly had an effect and with 180 minutes of relatively competitive action under their belts the boss is hopeful of an improved overall showing.
Commenting at the pre-match presser and quoted at https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2019/july/19-july/it-happened-pellegrini-wilshere-press-conference he said: “I think that was a very useful game for us.
We played with different players in each half and played very well in the first half and created chances. In the second, we made some important defensive mistakes but that is usual at this stage of the season. Overall, it was a game that was very useful.”
As for us, we worked in a physical way in Switzerland for ten days and now we have two games this week. We will use the complete squad on Saturday and I hope we can play a better 90 minutes than we did against Manchester City.
After the defeat to Man City, can I be the first this season to say that this is a must-win game, please?