By Kris Gonzo | Senior West Ham Columnist (Follow on X)
West Ham United assistant head coach Rui Pedro Silva has hinted at more positional changes for players during his interview with the club’s official website today.
Silva impressed during his lengthy chat with the media team and, as Claret & Hugh covered earlier, described how he and Nuno Espírito Santo are putting in eight-hour days at the Rush Green training ground to prepare the squad for next season.
However, it was when he was asked directly about his relationship with the players under his guidance that things became particularly interesting.
Different Positions, Different Perspectives
Speaking to West Ham TV, Silva said:
“I think these days, the data, the knowledge departments are so strong that if you build up just one philosophy the opponent will understand, so sometimes it’s important to create different connections, different relationships, for us to become stronger.
Even as an individual player, if you change position, you can become understanding of the game in a different position, and that can give us more advantage. I think our philosophies should read really well what we’ve got inside the building to be the strongest possible.”
We’ve Seen It Before
The trend of players switching positions will not be unfamiliar to West Ham fans under Nuno Espírito Santo.
The head coach tried, unsuccessfully, to convert Ollie Scarles into a right-back against Brentford and Leeds United last season.
He also moved Tomas Souček into a deeper midfield role which, to be fair, wasn’t entirely new to the Czech international after he had previously been used there by David Moyes.
Perhaps the most interesting example is Pablo, who joined from Gil Vicente for around £20 million in January.
The Brazilian had spent much of his career playing as an out-and-out striker but has been deployed in a very different role under Nuno. Early signs from pre-season suggest that experiment is set to continue.
Hopefully, we won’t read too much into James Ward-Prowse starting on the left-hand side against Stevenage. That was probably more a matter of necessity following Crysencio Summerville’s departure.
No doubt West Ham’s recruitment team, led by Nils Koppen, will be tasked with finding a natural left-sided replacement.
Nonetheless, it was fascinating to hear Silva openly discuss the benefits of training players to perform in different positions.
Not very calming to hear players being played out of position. Inverted full backs where we lost twice after drawing at Everton would have been points enough to keep us up. It was ridiculous then and I don’t know what’s happened since to make it any less ridiculous.
I think I prefer squad strengthening where its required.
Other than when Summerville played as a right wing back and I think that may have been under Potter I can’t recall a change in formation with that group of players from 442 that worked. Will be interesting to see if Rui can do what Nuno didn’t and hopefully we keep the 442 as standard