Manuel Pellegrini sat down with the media on Friday afternoon to preview Saturday's Premier League fixture between his West Ham United and Sean Dyche's Burnley.
The Hammers boss discussed a number of different topics, including the form of Declan Rice and Felipe Anderson and what he expects from the Clarets. Here is what the Chilean had to say...
We are only thinking about the present
Before the season, I think it’s a bad idea to have a target for the season. You must demonstrate what you are able to do in the Premier League and I think that we are trying to build a team with a strong mentality and an ambitious mentality.
If you review the games we played against the biggest teams – Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham – even though we lost two of them, I think we demonstrated that we can do it.
After that, we need to improve a lot of things to be a competitive team. At the end of season we will see what we did and if we could have done better or worse but, in this moment, we don’t have any targets.
We must win against Burnley. We have the same feeling and same opinion after we finished the last game, that we did well and we created a lot of options and we deserved better results but, for different reasons, we didn’t get the results that we wanted.
So, three points against Burnley at home must be a game we cannot fail in.
Declan can play in midfield or defence
At the moment, Declan Rice is playing as a midfielder because he knows how to do it, because he is doing well and because we don’t have many options in that position.
At centre-back, both Fabian Balbuena and Issa Diop are doing very well and we have Angelo Ogbonna who is an important player also, but Declan can also play in both positions at this moment.
In the future, it depends on the way he develops his technique and his tactical system, so you never know, but there are a lot of players who can play in both positions without any problems.
Felipe Anderson is doing his best to improve and adapt
I am happy with Felipe Anderson’s performance in a global way but I think he is not happy and everyone is not happy because he has demonstrated that he can do it more.
He had good moments in some part of the game and bad moments in other moments, but he is not the first player who needs some time to know the Premier League.
What I have no doubt about is Felipe’s performance and commitment with the team, that he knows he must improve and he is doing his best to do it.
I trust a lot in him and he’s always a player who can make easy mistakes, but can give you different things also.
I expect to see the same old Burnley
I think Burnley have had the same manager for six years in Sean Dyche so I don’t think they will change from one day to another one.
They have conceded a lot of goals in the season and in their last two games, but they play always the same line or four at the back.
Maybe in this moment, if you think there is a tactical thing they can improve, that will be in the mind of their manager, but I expect Burnley will continue to play the same way they did last season.
With my team I have enough to think about, though! I try to find what we must do to beat Burnley, not what Burnley must do to improve!