Jack Wilshere’s West Ham debut did not quite go to plan today, with the Hammers being on the end of a 4-0 drubbing by Liverpool at Anfield in their opening Premier League fixture of the season.
Wilshere ended his 17 year association with Arsenal earlier this summer when he moved to the London Stadium on a free transfer.
West Ham manager Manuel Pellegrini has hailed the 26-year-old midfielder as a special player and has predicted that he will force his way back into the plans of England manager Gareth Southgate:
“He was very unlucky in some seasons with so many injuries, but he continued being a different player,” said Pellegrini in his pre-match press conference.
“As a manager you can work a lot of different ways with a lot of different tactics, a lot of different systems, but if you don’t have good players it’s impossible to be a good team.
“Jack, in the 10 years that he played for Arsenal, he’s a different player. So if the injuries respect him, alone he will make the difference.
“We are always talking to him. Maybe he will not work exactly the same as the rest of the squad.
“But I am not scared about that because the last two seasons he played a lot of games. At Bournemouth and at Arsenal, he didn’t have too many injuries.
“He’s a young player and he knows his body and I hope that he will be fit for most of the season.
“Every day we have the players on the GPS and we know the most amount of metres that he does before he has a rest. So that, with the fitness coach and the sport science, will manage his work.
“Can he be an England player again? I think so, yes. The technical players make the difference and Jack is the special player that makes different things.
“So if he continues playing every weekend his performances will be better and I’m sure that he will have an option to return to the England squad.”
