Perusing Prospective Pellegrini Replacements

3 losses in a row. 2 points from the last 7 games. One win since the end of September. It’s fair to say the writing is on the wall for Manuel Pellegrini at West Ham and, barring a miraculous turnaround of form, it seems like a case of when, not if, the incumbent manager at the London Stadium is given the boot.

The Chilean is on an enormous contract at West Ham so there is apparently some reluctance from the board to pull the plug on him due to the cost and also some desire to give him the opportunity to get Łukasz Fabiański back in the side before they permanently consign the manager to the bin.

This would be a mistake. Roberto is evidently a clown and his high profile errors have drawn ridicule (and Mario Husillos is rightly being scrutinised for his signing) but the goalkeeper is only a small part of the puzzle.

It’s too easy to solely blame him. The team’s performances haven’t been fundamentally different since Roberto’s been in the side — we just don’t have someone playing out of their skin every week to bail us out at the minute. Fabianski’s form papered over the cracks in a big way last season and his absence has exposed just how poor we are.

The really egregious errors Roberto made against Newcastle and Burnley came when we were already 1–0 down in both those games. The Spurs game was a bit different, but we still allowed them to cut through us easily and let Son get an open shot off from just outside the 6-yard box. The errors are deflating and make the comeback more difficult, but the damage has already been done at that point — West Ham went 1–0 down in 20 games last season and won only 3 of them.

This group of players coached by this manager have showed very little capacity for turning results around after a set back. Those opening goals had nothing to do with the goalkeeper and our record suggests those are the most significant goals we conceded in terms of affecting match outcomes.

The volume of high quality chances we let our opponents take is a far bigger problem than the goalkeeper. How to address that issue will be one of the most important factors facing the new manager.

The options they should be looking at:

The knee-jerk response would be to bring in a steady hand to shore up the defence. I think completely changing course and appointing a manager who plays a conservative, ultra-disciplined style of football would be a mistake because we don’t have the personnel to make that tactical approach work unless we chuck loads of money at it (again) in January.

Working on the basis that the club aren’t going to want to spend on a replacement if they have to pay Pellegrini a fortune to sack him, there are some interesting options who are currently out of work:

• Marcelino — plays a counter-attacking 4–4–2 based around condensing the middle of the pitch, funnelling the opposition out wide, turning the ball over and breaking from there. Qualified for the Champions League and won the Copa del Rey with Valencia but got sacked because he fell out with the chairman. Applied for the Swansea job in 2016 so has previously been interested in working in the UK.
• Quique Setién — a more possession-oriented, attack-minded, tactically flexible coach than Marcelino. Had a really exciting Las Palmas side that overperformed then went to Betis where he finished 6th and had a good season. Slightly older though and things imploded a bit at Betis after that good start. Not sure his style of football translates to the current state of the Premier League that well.
• Marco Giampaolo — had a series of mid-table finishes with Sampdoria by overperforming their budget relative to the rest of the league. Generally played a compact diamond shape to dominate the centre of the pitch in and out of possession, with passing players at the tip and the base to be secure when his team had the ball. They signed and developed loads of really good young players under him (Lucas Torreira, Patrick Schick, Bruno Fernandes, Joachim Anderson, Milan Skriniar, Luis Muriel, Dennis Praet) who they then had to sell on for profit. Not sure how much he had to do with the transfer side but the improvement of those players is promising. Got a big move to AC Milan this summer and got sacked quickly, but not sure how much to read into that due to how dysfunctional Milan have been for ages.
• Roger Schmidt — one of the Red Bull school of coaches. Managed RB Salzburg for a few seasons and plays the type of football you associate with them: variations on a 4–4–2 shape, emphasis on young players, high octane, aggressive pressing, rapid transitions, pacey attacking. Got a move to Leverkusen and did well for a few seasons (including back-to-back Champions League qualification) but his team eventually got tired and burnt out, as tends to be the case with these ultra-pressing sides. Went to China for a bit which is a slight red flag but he’s available atm. We don’t really have the squad to suit his style right now and appointing managers who rely on a lot of coaching to get their ideas across is generally a bad idea mid-season, but I’d love for us to go for him.

I don’t think we need to be too reactionary if we sack Pellegrini and make a unimaginative, negative appointment just because we’re panicking. We’ve somehow got enough points on the board so far to be within touching distance of most of the league. We can afford to think a bit more long term.

A lot of these guys are slightly tainted goods given that they all were sacked from their previous jobs but that might make them more receptive to an approach from West Ham. They potentially have a point to prove and the resources available to them in the Premier League might make us an attractive proposition to help them re-inflate their personal stock.

Unfortunately, the club won’t actually consider or approach anyone of this ilk. Instead…

The options they have been looking at:

These are the guys that have been linked to a potential managerial vacancy at the club by the media, by ITKs, by the bookies:

David Moyes — I’d genuinely stop watching if I had to endure more of David Moyes. I wrote about why more extensively here, but the crux is: although he kept us up, the performances were abysmal. Our Expected Goal Difference (the difference between the quality of chances created and the quality of chances conceded) per game in Moyes’ 27 matches was -0.54, which is exactly the same as we achieved under Pellegrini last season. So, if Moyes were able to repeat that level of performance, we’d be swapping one relegation battle for another (an xGD rate of -0.54 per game is bottom 5 for each of the last 3 seasons). This squad is arguably less equipped to play the style of football Moyes identified last time than the post-Bilic squad, so there’s no reason to believe he’d be an improvement in any measure.

We desperately need Everton to jump on this grenade for us.

Chris Hughton — if we’re determined to go down the route of appointing a short term fix in order to try and grind out games, Hughton’s probably the best of a bad bunch. His sides are unambitious and disciplined but even though he kept Brighton up in consecutive seasons, their performances nosedived last year. He seems like a decent bloke and having someone warm and engaging back in the dugout might smooth things over enough to get us through to the summer.

Rafa Benítez — Rafa is David Sullivan’s white whale. He’s been heavily linked with the club the last two times the job has come but it hasn’t worked out, for whatever reason. The terms of his contract probably means he’ll be too expensive to extract from China and that this will be a non-starter again. Even if he were available, I think it would be a case of repeating the same mistake that we made with Pellegrini — an older manager who is out in China for a pay day, who perhaps has been slightly bypassed by the tactical advances of modern football. He also repeatedly butted heads with Mike Ashley over transfer policy so I’m not sure the honeymoon period between him and the board would last particularly long here. I find his overtly cautious style of football quite miserable to watch too, so I’m quite glad it won’t be him.

Sean Dyche — you’d be getting a low-block 4–4–2 shape centred on positional discipline out of possession and direct passing up to mobile, aggressive forwards in possession. Dyche would be an awful appointment, though. We’ve got a hugely multinational squad and he’s got no track record of working with players who aren’t British/have played in the UK for extended periods of time.

He’s overperformed with Burnley playing a style of football that he wouldn’t be able to replicate with us without a massive overhaul of the squad — there’s no chance he’s getting Fredericks/Zabaleta to play like Phil Bardsley and no combination of our CBs that can defend the box like Mee + Tarkowski. I don’t see why you’d appoint someone whose record is based on doing one thing well and then ask them to do something totally different.

We’ve got £100mil tied up in Anderson, Fornals, and Yarmolenko, none of whom are Dyche players. You’d essentially be writing that money off if you appoint him. Dyche’s team is designed, back to front, to execute their gameplan out of possession and he’s not got the personnel to do that here. How effective can he be in the short-term without the right type of player at his disposal?

He’s also achieved what he has at Burnley with effectively total autonomy over the football club. If he’s not afforded the same latitude in his next job, will he be able to overperform to the same extent?

Eddie Howe — Generally possession-based football but utilises the pace of his forwards on the break. Mixes up his shape from 4–4–2 to 3–4–3 based on opposition strength. Has real problems controlling games. Tends to have extended hot and cold streaks over the course of a season. Excellent at creating chances from set pieces.

More broadly, you can level the same accusations at Howe as you can at Dyche: lack of experience working with non-British players; thrived in a role where he has autonomy over many aspects over the club; only experienced success at one club. Howe’s record in the transfer market is worse than Dyche’s though.

With that being said, he’s probably a better fit than some of these others. I don’t think he’s an especially good coach and his sides have the same weakness out of possession that Pellegrini’s do. If he can’t resolve that issue but does provide some more structured attacking coaching for the side (which it seems he’s capable of doing) then he’d be an improvement on the current situation.

I think it makes more sense and is less risky to double down on the attack-first approach that Pellegrini was appointed to implement than it does to completely change track and try to grind out results with the current squad. Bournemouth’s performance data backs that up — they’ve been consistently slightly better going forward and slightly worse defensively than West Ham.

He’s the current 6/4 favourite with SkyBet but it could well be the case that Howe is simply using these links to the West Ham gig to engineer a new contract with Bournemouth. If his interest is genuine, he seems to be the most alluring of the options that are on the table at this point.