David Moyes
West Ham United manager David Moyes admits Gianluca Scamacca needs reminding of his basic striker instincts after scoring his first goal in almost three months on Wednesday against Leeds United. While Moyes likes Scamacca’s link-up qualities, he is urging him to get in the penalty area more to recreate the goal tally he mustered at Sassuolo last season.
David Moyes said: “We enjoy his link-up play. But if you want to be a 15 or 20-goal a season man you need some tap-ins, you need to slide across the goal and get in front of people. What he’s got is three or four a season in him like against Leeds, he’s got great ability to score from distance. But I think everybody who watches football or plays football would tell you if you’re going to be a centre-forward you need to score with your head, you need to score with your feet in and around the six-yard box. I don’t think that’s a difficult thing for a centre-forward, if you are going to be a centre-forward that’s skills you learn as an eight-year-old ‘ how am I going to score?’. So I don’t think it’s something Gianluca doesn’t know, I think it’s something he needs reminding of, getting in the right positions. And we’ve maybe not delivered enough good balls at times to pick him out, so we need to get that better.”
Speaking on how Scamacca can improve his threatening qualities up front, Moyes said that it is a combination of training drills and conversations that will lead to improvement. However, Moyes also said that the issue has been one with Scamacca ever since his arrival and needs to take it upon himself to improve his threat up front for the Hammers.
David Moyes added: “A bit of both, sometimes showing him and I think he understands but it’s not as if we just recognised it this week, we’ve been on it since probably week one. The worst part is you can tell people and show them, but they have to pick it up. It’s self-development. We’ve all had teachers, we’ve all been taught things but in life you have to find a way of how you do it yourself. How you find a way of scoring. There’s a lot of coaching going on but the players have got to be the ones who stand up a little bit and say ‘I understand what you’ve told me, now I’m going to put it into action.’
