Alex Kral has issued a disappointed but respectful verdict on David Moyes’ man management attitudes during a new interview.
Kral was frozen out at West Ham last season and received next to no minutes from the West Ham manager who brought him in on loan.
Král now opened up on his strained relationship with the Hammers boss, shockingly revealing that he only spoke to him on one occasion last term.
Very few of us could understand why the midfielder – having cost a loan fee – should have been totally ignored for his time at the club.
But apparently that didn’t only refer to his lack of appearances on the pitch but to Moyes attitude off it with Kral.
“I am a young player who always wants to play and for that reason at West Ham was a hard time for me”, he told Capital Football following Schalke 04’s 1-0 win over fellow Bundesliga strugglers 1.FSV Mainz 05.
“Really fast I recognised I won’t play in too many games, so I worked on my weaknesses in each training.
“Moyes didn’t speak much with me, he was detached.
“I only spoke to him one time when I went to him, asking him what I needed to improve to play, at a time when Rice and Tomas were out of the game.
“But something was off because if I had been doing everything right I’d be playing, no? So, I tried to speak like this with him, I didn’t go and ask: ‘Why am I not playing?’.
“But he kept saying that I needed to wait for my chance, the rest was between him and me.
“I kept training hard, apart from one week when I had Coronavirus, I was never injured, I was ready.
“Sadly, there wasn’t much communication, but he wasn’t like that just to me. It’s just the way Moyes is and I don’t take it personally.
“I respect David and it was a good lesson, using it to my advantage to work on my weaknesses.”
The Hammers misfit still feels aggrieved by that ruthless decision-making, not least as the team were in dire need of fresh legs during the season run-in, when they challenged for a European finish domestically while attempting to win the Europa League.
While fellow central midfielder Declan Rice and Tomáš Souček were involved in 36 and 35 Premier League games respectively and played through tiredness, Kral was ridiculed with a mere one-minute cameo at Watford in over nine months.
He said: “They are really good players who played well and were healthy so there wasn’t something that someone was injured and you’d go in.
“I don’t know how many games Declan played last season, over 60? And the same Tomáš.
“I feel there was a space to use me more in the Europa League, for example in Frankfurt the team was really tired but Moyes had his own players.
“Sometimes I’d feel it, the players would feel it, that we should change a little bit to refresh the team, but Moyes saw it differently and I respect it.
“In the end the results spoke for him, if he hadn’t had them, it would have been different.”
Kral was another player sunk by Moyes – as with others, Moyes signed him then never ever played him, not even when we were short handed. Another face that didn’t fit. This last two years has been weird for players brought in then cold shouldered by DM, and all international players too.