West Ham United boss David Moyes admits he can see goalscoring winger Jarrod Bowen potentially becoming more of a central striker later in his career. Speaking on Bowen, Moyes now sees a quicker, more technically gifted and more tactically astute player and can see him emulating multi-time Ballon d’Or winners Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, who both started as wingers before playing as a central strikers later in their careers.
David Moyes said: “I think Jarrod has started to show in his development, you can see an improvement in him. His technical part of the game looks better. He’s faster and quicker than he’s been and he’s understanding a lot more tactically, what his roles have to do. I see Jarrod, if you think of the best wingers, it might not be the right terminology, I think of all of the best wingers over the years, you have your Ronaldo’s and Messi’s nearly all of them became centre-forwards and goalscorers and I think Jarrod is going towards that and his career is going on, getting more towards being a forward player who wants to score goals. If you look at his goals last year and to be fair, if you look at his goals every year, his goals at [Hull] over two/three years, he has a really good goalscoring record over the years and for us, he’s been really consistent as well.”
Bowen has only rediscovered his best form since coming back from England duty last month where he did not feature in either of their Nations League clashes with Italy and Germany. Moyes has spoken on that start and felt that prior to his 18-goal 2021/22 campaign, Bowen came back from pre-season fit after running in potato fields in his hometown of Hereford compared to this year, where his summer break involved a camp with England.
David Moyes said: “I think there is. The year before, we’d had quite a short break, Jarrod had said he had gone home, back to Hereford to be with his family. I said ‘what were you doing?’ He said ‘I just went running, I was running in the potato fields and all over Hereford’ and he came back in incredible condition and went on. He started the season great, actually in the end, probably his form from January onwards, we needed his goals. I actually think he got himself in such a good physical condition, he was ready to start. I think the difference was probably the length of the season, away with the international break then saying he needed a break, which he did do. I think it’s just taking him time to get up and running again. I just think of the season before after England England were in the final of the European Championships, Harry Kane had a slow start to the season but that went on to be fantastic in the second half of the season. It was probably because of fatigue, the games, not enough recovery. I’m hoping it is a little bit of the sign, but I’m beginning to see a lot of good signs from Jarrod now.
