Pre-season friendlies are much more about fitness than results, but Pellegrini's first game in charge has ended with a 3-2 defeat to FC Winterthur in Switzerland, with Andy Carroll scoring but also missing a penalty and Mark Noble netting the other goal. My pal Fraser watched it on the live feed, which is certainly dedicated in the middle of the World Cup.
Fraser writes: "After all the talk of him wanting to play 4-4-2, he instead opts for 4-5-1. Still that’s an improvement on the thankfully short-lived anti-football era of Moyes, with his preference for no recognised forwards in the line-up.Maybe with Pellegrini wanting to run different starting elevens in each half of his first pre-season friendly today, he didn’t have the available personnel to play two forwards in each half. But it shows we desperately need another striker. With the defensive howlers on view, we need another centre back too. Encouragingly Pellegrini does seem to want to give everyone a chance. So there were 45 minutes each from previously rarely glimpsed players like Snodgrass, Samuelsen, Haksabanovic, Byram, Oxford and Hugill, as well as a bunch of the kids."
Those kids included Conor Coventry, who has presumably been sent to West Ham. World Cup ‘heroes’ Fabianski, Kouyate and Chicharito were sensibly rested, as were Arnie and Cresswell, with the still recovering Antonio and Reid not risked. Diop and Fredericks both got half a match and apparently even Snodgrass looked sharp — might he still have a future at West Ham under Pellegrini?
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