Jarrod Bowen has been in excellent form for West Ham this season
(Picture: PA)It took a while for Jarrod Bowen to convince himself he was a Premier League player.
After joining West Ham from Hull in a £20million-plus deal in January 2020, he felt like a Championship player trying to make his mark in the top flight.
But Bowen has transformed himself into one of the most productive and reliable attacking threats at the highest level. With seven goals in his last seven games, he now looks like he belongs. Only Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah has been involved in more goals than Bowen’s 16 this season.
Bowen has hailed Salah as his inspiration, while Liverpool have tracked the 25-year-old, as Jurgen Klopp looks to further invest in his forward line.
Bowen is eager to learn from his coaches and often studies video clips of himself back home. He will think nothing of arriving at the training ground early to go over some footage with David Moyes’s assistant, Billy McKinlay, before training.
Individual sessions have been put on to improve his weaker right foot in a bid to add a level of unpredictability to his game.
When he does cut inside onto his left, there has been a specific focus on taking his shot early and with conviction.
There was evidence of that with his goal at Leicester last weekend. Instead of dithering and wasting the moment — as had been the case too often in the past — he took one touch to control the ball before firing it past Kasper Schmeichel.
That has been a point driven home by coach Kevin Nolan, who has worked hard with Bowen to mould him into a more instinctive and clinical player in the final third. Nolan has helped Bowen become more intelligent about the attacking positions he takes up.
It is working, too. Bowen has already comfortably beaten his goal tally from last season, the amount of his shots that hit the target is up 10 per cent and his shots on target per 90 minutes have almost doubled, suggesting he is making more of the chances that come his way.
While Michail Antonio struggles for form and goals from elsewhere are drying up, West Ham are increasingly looking to Bowen to keep their Champions League push alive.
Now, crucially, the 25-year-old has the confidence and ability to deliver.
“You can see Jarrod’s confidence is very high and he’s a top, top player,” said team-mate Craig Dawson this week. “We expect big things from him every week now.”
Bowen’s fitness has played a key factor in his improvement, too. He spent last summer pushing giant tyres and wheelbarrows full of cement out of a mixer up and down the lanes near his father’s home in Herefordshire.
That work helped Bowen return, in Moyes’s mind, as the fittest West Ham player at the start of pre-season.
He has stayed injury-free despite being on the receiving end of a few robust challenges, and is now being substituted by Moyes far less frequently.
Bowen averaged 67 minutes playing time in Premier League games last season; this term that figure is 85.
The big question now on everyone’s lips at West Ham is whether he can earn an England cap.
Bowen has been put on standby for squads this season but is still waiting for his first call-up. The feeling is that could come next month, when England face Switzerland and Ivory Coast, and there is a strong belief at West Ham that Bowen has the ability to join Declan Rice in the squad.
Of all the players available to Gareth Southgate, only Raheem Sterling has more goals in the Premier League this season.
While staff sometimes joke with Bowen about his England ambitions, nothing would give them more pride than seeing him earn recognition on the biggest stage.
