Soccer Football – Europa Conference League – Group B – West Ham United v FCSB – London Stadium, London, Britain – September 8, 2022 West Ham United’s Jarrod Bowen celebrates scoring their first goal Action Images via Reuters/Peter Cziborra
Jarrod Bowen appears to have known since way back that this season was going to be tougher than the last two.
It’s always easy to get things right in retrospect but Bowen is an honest broker and his reasoning makes a lot of sense.
It doesn’t fully explain why the Hammers should have found themselves deep into the relegation zone but Wolves found the selves sliding after a couple of top seasons and European qualification.
It’s not been dissimilar at the London Stadium of course but things are now looking up and the Newcastle point was the best of recent results.
The FA Cup wins and the three points against Everton was great but a point at Newcastle really was the icing on the cake given the brilliant form Eddie Howe’s men have been in.
More of the same against Chelsea and confidence should be sky high but in the meantime Bowen has been explaining the season’s problems,
He said: ” I remember speaking after the Arsenal game and I said then that, as players, we got ourselves in this position and, as much as you do not believe it, you have to believe it and cannot hide away from it because it’s the situation that we’re in.
After the two years that we’ve had, I think this year was always going to be the hardest in terms of being consistent because we had that one year where we finished sixth, then last year was a bit of a free hit because nobody expected us to do it again.
We played freely and ended up finishing in the European positions again, but then I think this season has been different in the way people have been looking at us and putting pressure on us not just to finish in mid-table, but to finish in the top six every year.
We didn’t start as well as we wanted to get back in that position, and we still haven’t, but it’s about us as players to stick together and really fight for this Club like we’ve always done.
The start of this year, we’ve had a couple of FA Cup wins and they’ve obviously helped with confidence, which is a massive thing when we’re in the position that we’re in.
When we were in the top six, we were coming in every day with confidence and momentum behind us, but at this time winning the Derby game was one we wanted to win and took confidence from into the Newcastle game, which is probably one of the toughest games we could have had up at St James’ Park with the way they are flying.
I thought we did really well there and could have come away with three points on another day, so it’s looking up and that’s all we can do.”
Bowen’s loss of form is one thing and it can happen to any player but for me what is not acceptable is Moyes continuing to pick him knowing full well as we all could see he was not performing while leaving players who want to prove themselves sitting on the bench getting no game time. Even against Newcastle in the last game he was poor especially second half, he even picked up a knock and he was struggling with it for some time afterwards. What does Moyes do leave him on the pitch for the entire game. The board are in disarray and completely not in alignment with the fans, the next few games will prove once and for all Moyes has to go. We can no longer put up with these sort of team selections, negative tactics, preferential treatment of players and it is sinking the club further and further into a relegation all down to mis management of the team, he is no leader I would safely say he does not even understood what leadership is as he portrays none of it.