Manuel Pellegrini has spoken why technical players make all the difference ahead of West Ham’s clash against Aston Villa.

Pellegrini told WHUFC.com: “With technical players, you can work a lot in a tactical way but finally what decides games is the technical players; the strikers who score a goal, the midfielders who create options for the forwards. So, having those players back and 100 per cent, of course, makes a difference.

“Last season we had too many of them in the same position who could not play – Wilshere, Lanzini, Yarmolenko, to name three of them.

“Yarmolenko is a different player [to Lanzini] and he’s maybe a step below Manu Lanzini [in terms of his match-fitness], because Manu played the last eight or nine games of last season and Andriy started only a few weeks ago.

“I am sure, the same as Manu, the more games he plays in a row, he will continue to improve his performance because he is a technical player who makes a lot of impact near the opposition box.”