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Manuel Pellegrini snuck under the radar, returning from his trip to Chile far earlier than had previously been scheduled, the ex Real Madrid and Manchester City manager spent most of this week working with those players who were not on international duty, one of those players was Declan Rice. Having been the subject of a bit of a tug of war between England and the republic of Ireland for his services as a full international Rice was able to concentrate on learning the role Pellegrini has envisaged for him, and that is as a central midfield destoyer/enforcer.

Well maybe they know more about Muscat than being Musketeers, but Manuel Lanzini, Andy Carroll and Winston Reid were, and have been, major players for West Ham United. Much has been made of the club's recent massive investment in players and their current lack of success, but it should be remembered that much of anything decent that happened in the last few seasons occurred when one or all of them were playing.

Historically the dreaded 'vote of confidence' from a football club's hierarchy was the portent to a manager being 'hooked', however that is not so much the case now, managers are paid vast amounts of money and terminating their lucrative contracts can prove to be extremely costly. The atrocious run of losses that West Ham have sustained during Manuel Pellegrini's four games in the Barclays Premiership has seen the odds on El Pel being sacked shorten to such an extent that only Manchester United's Jose Mourinho is priced shorter.