West Ham fans will already know the way that Manuel Pellegrini wants them to play, and the fantastic goal that was scored by Sebastien Haller last weekend was a superb example of the passing football that the Chilean is obviously trying to deploy whilst in charge at The London Stadium.
It certainly wasn’t a goal that you’d see a side like Burnley or Brighton would find themselves scoring, obviously no disrespect to either of those sides, who are hard to beat and top sides in their own right, but the goal Haller bagged was not one scored by a typical long ball team.
However, long ball is a tag that has now been put onto the Hammers under Manuel Pellegrini, and the accuser is a member of Liverpool’s current coaching staff. The man in question is John Achterberg, and it won’t be a claim that goes down well with the Irons.
Whilst speaking to The Liverpool Echo about former West Ham goalkeeper Adrian San Miguel, Achterberg claimed:
‘He had to come in from West Ham and he had to settle quickly.’
‘Everything he has done so far has been really good, we have not been able to complain much at all. It’s a different style of play, with West Ham he had to kick the ball long 90 per cent of the time, but we ask him to be calm on the ball and play out from the back’
‘To be fair, he has picked it up really quickly. He has adapted fast, even though he had a lot of experience playing in the Premier League’
‘It has helped him a lot to settle quickly. He is a calm and confident guy but also a really good guy. He fits in well, I would say. Big credit to him and what he has done. It has been really good, so we cannot complain.’
Whilst a lot of those comments are harmless, the talk that Adrian has come from a long-ball side is an insult to the way that West Ham play, and given that the Hammers have played some lovely passing football this season, hopefully, it won’t be too long until Achterberg’s comments are proved very, very wrong.
