Manuel Lanzini’s preparations for the 2021/22 campaign have included taking on a slightly different role in the West Ham United midfield.
Just as at Celtic last weekend, the Argentinian lined up at Brentford in a deeper-lying midfield role, this time partnering Conor Coventry as his team secured a 1-0 win at the Premier League new boys.
With two weeks to go until the new Premier League campaign kicks-off at Newcastle United, Lanzini is delighted with how the pre-season work is going. Saturday’s victory, secured by Saïd Benrahma’s stunning second half goal, was his team’s fourth in succession and the No10 is determined to build on that momentum.
He spoke with West Ham TV at the final whistle in west London…
Manu, a 1-0 win over Brentford here today. It’s our fourth straight win in pre-season and things seems to be building nicely…
For us it’s a good result and Brentford played very well. Our focus is on the Premier League and this kind of game is good for us – for our preparation, for the fitness and we need to keep going like this.
We have won four games, but the main thing for us is the preparation.
How about that goal from Saïd Benrahma – back at his old club, that was a really special one…
For Saïd it’s good. He is training very well and playing very well too. He has the quality, we know this, and we know he can help the team with assists and with goals. For us that’s very important because these goals will help his confidence.
And for yourself, you’ve had plenty of minutes on the pitch these last two weeks at Celtic and Brentford. How are you feeling?
For me personally it’s good. I’m feeling very well, it’s a new position for me but I like it. I like it because I get more touches of the ball and can help the team keep possession. It’s good to start to play, to get the minutes and I feel like I’m ready for the new season.
From the team’s point of view we scored six last week at Celtic. There was a clean sheet today, so positives at both end of the pitch…
That’s important. We have done a lot of positive things in the game, and also we need to keep it going for our preparation for the Premier League, but we are playing well.
Just finally, it was good to see 1,000 or so Hammers fans in the corner over there today. There will be many more thousands of them at home next week when we play Atalanta – you must be looking forward to that?
It’s going to be very good for us, for the fans and the players, because last season we missed this. We missed the fans in the stadium and we want to give them a good season, like the one we had last year. Hopefully we can do that.
