The Hammers began the Premier League season with four losses in a row but ahead of the Manchester City trip are ninth in the table.
West Ham United full-back Pablo Zabaleta has shared how Manuel Pellegrini managed to successfully turn around his side’s poor start to the Premier League season.
The former Manchester City manager took the Hammers reins last summer but things at the London Stadium began poorly, with four consecutive league defeats setting off alarm bells within the fanbase.
West Ham have since found their feet and, although some results have continued to be hit-and-miss so far, a current placing of ninth in the table and 12 points above the bottom three suggests the worst is well behind them.
On Wednesday night, Pellegrini and Zabaleta will be returning to Manchester City to face Pep Guardiola’s title challengers, with the former going back to the Etihad Stadium for the first time since leaving the club in 2016.
Speaking ahead of that game, the Argentine praised his manager and, reminiscing about the start-of-season woes, explained how he just needed a bit of time for his philosophy to bed in with the players.
“You can see we lost the first four consecutive Premier League games and it seems like there was so much talk about the manager but we’ve always been 100 per cent sure that it was a matter of time before we won a game to lift our confidence,” Zabaleta is quoted by Sky Sports News as saying.
“When we lose and when we win he always seems like he’s still the same, he’s so calm in the bad moments. He always kept telling the players that we’re not going to change because we lost four games… he said we’re going to go to Goodison Park and we’re going to win and we did.”
West Ham won their last game, beating Fulham 3-1, and will be facing a side whose last game saw them overcome Chelsea on penalties to earn them the Carabao Cup.
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