New Fulham signing Alphonse Areola
It’s probably unfair to criticise him to severely but Alphonse Areola a may not have had the best game of his career in Belgium last night.
Some – us among them – believed he should have got a stronger hand to the first Genk goal and looked uncertain at times from then on.
There were a couple of longish range shots which saw him scrambling and an enthusiasm to punch rather than gather the ball was a tad worrying.
However, there were others at the stadium last night who believed he had a very decent game and he is clearly working hard to establish himself in the squad.
Whether hee will become the club’s No 1 remains to be seen with Lukasz Fabianski agreeing that he could be around for another season.
In the meantime he will be working hard to establish himself and was disappointed to come away from Genk with less than the three points we believed were in the bag until Tomas Soucek’s late own goal.
And afterwards he declared on www.whufc.con: “It was unlucky for me and for the team because we wanted to get the win, but we go back to London with an important point
“I’m just working as much as I can every day, trying to help the team, so I’m just trying to do my best and the Gaffer will make his choices,
“Everyone welcomed me. I was really happy to sign for West Ham and the guys just welcomed me very well. We have a little group of French of players which helped me a lot and I feel confident with them and with this team.”
He has been recalled to the national team having been recalled alongside clubmate Kurt Zouma to Didier Deschamps’ squad ahead of two vital 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers with Kazakhstan and France.
He knows West ham are truly on their way declaring: “Of course, the Gaffer said we can compete for the top four and I think we’ve shown good things in our games.
So we’re just going to prepare for that game and the way we’re playing we’ll move forward and try to win that game and see what happens.”