There was speculation that West Ham United striker Lucas Perez may have refused to warm up before potentially coming on on Sunday.
It was a fantastic day on the pitch for the Hammers at Goodison Park as a brace from Andriy Yarmolenko and a strike from Marko Arnautovic helped the Irons to a 3-1 victory that lifts them off the bottom and out of the relegation zone in the Premier League.
But there was an incident on the subs’ bench that led to plenty of speculation regarding summer signing Perez. The Daily Mirror reported that there was a suggestion that the striker may have refused to warm-up ahead of potentially replacing Arnautovic.
But Pellegrini insisted that Michail Antonio replaced the Austrian because he was ready when the change needed to be made, and there was no issue with Perez.
“Maybe you can think that he refused but when Marko was injured, I called Lucas because he was doing his warm-up. Then I saw that he was sitting on the bench because he has finished and Antonio was working, Antonio was ready – that’s why I did the change, not waiting for Lucas to start again because we needed to do the change immediately,” he told Sky Sports.
“Antonio was ready and Lucas had to warm up a little bit more.”
While it would be unfair to criticise Perez too heavily without the rumours being confirmed, the pictures do not look good for the Spaniard, especially as he has only just arrived at the London Stadium and is yet to make an impact.
He has not played much, but he is not the only signing to make a slow start to life with the Hammers. And if it turns out to be true that he did refuse to come on, then he has put an enormous amount of pressure on himself to make sure that he turns his Irons career around in the future.
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