While it’s not necessarily a bad sign, there’s no denying that Guido Rodriguez didn’t have the best of starts to life at West Ham. Although he strung together some excellent passes, he did leave massive gaps in the midfield, which isn’t really a surprise, after all not only was it his first Premier League game but he was also acting as a lone defensive midfielder.
Despite the result and his performance, it was a proud moment for the Argentinian as he made his debut in claret and blue. “It was good, it was a nice experience to debut in the Premier League,” he explained to the official site. “It was a shame that we couldn’t win or at least get a point from the last play of the game [when Tomáš Souček twice went close in the final seconds]. We have to keep working as this has only just begun, and there are plenty more games to put things right.”
“It was a game in which could have gone our way. We have to keep working, put this behind us and keep looking forward.”
“It was a really good experience. I really liked the atmosphere that the fans created, they gave us a lot of energy during many moments that we needed it and we ask them to trust us that we will continue to work hard to achieve things.”
Aside from the previously mentioned reasons, Rodriguez also hinted that he wasn’t fully match fit, but he believes he did a decent enough job in the middle of the park. “In the little time I’ve spent training with the team I’ve been trying to get back to 100 per cent physically,” he admitted. “I believe I was able to hold my own during the match for 80 or so minutes, so I’m happy about that.”
“We have a very important match next week. We are going to go for it from the very first moment to win all three points.”
Hopefully there’s much more to come from Rodriguez as there were some extremely positive signs. You’d imagine that he will be much better when playing alongside Edson Alvarez as it would allow him to stress less about the defensive work and more about his passing from deep.
