We have already done Marco Silva at Everton, Unai Emery at Arsenal and Maurizio Sarri at Chelsea, and Pellegrini is the final new Premier League manager until Sam Allardyce finally gets his chance at Old Trafford. This is also the hardest one of the lot, because West Ham have lost all three of their league games and played away at Arsenal and Liverpool. Still, that doesn’t mean that it’s the same old story…

Forced an upgrade in the club’s training facilities

West Ham only moved to their Rush Green training complex in 2016 – previously the home of the development and academy squads – after Slaven Bilic had complained about the state of the pitches at Chadwell Heath.

“I heard a lot about the pitches here, they are not ideal. They are slippery on the top but rock hard underneath and it is a bad combination,” Bilic said in 2015. “Over the time, players have been moaning about the pitches, they are not happy.”

West Ham did upgrade the Rush Green facilities to accommodate the first-team squad’s move, but Pellegrini was apparently pretty unimpressed by what he saw when he arrived at the club. When your former clubs include Manchester City, Real Madrid and River Plate and you’ve just come from a club building this ludicrous palace, you will expect a little more than basic.

According to a report by the Daily Mail, West Ham began an urgent upgrade to their facilities after Pellegrini’s warning. His predecessor David Moyes had been astonished to learn that he would change with 14 other members of staff in a small room, while the gym and catering areas will also both be significantly extended. Pellegrini’s ultimate aim is to have the club’s Under-23 side training together with the first team, but that is not possible with the site in its current state. No wonder West Ham’s youth players never break through.

Playing on the front foot

Under David Moyes, West Ham occasionally shifted formations but would typically set up to frustrate the opposition. This was no bad thing, with several first-team players remarking upon West Ham’s defensive improvement under the new manager. Moyes did what he had to do to ensure survival.

But that defensiveness also counted against him when it came to retaining his job in the long term. Between his appointment and the end of the season, West Ham ranked 18th in the Premier League for chances created, ahead of only Carlos Carvalhal’s relegated Swansea and Sam Allardyce’s Everton. They ranked 18th for shots too.

The accusation, fair or otherwise, was that Moyes would struggle to change his style to make West Ham attacking. The club’s owners therefore decided to seek someone who would. Step forward Pellegrini.

“I think that West Ham had a difficult season last season and I hope that next season we are going to play football that will delight the fans,” the new manager said at his unveiling. “I always play attacking football and we must try to reach important targets in the season.”

West Ham may have lost all three games, but he has stayed true to that message. West Ham’s average total of shots, shots on target and chances created are all up from last season. They ranked 17th in the league for chances created from open play in 2017/18, but are 11th so far this season and have only created two fewer than the team in sixth. Considering the standard of opposition faced in their two away games, these are meaningful figures.

What has let West Ham down has been their profligacy in front of goal. Under Moyes, their shot conversion rate ranked second in the Premier League at 14.5%, evidence that the manager should be grateful to Marko Arnautovic for making him look good. So far this season, West Ham rank 16th with 6.9%.

More fluidity too

There was little secret to West Ham’s attacking success last season. Moyes’ masterstroke was moving Arnautovic into a central striking role rather than the wide forward position in which he regularly ran down blind alleys and failed to help out defensively. Arnautovic’s strength lies in holding the up the ball and bringing others into play. By instructing Manuel Lanzini to play off him, defenders would typically hit direct balls to Arnautovic and hope he and Lanzini could interchange. The most memorable success story was away at Huddersfield in January, when they scored three goals between them.

Yet the danger was that Arnautovic was left far too isolated when West Ham were under pressure, Lanzini dropping deep into midfield with the centre forward given the task of facing two or three defenders by himself and dealing with increasingly desperate direct passes. West Ham’s passing accuracy into the final third, a reasonable judge of long balls and an isolated striker, was 60.5% last season.

Pellegrini has preached to his players the importance of getting closer to Arnautovic but also of trusting themselves to pass their way through midfield rather than bypass it. They currently rank second in the Premier League for completed dribbles and 12th for passes, up from 16th last season. Possession has also increased from last season’s average, again impressive given the calibre of their two away opponents, while the passing accuracy into the final third has jumped up to 69.5%.

Touches in the penalty area have increased from 17 per game to 20, and West Ham’s new-found bravery can be handily represented in one statistic. Against Arsenal on Saturday, West Ham touched the ball 28 times in the opposition box. That’s a figure they passed only twice in the whole of last season, at home to Stoke and Newcastle.

By getting closer to Arnautovic, West Ham’s players can then begin to persuade the Austrian to share the load. He had 26.2% of all their penalty-box touches last season and 24.8% of their shots on target. As a comparison, Harry Kane had 35.3% of Tottenham’s shots on target, but only 22.3% of their touches in the box.

Improved their transfer market draw

West Ham haven’t quite shaken their tendency to sign ageing players or those who come out of left field and seem like throw-the-dice gambles. This summer alone they have bought 32-year-old Carlos Sanchez from Fiorentina, rescued 29-year-old Lucas Perez from his Arsenal misery and imported Paraguayan central defender Fabian Balbuena from Corinthians, who is 27 and has no experience of playing in Europe.

Training facilities aside, West Ham should have no problem signing players. They are based in the capital city of the world’s most affluent league, and are renowned in the game for being generous in transfer negotiations, both in terms of salary and contract length.

But the arrival of Pellegrini has increased the standard of player that West Ham could hope to sign, at least in comparison with Moyes. Would he have been able to broker the arrival of Felipe Anderson from Lazio or Andriy Yarmolenko?

West Ham’s issues have not been solved by their summer spending. The departure of Cheikhou Kouyate does not cause a problem in itself – he had been on the wane for 18 months – but replacing him with Jack Wilshere fails to make a fragile defensive midfield area more secure. Pellegrini likening him to Andrea Pirlo is a huge compliment, but they are completely different players. Very simply, Wilshere likes to carry the ball forward while Pirlo would pass it. Mark Noble would not start for any other team with top-half aspirations; his West Ham-ness gives him a VIP pass.

Of all the players to start 20 Premier League matches last season, 13 clubs had a central midfielder who made tackles more often than any West Ham player in that area of the pitch, including ten of the 12 clubs outside the top eight. West Ham have long been too fragile in that area, and it needs solving. Plenty rests on Sanchez’s shoulders.

But if Pellegrini is truly a manager for the long term, and only two of the club’s last nine permanent appointments have reached 100 games in charge, his reputation and connections within the game can only help.

Still, he could do with a league win.

Daniel Storey